Toronto

The best used bike shops in Toronto offer a useful alternative to fending for yourself on Craigslist. While there's certainly some premium involved in buying from a store rather than some dude in sweatpants, you tend to get what you pay for. If you know a whole lot about bike maintenance, it probably makes sense to skip the middle man. For those of us, however, who prefer to ride rather than tinker, it's nice to know that your potential bike has been tuned and inspected by someone who knows what they're doing. As an added bonus, many of these shops will stand behind the bikes they sell in the event that you encounter problems post-purchase. Toronto's used bike shops are typically geared to the commuter cyclist, though there are some exceptions where you'll find higher end single speed/fixie conversions of vintage steel framed rides. Because stock turns over quickly during the summer months, you'll want to check in at your shop(s) of choice on a regular basis if you have something specific in mind. Here are the best used bike shops in Toronto. See also: The best bike stores in Toronto The best bike repair shops in Toronto

Actor, author, artist and university student/professor James Franco is hoping to raise US$500,000 to finance three films based on his collection of short stories — and he needs your help. Franco launched an Indiegogo campaign this week to raise funds for his new film project, based on Palo Alto, a book of short stories he authored in 2010. Franco hopes to turn the short stories into three feature films: Memoria, Killing Animals, and Yosemite. The profits from the films, he says, will go to Art of Elysium, a non-profit that Franco has been involved with in the past. “Finding the funding while still maintaining artistic integrity has been a constant challenge. Because of who I am, people often believe that it is easy to find investors and distributors for my films,” says Franco on the campaign home page for Palo Alto. Indiegogo.com “Unfortunately, things aren’t that easy. More times than not, I have put in my own money to produce my films and my students’ films. However, this time it’s different; We need more funding, I will still fund part of it but I need of your help, filming three feature films back-to-back requires more funding than I can give,” he says. Franco hopes to begin shooting the films in August 2013, and have them ready for festival season in the fall. The star of Spider-Man and 127 Hours joins a list of other Hollywood celebs who have turned to Internet crowd-funding to finance their personal projects. In April, actor Zach Braff launched a Kickstarter campaign for a follow-up to his film Garden State, and raised more than US$3-million from 46,520 backers. Rob Thomas, creator of the series Veronica Mars, raised more than US$5-million in his Kickstarter campaign to make a Veronica Mars movie. RelatedZach Braff defends Kickstarter campaign to fund new film, Wish I Was Here: ‘It’s merely one aspect of the budget’Veronica Mars movie hits $2M kickstarter goal in less than a day, becomes fastest campaign to hit that mark‘He’s an artist just like everyone else:’ Why it’s okay for Zach Braff to use Kickstarter

The ROM's new exhibit offers a glimpse into ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of urban civilization. The name “Mesopotamia” derives from a Greek term meaning “land between the rivers.” The Royal Ontario Museum’s latest major exhibit, which opens on June 22, takes this literally, as visitors flow between painted representations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on the floor. Presented by the British Museum and rounded out with pieces from institutions in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World covers 3,000 years of human development in the cradle of urban civilization. Most of the 170 artifacts on display have never been shown in Canada.

Toronto has no further interest in either charging a fee for plastic shopping bags or banning them, says Mayor Rob Ford.The mayor took the unusual step of appearing before the public works and infrastructure committee to add his vote to ending the bag debate.A staff report that discussed a new fee or ban was received for information in a 5-2 vote.The vote means the politicians plan no further action and will leave things as they now are, where retailers can charge for a plastic shopping bag if they wish and people are urged to re-use the bags and then put them in the blue bin for recycling.The former administration of mayor David Miller mandated retailers to charge 5-cents per plastic bag starting in June, 2009, which cut the use of plastic bags according to solid waste officials.Ford opposed the charge and last June it was rescinded by councillors, who in a surprise move voted to ban plastic bags outright. The ban exposed the city to legal problems and was subsequently scrapped.Wednesday, Ford attended to cast his vote at committee, which he’s entitled to do because he’s an ex officio member of all standing committees.“Obviously, this is an important issue to the taxpayers,” Ford told reporters after voting. “I wanted to make sure the nail’s in the coffin. It’s done, it’s finished.”People are suffering from “debate fatigue” and are tired of hearing about councillors squabbling over plastic bags, said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.The public are happy with the status quo, Minnan-Wong said.“The public doesn’t want to deal with this any more,” he added. “The current arrangement is fine: Businesses that want to charge for plastic bags will, and the ones that don’t, won’t.”

