There are few better ways to get a crash course on a street or neighbourhood than by heading out on one of the many Jane's Walk offered each year in early May. Led by knowledgable folk who range from urban planning experts and local councillors to engaged neighbourhood residents, if exploring Toronto is your thing, this weekend (May 5 and 6) has some action in store for you.

In an effort to avoid repetition, I'll keep this subjective list of recommendations fresh by not repeating any walks we highlighted last year. But if you haven't been out for one, Himy Syed's walk, Retracing Stop Spadina, is a good intro to how these things work and also highly informative. Also worth checking out if you havent already done so is Jason Kucherawy's Toronto graffiti walk, which'll take you to some of the best street art pieces in the city.

Two lanes of Yonge Street between Gerrard and Richmond Streets could be closed for almost a month as part of Celebrate Yonge, a street festival co-produced by Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam scheduled for later this summer. Under the plans heading for council, planters and other foliage will be installed in the street a few metres from the sidewalk to keep traffic to just two lanes. The closed portion side will alternate heading north.

You've probably heard the news already — that the police were once again called to the mayor's house last evening, this time after an altercation of some kind with Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale who was working on a story that brought him in close proximity to the Ford home in Etobicoke. Depending on whose account of the evening's events you believe, altercation might not even be the correct word. What sounds most likely is that Ford completely lost control and threatened a reporter who was merely doing his job.

A comment containing a great photo of the old sign at Duffy's Tavern on our post yesterday inspired me to fill in yet another gap in our series of historical posts about Toronto: Bloor Street. Although we've devoted some attention to the intersection of Yonge & Bloor, the rest of the street hasn't received its well-deserved time in the spotlight. That's a bit of an oversight when you consider just how important an artery it is for this city.

I suspect, however, that Bloor gets somewhat overlooked when talking about Toronto's grand streets because north/south corridors like Yonge and Spadina played a more important role in the early development of the city. When Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe created Toronto's Park Lots in the 1790s, Bloor was the northern terminus of the long narrow estates that would eventually determine the general shape of the downtown streetscape.

Cargo van rental in Toronto has many uses, with moving-related activities being chief among them (perhaps you, too, have a disproportionately large collection of end-tables). It seems that more and more car rental companies are servicing this need by adding larger vans to their rental options. For the purposes of this post, we'll assume that a cargo van will be sufficient for transporting your worldly goods.

May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, brought out nearly 1,000 people in various protests and marches across the city yesterday, many of whom could be tied to the Occupy movement in some capacity or another.

The events started at Queen's Park early in the day, eventually gaining its highest numbers at Nathan Phillips Square around 4 p.m., where a variety of groups had gathered. There were people from Occupy Toronto, the Filipino Canadian Workers Organization and even a group dedicated to environmental justice, Green Bloc. As was the case with Occupy, there was a general sense of dissent rather than a narrow focus on one cause.