Innholdsfortegnelse for Noember 2024 i Toronto Life

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“The good old days of driving downtown without hassle are over”—Traffic director Roger Browne, p. 24 Negotiations came down to the wire. Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro begged Mayor Olivia Chow to intervene, former mayor John Tory stepped in as a mediator and, in the end, the heroes prevailed. After months of living under the threat of eviction, the Revue Film Society announced in September that it had secured a new five-year lease for its beloved theatre on Roncesvalles. Unlike so many of the city’s fallen movie houses, the Revue has survived and thrived during the streaming era, defiantly serving sold-out crowds a full program of art house, horror, Hollywood blockbusters and delicious schlock. It’s great news for cinephiles and art lovers in general—a welcome twist for a sector that, since…

IT’S A 45-MINUTE DRIVE east on the 401 from the courthouse in Oshawa to Brookside, a juvenile detention facility, or what the Ontario government called a “training school,” for delinquent boys in Cobourg. I would have done anything to make the trip last longer. From the back of the police cruiser, I stared out at the frozen fields flashing by, turning over in my mind the ominous rumours I’d heard about Brookside. Many of the boys were there for serious crimes such as assault. My transgression had been hitching a ride in a Toyota I didn’t realize was stolen. The judge released the culprits—two teens—to the custody of their parents, but as a 13-year-old ward of the Children’s Aid Society, I wasn’t so lucky. The judge decided that the structure…

A DECADE AGO, Briony Douglas quit her ad sales job and decided to pursue her artistic hobbies full time. In 2019, a friend asked her to make an elephant sculpture for Holt Renfrew’s anti-poaching charity, Knot on My Planet, and Douglas made one out of 500 pounds of rope. After that, brands started lining up to commission their own larger-than-life installations. Douglas built an eight-foot-tall Stan Smith out of recycled bottle caps for Adidas, a pair of 10-foot-tall cowboy boots for the Boots and Hearts Music Festival, and a life-size Formula One race car made out of nails for the Montreal Grand Prix. Then, this spring, she created the giant Toronto-inspired Where’s Waldo–style mural at Shake Shack’s first-ever Canadian location. Currently, Douglas and her partner, Stephen James, are focused on…

Nobu Bar Nobu Hotel 25 Mercer St., nobuhotels.com/toronto/nobu-toronto Nobu Bar has managed to become one of the city’s best hotel lobby bars without even having a lobby. The hotel portion of Nobu Toronto won’t be finished until next spring, but its swanky restaurant and lounge launched just in time for this year’s TIFF. It’s no surprise that the brand made a mad dash for festival season: Kim Kardashian lives for its lychee-elderflower martinis, 2 ChainzandDrakerapabout it, and tabloids dedicate whole sections to paparazzi shots of A-listers dining at Nobus around the world. Regulars include Leonardo DiCaprio, Demi Moore, Taylor Swift and the Biebers. Since the original Tribeca location opened in 1994, cofounder Robert De Niro’s star power and chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s elegant Japanese-Peruvian plates have made Nobu the ultimate celeb…

In the past year or so, Tom Cruise, Will Ferrell and Niall Horan have all complained about Toronto traffic. What are the odds you can fix it before Taylor Swift lands at the Rogers Centre? Six concerts, nine days and a huge influx of people—we’ve spent a lot of time coordinating and have drawn a box around the Rogers Centre. The inside zone will be for ticket holders, the middle for pedestrians and the outside for ride-share vehicles only. The TTC and GO will also be ramping up service. What is it about our city that makes traffic so eye-bleedingly bad? The number-one cause of congestion is construction, but I don’t want to cast the cranes in the sky as villains. We’re a megacity. People want to live and invest…

$0.04 Cost difference between buying a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon at Circle K versus the Beer Store. $2 Hourly pay cut coming to child care employees working at institutions that operate outside of Ontario’s subsidized $10-a-day system. $17.20 New minimum wage in Ontario, up 65 cents. Assuming a 40-hour workweek, it adds up to an annual salary of $35,776. $900,000 Selling price of Leslieville’s somewhat charming but mostly terrifying dollhouse—$99,000 under asking. $140,000,000 Amount the TTC loses to fare evasion every year. To help staunch the bleeding, the transit agency is phasing out no-tap gates, which account for $20 million in unpaid ridership. $421,000,000 Cost to revitalize the aging St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts. After learning that the project would require additional government funding and third-party sponsorship, Toronto’s…