Whenever Tuukka Rask has stepped onto the ice at Boston's TD Garden of late, it's as if he puts on a black-and-gold cape and turns into a Finnish version of Superman.

The Boston Bruins are starting to look unstoppable. After shutting down the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday night, they hold a 2-1 series lead in the Stanley Cup final heading into Game 4 at home tonight. They’re two wins away from a championship that would cap off one of the most impressive playoff runs in recent history.A quick recap: In the first round, the Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs. Since then, they’ve found themselves facing the New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and now the Blackhawks. Or, to put those matchups in some perspective: last year’s top seed in the East, this year’s top seed in the East, and this year’s top seed overall.Heading into tonight’s action, here’s how those teams have fared against Boston: The Maple Leafs Everyone Else Combined Games played 7 12 Goals scored 18 17 Wins 3 2 Regulation wins 3 0 Without putting too fine a point on it, those numbers don’t make any sense. How could the Bruins be rolling over three of the best teams in the NHL so easily, when they needed a historic Game 7 comeback just to survive against a very average Toronto team?Or, to rephrase the question in a more intriguing way: Is it possible that the Leafs knew something that everyone else has missed?The good news is that, as a Maple Leafs fan, I watched that first-round series closely. The bad news is that, as a Maple Leafs fan, my therapist has ordered me never to discuss it again. So if he asks, the next few thousand words never happened.I floated a version of the question — What the hell happened in that Leafs series? — on Twitter a few nights ago. Here are some of the most common theories I got back in response, and my thoughts on whether there could be some truth to them.>> Read the full post on Grantland

photos by David Andrako Mikal Cronin We already posted pictures of the Mikal Cronin/Shannon & the Clams show from day 3 (6/15) of Toronto festival NXNE, and that same day we also caught Mikal on the annual M for Montreal / Panache Bruise Cruise during NXNE with Toronto locals Odonis Odonis, Montreal's We Are Wolves, and rapper Fat Tony (who also played Yonge-Dundas Square). PIctures from that Bruise Cruise are in this post. Mikal Cronin and Fat Tony both play NYC soon too. Mikal Cronin is currently in NYC and will be playing live at the Pitchfork offices at 3 PM today (6/19) which will be webcast live. WATCH IT BELOW. If you haven't been keeping up with our NXNE coverage, check out pictures of day 1, day 2, more day 2, day 3, and day 4. More pictures from the Bruise Cruise on day 3 below... Continue reading "Mikal Cronin, Fat Tony & more played the Bruise Cruise during NXNE (pics); watch Mikal Cronin play P4K offices today" at brooklynvegan

The Raptors have hired Bobby Webster as a salary cap specialist. Ujiri said: “I am delighted to have Bobby join our basketball operations team,” Ujiri said in a statement. “His skill set will be valuable in a number of areas, and his experience and knowledge of the CBA and its complexities from a league level will be a great asset to the organization.” This has left Steve Fruitman in flux. Fruitman is the man who orchestrated the Hedo Turkoglu through by proposing a mathematical formula so complex that the NBA couldn’t comprehend what he was saying, and finally gave up and approved the trade. Word on the street is that there was a fourth and fifth team involved in the Turkoglu trade, both of whom play in the South American league. Genius. Also in flux is Maurizio Gherardini, who has not been heard or seen from since Ujiri was hired. Sources close to RR report that the Raptors are desperately trying to find him so that they can fire him, but he simply refused to be found. It’s this sort of agility that has made Gherardini a household name in the city of Forli in Italy. The chase continues. Notes: Gherardini is also a member of Canada Basketball’s Council Of Excellence…

