NEW YORK -- The American obesity epidemic always seems most visible in my native Midwest — but evidence of the national widening can be found in this New York City subway bench, spotted this week at the Spring Street C E station in lower Manhattan. We have here a standard wooden MTA platform-level waiting bench...only with one of the between-person dividers removed. And finished over. To accommodate the New American. - - - - - - - Liz Clayton is a former Toronto resident who now lives in New York City and occasionally posts  ...

NEW YORK -- Though waste receptacle culture here in New York City regularly makes me hearken back longingly for Toronto's more progressive (if often overflowing, monster-sized and ad-laden) street-level trash can offerings, there's a new kid in town — specifically the BigBelly Solar Compactor. (Don't miss that link for a super-cute animation of an anthropomorphic solar-powered trash compactor gleefully feeding garbage to itself!) Spotted at the northwest corner of Union Square, this crazy mofo boasts a US-Mail-style trash door and a solar-powered lid. Charge-level indicators blink with modernity at the front of the bin. Though the ...

CHICAGO -- Not much sounds more appealing than a Festival of Maps, and Chicago delivered that holiday gift (and continues to deliver it) in its multi-site ongoing exhibit and lecture series that runs the gamut from tablet to tube map. While home for the holidays I was able to check out two exhibits, Maps, Finding Our Place in the World at the Field Museum (through Jan 27) and Mapping Chicago: The Past and the Possible at the Chicago History Museum (closed Jan 6).

WASHINGTON, DC -- It is still fall right now in Washington, DC. Leaves cling to trees and only occasionally scatter in a yellow pile. This is my first trip here that doesn't have to do with my father or eighth grade or some other strangely structured reason; as such I wandered out of DC Union Station past caterers setting up 2,000 champagne flutes and right onto the National Mall. Within half an hour of being here I found a pocket-sized copy of the US Constitution on the ground. So American, this place. Within another ten minutes ...

"I could fill up the lake with the things I didn't say Had a good run anyway Had a good run anyway" — Final Fantasy, "The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead" When I close my eyes I see red and white streetcars streaking past: eight years and forty-nine weeks ago I moved to Toronto with not much more than the notion that it might be a good idea. I had visited a handful of times (concerts at the Opera House, a romantic weekend or two away on the Scarborough motel strip) but hadn't lived there, nor even lived in Kit-Kat sign-filled ...

So-called "Bloorcourt Village" residents were startled to see the former Concord Avenue Community Gardens south of Bloor suddenly more barren than the average autumn garden last week. The longstanding community garden, maintained under the auspices of the West End Flower Fairy Gardens group, stole off in the dead of night and has been replaced by a considerably unfestive "Pardon Our Dust"-style work sign, evocative less of nature than of Mosaic Netscape web design ca. 1994. A call to councillor Joe Pantalone's office was met with hasty reassurances that the new landscaping is part of the neighbourhood's ...

Though it would surely strike fear in the heart of illegal-newspaper-box-hating Mayor David Miller, a recent trip to Chicago witnessed an act of public art and generosity that our own city would do well to adopt — in spirit if not to the letter itself. The Logan Square Book Exchange — and more recently, the Logan Square Video Exchange — lies somewhere between guerilla gifting and that innocuous cardboard pile of books left on somebody's curb for public rifling. Only Ryan Duggan's idea is more stylish, activistic, and less likely to let all ...