A GARAGE TURNED WORK-OR-PLAY SPACE 415 square feet WHEN COVID HIT, Jessica Knox and her partner, Mark, were living with their two kids in a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom semi in Danforth Village. Mark, who works in IT software sales support, began working from home, using one of the kids’ bedrooms as an office, while Jessica worked at the dining room table. By 2021, they started brainstorming ways to create more living space. They had a dilapidated garage in their backyard that they were using for storage. With the help of architecture and design studio Creative Union Network, they hatched a plan to tear it down and hired Green Room Contracting to build a 415-square-foot multipurpose space in its place. By the summer of 2023, their single-room, open-concept studio was complete. It…

THE BUYERS: Chelsea Clark, 32, a marketing specialist, and her husband, Christopher Russo, 34, a high school teacher. THE STORY: In February of 2022, Chelsea and Christopher’s work lives took a turn. She was shifting to full-time remote work, and he had transferred from the Peel District School Board to Durham. They had been renting a one bedroom apartment in Oshawa for two years, and now they felt ready to buy. The couple set a budget of $600,000 and cast a wide net, searching for properties from Courtice to Newmarket. But they soon realized that Oshawa, which was close to their family, friends and work, was also within reach. Here’s what happened next. OPTION 1 CENTRAL PARK BOULEVARD NORTH Oshawa Listed at $599,900 Sold for $615,000 Chelsea and Christopher saw this twobedroom,…

THE DEFINING DRINKS of the ’80s and ’90s were, well, awful—super sugary, garishly garnished and often unnaturally coloured: think of the electric-green appletini or the sunset-hued sex on the beach. But today’s bartenders are raising these disco drinks from the dead, crafting new versions of nostalgic cocktails with fancier ingredients and artisanal flourishes. At the Joneses, a groovy downtown steakhouse, both the cosmopolitan and the lychee martini have made a comeback. The latter, unlike its syrupy predecessor, features Empress 1908 gin, fresh lychee juice and fluffy egg white. “It’s like the lychee martini grew up and bought a condo downtown,” says general manager Bryer Lees. “It’s less party girl, more sophisticated woman.” Civil Works, the new cocktail lounge inside Waterworks Food Hall from the team behind the award-winning bar Civil…

The Lion King Opens Nov. 2, Princess of Wales Theatre…

The pandemic played a role in the latter two cases, but the truth is that single-family homes are way too expensive, and condos just aren’t being made for families. Even today, only 10 per cent of Toronto condos have three bedrooms or more. The three couples in my circle that left are talented, gainfully employed parents who contribute to their communities in big and small ways. They’re also young and brimming with energy and optimism. In other words, the exact people Toronto needs to stick around. Unfortunately, the dire housing situation pushed them out. Toronto’s loss, times six. My urgent, irritated, increasingly lonely question is this: Why? In a city as vibrant and theoretically ascendant as ours, why is there an affordability crisis? The pieces should all line up: developers…

A CLASSIC 4X4 WHO: Sloane Paul, founder and CEO of Arc Motor Company WHAT: 1974 Ford Bronco HOW MUCH: $150,000 During Covid, Sloane Paul, then a marketer at Microsoft, developed a passion for classic cars. In 2022, she bought a rusting Ford Bronco from a friend in Alberta who restores them and decided to transform it into an EV. “Batterypowered cars are where the world is going,” she says. “I wanted to do my part for the environment.” She enlisted her brother Tom Chep, an automotive and electrical engineer, to help. Chep removed the internal combustion engine and replaced it with a handful of recycled Tesla batteries. They created a 3-D template of an electric motor to make sure it would fit, and then bought one with similar dimensions from…

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Every month, TL Insiders enjoy terrific experiences and events across the city. More than 1,000 Torontonians have already signed up, and you can too! Members get front-of-the-line access to cultural events and private dining experiences plus exclusive invitations to Toronto Life’s salon-like discussion series. Membership is only $75 a year—so sign up today and rediscover the city as a member. Don’t miss out. Sign up at: members.torontolife.com Live Nation Lake House experience with NKOTB: TL Insiders gained exclusive access to Live Nation’s Lake House, a world-class members-only bar and restaurant patio situated directly backstage at Toronto’s hottest summer music venue, Budweiser Stage. The experience was followed by access to shows at Budweiser Stage, including Train and REO Speedwagon, Alan Doyle, and New Kids on the Block with Paula Abdul and DJ…