Can you Marketplace the Face?

So, like many other Toronto Facebookers, I've become aware that the social networking site has a classified section (reg. req'd). A friend has already found a potential loft, and loftmate, on the Toronto-specific version of the Marketplace, which includes job postings, several entreaties to join groups and thereby Help (them) Win $7000 From 102.1 The Edge, as well as an offer to trade one pair of double D silicone breast implants for a pair of butt implants (pretty sure that's fake)

The highly addictive site has just become even more addictive, and now it's encroaching on the territory of other compound-name websites, the mighty Craigslist and LiveDeal.ca, owned by my employer Torstar. (Not to mention further beleaguering the already beleaguered hard-copy classified sections of this and other newspapers).

But not all Facebookers are happy with the new feature. Under the "Wanted" category, the members of group Sick of Facebook Adding Garbage declare, "It's a social network, not a store, stop trying to get us to buy things from you and other people."  Looks like they won't be sending any $1 gifts any time soon.

-Shauna Rempel

The city that never was

Toronto, the Megacity, is naturally home to a rash of mega-projects, including many that never got off the ground.  That's the impression when one gets a look at David Kopulos's very cool Toronto Pending. It's his thesis project for his Bachelor of Fine Arts at OCAD and we first noticed it in one of the  postings on Stillepost. A fascinating look at projects that might have been, from the Scarborough Expressway to an ambitious (and sadly familiar) scheme for a 1970 project called Harbour City. From his forward:

"Perhaps more so than other cities, Toronto betrays a secret history. In the heyday of postwar modernism, a rash of megaprojects were proposed for Toronto ... This site catalogues and examines these megaprojects in the context of strategies of visual representation."

We got on the e-horn with Kopulos and asked why he decided to look into projects that never happened. "Well, I had been searching for a particular 'angle' of Toronto's history to look into, and specifically not something that had been researched many times over by others. After digging around online and in libraries, I found that there wasn't really one resource that brought all of these proposed megaprojects together, even though Toronto boasts quite a few of them."

Make sure you check out the Pyramid - who knew we could have had a Luxor by the lake?

-Raju Mudhar