Oh, yeah? We were meaningless first...

It's surprisingly rare that a magazine even acknowledges its publishing rivals in a particular market, let alone disses them in print. But Toronto Life's Informer blog has plunged in by ridiculing NOW magazine for running a cover story on the differences between Toronto east and west of Yonge Street.

The latest issue of Now does its best to capitalize on the long-standing but meaningless debate by laying out the arguments for both sides: the east has better ice cream (Ed’s Real Scoop), but the west has the best burger (The Queen and Beaver); the west gets too much attention, whereas the east benefits from “divine neglect.” In the end, they confirm the debate’s irrelevance by not choosing sides.

And, paradoxically, the item makes the argument that NOW's idea is not only stupid, but it is late to the party...

Of course, we’re not recusing ourselves from the situation. Indeed, we’re experts: we had this discussion almost 10 years ago with similarly ambiguous results.