JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Found this cartoon while researching this weekend's edition of Historicist . I can sympathize with the frustrated diner -- a couple of months ago a friend and I experienced a lengthy delay at a Corktown brunch spot we had liked. Over an hour passed before we discovered our order had slipped through the cracks. Usually the 100-year wait while dining in Toronto is for the bill. I usually dash to the cash when it's time to go, regardless of the grumbly looks this occasionally inspires. Source: the News , December 31, 1887.

This post provides supplementary material for a Torontoist article about the evolution of Toronto's pinball machine regulations , which you should read before diving into the following text. I began my research for the article by going back to the 1930s, when guardians of morality began pressing to curb or eliminate pinball machines. On my first run through the Star archives, one of the earliest references to pinball I found was on the kids page of the May 5, 1934 edition. Problem: it wasn’t the pinball I was looking for:

From November 2011 through July 2012 I wrote the "Past Pieces of Toronto" column for OpenFile, which explored elements of the city which no longer exist. The following was originally posted on January 29, 2012. At this point, the column went from biweekly to weekly. This entry also seems like a good one to repost now with news that the Paradise has been sold . Personal story: the first time I went to the Paradise was to see Robert Altman’s Nashville . The print was faded, but watchable; my seat was in rougher shape. The armrest was barely attached to the rest of the chair with either duct tape or chewing gum. While some people would have hightailed it to the nearest theatre with stadium seating, the improvised fix gave the Paradise a certain charm. Opened around 1937, and known for a time as the New Paradise, it was a neighbourhood cinema that served the community around Bloor Street West and Westmoreland Avenue. Notes in the City of Toronto Archives indicate ...

In honour of today being the 12 th day of the 12 th month of 2012, here’s a roundup of front-page headlines from a carefully selected batch (as in those I could get my hands earlier this morning) of Toronto newspapers the last time the calendar read 12/12/12: The Toronto Daily Star The only paper to acknowledge the significance of the date, which it called “a gala day for puzzle fiends and people of the class of who travel one hundred miles to see a century plant boom.” The Star also wins the best headline of the day: “THE KING AND YONGE CORNER HAS BECOME A GUSTY SPOT.” Recent gale-force winds added to the problems of crossing King and Yonge in the shadow of one of the city’s first skyscrapers, the Canadian Pacific Building . “Ladies making the crossing looked in some particulars like the pictures of fishermen’s daughters down on the stormy strand, when they have lost hope for their loved ones in the fishing boats out on the raging seas.” The wind tunnel effect ...