Fellow Fools, when I run across a company I might be interested in as an investment -- one that I know next to nothing about -- I typically start my investigation by just jumping in and taking a quick look around. And that's how I've designed this "7 Things You Need to Know" series: a quick scan of the facts, in no particular order, that gives you -- the potential investor -- a mix of high- and low-level takeaways. TD Bank ? I've heard of it, but I know next to nothing about it. So here's the start of my personal investigation into TD. 1. TD Bank is Canadian Toronto-Dominion. That's what the "TD" in TD Bank stands for. TD is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and was founded in 1855. So it's important to remember that an investment in TD is an investment in a foreign-owned corporation. But we are talking about Canada, here, which has a far more regulated banking system than that of the U.S. This is one of the reasons Canada's banks didn't get into the same kind of trouble ours did in the financial crisis. 2. TD Bank is bigger than you think A visit to the Federal Reserve's National Information Center tells us that TD is the 14th largest bank-holding company in the U.S., farther up on the list than American Express or SunTrust . TD has a big American operation, so this isn't surprising; it runs 1,315 brancs from Maine to Florida, almost as many as SunTrust in its region. Used skillfully, a bigger bank can generate greater revenue and profit than that of a smaller rival. 3. Eye-popping return on equity Return on equity, or ROE, is a measure of management efficiency, and it gives you some idea how much profit a company generates with shareholder money. TD's ROE is an eye-popping 14.04% trailing 12 months. Lean, mean comrades-in-banking JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have ROEs of just 11.55% and 13.07%, respectively. Go, Canada. 4. Eye-popping profit margin Is there any greater measure of management efficiency for a corporation than how well it converts revenue into profit? TD does this extremely well, with a profit margin of 30.64% TTM. Again, JPMorgan and Wells only manage 24.90% and 24.82%, respectively. 5. A mixed quarter For the most recent quarter, TD grew its revenue by 4.10% and its income by 1.80% year over year. The revenue growth is actually impressive. For its most recent quarter, JPMorgan only grew its revenue by 1.20%, though it did squeeze 32.60% income growth out of that. Wells did a similar trick, squeezing 21.70% of income growth out of revenue growth of just 2.00%. Those tricks, though, are undoubtedly the result of heavy cost-cutting, as all the big American banks are currently slimming down from their 1990s and 2000s bloat period. Big earnings growth out of small revenue growth just isn't sustainable. 6. Solid share-price performance Over the past year, TD stock has gained 4.97%, enough to keep up with the S&P 500 on an annualized basis. This is actually good performance for a bank, though it's not what we're used to seeing here in America of late. Since the financial crisis -- which again, Canada and its banks didn't experience like us -- American bank stocks have gone through the roof. They also had fallen farther, both in monetary value and in reputation. In some respects, the big American banks had nowhere to go but up. So, sure, Bank of America stock has gained 70.23% over the past year. But as American banks become more stable, and therefore get back to being boring in the style of their northern cousins, it's unlikely those kinds of returns will continue. 7. A great dividend TD currently pays an annual dividend yield of 4.00%. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo pay 2.90% and 3.00%, respectively. Healthy, but not TD Bank healthy. B of A pays 0.30%, and Citigroup pays just 0.10%. Foolish bottom line TD Bank is big enough to matter, Canadian enough to be stable, has eye-popping efficiency metrics, and pays a nice dividend. From a share-price appreciation perspective, it's no B of A, but it doesn't face B of A's

Inside the Krystle Lee pop-up (Image: Krystle Lee) Residents of the East Danforth—an area long euphemistically dubbed “in transition”—are banking on a series of pop-up shops to help increase its vibrancy. Copying a model that has proved successful in Newcastle, Australia, the local community association convinced four clothing stores and a bakery to take on summer-long leases in previously empty storefronts, with the possibility of staying permanently. Over the weekend, all five pop-ups launched on the stretch between Monarch Park Avenue and Woodbine: Krystle Lee, a clothing store with image consulting services; In This Closet, a women’s apparel thrift store; e-closet, a women’s accessories and apparel shop; Cheap Thrills, a shop selling samples and seconds for men, women, and kids; and Yummy Stuff, a bakery specialising in cookies, cakes and cupcakes. Krystle Lee, 1517 Danforth Ave., 1 647 284 5154, krystle.ca In This Closet, 1765 Danforth Ave. E-closet, 1801 Danforth Ave., 647-207-0494, ecloset.ca Cheap Thrills, 1811 Danforth Ave. Yummy Stuff, 1938 Danforth Ave.,  416 531 9732, yummystuff.ca The post Five pop-up shops land on the east end of Danforth Avenue for the summer appeared first on torontolife.com.