I was never very good at skateboarding as a kid, though I spent way too many nights trying to slide the bottom of my board along the curb outside my house. Over time, the board became more useful as a tool for moving my ball hockey net to nearby school yards and parking lots. But I had a lot of friends in high school who were excellent boarders so I spent numerous hours taking photos as they perfected their moves and tricks. In the intervening years I ...

If you live in a place without air conditioning than you can relate to my current plight: the heat wave is making it difficult for me to sleep at night. When I find myself wide awake and sweating buckets at 3am, I sometimes sit on my couch, place the fan directly in front of me and watch a bit of late night TV. The other night/morning, the TV gods were kind to me: they offered up a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza is handing out a scholarship, in honour of his late fiancée, to a kid who aspires to be an architect (George's fake occupation). The recipient later changes his mind and wants to be a city planner, which earns George's wrath: he revokes the scholarship. The kid ends up in a gang who later confront George by demanding that he give back the scholarship and let the kid become a city planner.

Last week, social media demonstrated that Toronto is a quite a plugged-in city: Twitter, Flickr and Facebook quickly confirmed that an earthquake had happened before any news media could get it out. And this weekend, Torontonians did an outstanding job of documenting the G20 protests and altercations. Here are a few items that made an impact on me. THE BEST VIDEO, DAY 1: This is a well-edited video of the rampage that took place in the downtown core. The videographers at times were able ...

This may be a cliche, but I've always loved Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue because it sounds like a city. Well, it sounds like New York, or some 1920s metropolitan metropolis New York. Looking for a YouTube version of it last night, I found this animation I hadn't seen before. It's unapologetically big city and unapologetically New York. I encourage you to watch the entire thing. You'll need one less coffee today if you do. It's stuff like this that makes you (me) realize other people love ...

Ryerson University announced Wednesday that architectural firms Zeidler Partnership Group of Toronto and Snohetta of Oslo, Norway have been hired to design the school's new Student Learning Centre at the corner of Yonge and Gould. The hiring represents a significant step forward in the university's marquee plans to redevelop the Sam the Record Man site. While a complete plan for the site is still at least a year away, the architects were on hand to talk about their previous experiences and their initial ideas around the project. Their collective resumes are very impressive. Snohetta's CV includes the new Library of Alexandria and Oslo's National Opera.  The firm is currently working on the September 11th memorial museum in lower Manhattan, the King Abdulaziz Centre for Knowledge and Culture in Mecca and new university libraries in Ohio and North Carolina. Toronto's Zeidler architects have been involved in international projects in Tel-Aviv, London's Canary Wharf and Seoul. Right now, they're working on the revitalization of the Union Station rail shed. It is clear from this selection that Ryerson views the site as an opportunity to do something special both for the school and for the city as a whole. Lead architects Tarek El-Khatib and Craig Dykers made clear that they too understand the potential for the site and the intricate role it will play in linking the campus with the city, while further enhancing the vibrancy of Yonge Street. To this end, the architects acknowledged that the building will have retail along Yonge Street and will attempt to keep up with the round-the-clock liveliness of the area. "The context is extremely important...there's a great movement to create this public environment around Dundas and the whole force of it is creeping up the street," said El Khatib. "There has been also some great efforts at changing the character of Gould Street so that is going to become a very important players in how the ground floor works." The architects created a video of a visit to the site and their consultation with students on what the new centre should be:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvzkjxSf9gg[/youtube] Earlier this week, the local media jumped on the news that councillor Adam Giambrone is set to launch a mayoral bid after he sent out invitations to an event to "celebrate Toronto" on Monday, Feb. 1st. Spacing just caught wind of a campaign video that certainly confirms any lingering doubts about his intentions.

Last week film artist Hye Yeon Nam produced a charming video of herself walking backwards through the Times Square area. Well, in the film she's not the one walking backwards, it's everyone else is. You can read her artists statement on the Babelgum web site where the video is hosted.

Editor: Spacing is pleased to showcase films from the NFB's online screening room. The NFB will be occasionally posting films here that explore our public spaces, Canadian or international cities and anything urban. The NFB is one of Canada's greatest resources; watch movies for free online at NFB.ca. We released a free new NFB iPhone app yesterday. The app lets you watch hundreds of animated films and documentaries from NFB.ca, streaming, on your iPhone or iPod touch. We also built in a "Watch Later" feature that lets you load films ...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw[/youtube] I'm one of those annoying people who you find walking up the stairs of a subway station bumping into the great flow of people pouring downstairs. Its not that I want to be annoying -- I just prefer to take stairs so I can get a tiny bit of exercise that I rarely get. So it was with great joy to see how a team of artists tried to attract more people to take the stairs instead of an escalator at a Stockholm subway station.

Toronto Lightning Storm from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo. Spacing photo contributor Sam Javanrouh captured a recent lightning storm in a great time-lapse series.