Corisco
Banned
If the market becoming 'metrosexualized' or 'gentrified' means that fewer crack heads will hang around the market, I'm all for it.
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Kensington Market
- Thread starter Alley Kat
- Start date
Mystic Point
Active Member
It would be cool to expand the market north and west.
Corisco
Banned
What do you mean? I can see it expanding a bit farther west until almost Bathurst, but north?
Mystic Point
Active Member
5 or so families own almost all of Kensington. These families are worth hundreds of millions. Which means, they could probably buy up vast tracks of the lower Annex and convert it into more " market " space. Which would be a good thing. Imagine the market if it were 50 blocks all around. It would awesome. Like Berkley.
urbandreamer
recession proof
Re: The Star:
Oh, no wonder I don't read the Falling Star.
Re: Expanded K-Market:
Never say never! Anything could happen over the next 1000 years! It's true, K-Market is owned by perhaps 10 families. I know several of them, and their rep's (kids) are happy to see K-market gentrify....$$$$$. The key is in buying up the old folk's rundown homes (from the Chinese especially....)
Oh, no wonder I don't read the Falling Star.
Re: Expanded K-Market:
Never say never! Anything could happen over the next 1000 years! It's true, K-Market is owned by perhaps 10 families. I know several of them, and their rep's (kids) are happy to see K-market gentrify....$$$$$. The key is in buying up the old folk's rundown homes (from the Chinese especially....)
Alley Kat
Active Member
Would you be comfortable giving the family names? I'm just curious.
Zimmerman?
the "Courage My Love" family?
.
urbandreamer
recession proof
Zimmerman's certainly one of them--they own a large strip that could easily be turned into lofts/condos, if they could get over the public feuding.... The strip includes Model Citizen, Valu-Mart, etc....
egotrippin
Senior Member
I like Kensington Market how it is. This is one area where gentrification and condoization should not be welcome. I'd welcome expansion along with some more nightlife, make it a 24 hour market and entertainment area.
Alley Kat
Active Member
N I M B Y
Mystic Point
Active Member
K-MART as we know it now will vanish soon.
urbandreamer
recession proof
^Well, not soon. But over the next 25 years, I could see it turning into a sort of Montreal (think Prince Arthur/Marie-Anne/old Montreal) meets Yorkville of the 1990's atmosphere.
The real estate downturn will certainly affect plans for the two or three loft projects in the planning stages.... But the next cycle, no doubt some of those silly single story dumps will be pulled in favour of better density.
Many of those market stalls are suffering....owners getting older...oh well.
Remember, new K-Market's are already being created...in the suburbs!
The real estate downturn will certainly affect plans for the two or three loft projects in the planning stages.... But the next cycle, no doubt some of those silly single story dumps will be pulled in favour of better density.
Many of those market stalls are suffering....owners getting older...oh well.
Remember, new K-Market's are already being created...in the suburbs!
egotrippin
Senior Member
You couldn't be farther off the mark. Thanks for coming out though.
Alley Kat
Active Member
I notice you live in Corktown. Welcome to my world: enjoy your visit.
Alley Kat
Active Member
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=788219
To market, to market
National Post
Published: Saturday, September 13, 2008
On Oct. 17, the winner of the Toronto Book Awards will be announced. Established in 1974, the prize honours authors who have written books that are evocative of Toronto. Over the next five weeks, we will run excerpts from the books short-listed for the award. Today, a chicken crossed a road and a girl fell in love in David Chariandy's Soucouyant.
They met in a city that doesn't exist any more. A city that perhaps never really existed, though you'll sometimes hear people talking about it. A city where people were always good and children could play outside unattended. A city before the new darkskinned troubles and the new darkskinned excitements. A city where rice and pasta were still considered "ethnic foods," and one of the few places where a newcomer might have a chance of getting her hands on breadfruit or fresh coconut or the sunny heft of a mango was at the Kensington Market.
It was early one morning at the height of summer. Adele was walking through the congested lanes of the market, and she had passed vendors calling out to her from behind arrangements of plantain or dried shrimp or okra. She had glimpsed under a rude canvas tent three live chickens and a goat, their freshness unchallengeable. She felt alive in this place, attuned at once to dozens of different voices and smells, but she didn't notice him at first, the dark young man in short pants, on a bicycle and carrying a massive satchel of flyers and newspapers across his back. He peddled recklessly near, a blur of khaki and pumping knees, a waft of something discomfortingly familiar. She wheeled to look back at the young man cycling away down the congested street, his satchel swaying with each near avoidance of crates and small children, his calf muscles black-brown and pulsing with liquid energy.
"Coolie fool!" she shouted. "You almost run me down!"
He stopped and turned around. They didn't know each other, but there was history between them all the same. There were mildewed explanations for why they shouldn't ever get along. An African and South Asian, both born in the Caribbean and the descendants of slaves and indentured workers, they had each been raised to believe that only the other had ruined the great fortune that they should have enjoyed in the New World. They had been raised to detect, from a nervous distance, the smell that accompanied the other. Something oily that saturated their skins, something sweet-rotten and dreaded that arose from past labours and traumas and couldn't ever seem to be washed away.
"Sorry, sister," answered the man on the bike.
"Who the hell you calling sister!?"
Adele watches now as the young man begins his dismount by swinging a leg over the seat of his still moving bicycle. He sails on one foot for a couple dozen feet before stepping off, parking, and walking to a stall in one fluid gesture. She watches him tug a paper from his satchel without looking and pass it to a vendor with an enormous brown moustache. The vendor immediately rolls the paper into a tight stick and uses it to conduct his banter. How long has it been? the vendor asks, gesturing about with mock seriousness. What kind of trash is this and why isn't it ever on time? If it's trash, it should at least be on time. He says the word "trash" in a pleased way, as if he has just learned the word, and the young man laughs along with the whole performance. He moves to another stall and then another, handing out more papers, and she sees, now, that they are in many different languages. One vendor, an old Asian woman, unsmilingly receives a paper in what looks to be Chinese characters and then carefully counts out four Scotch bonnet peppers into the man's hand, which he slips into his pocket.
Scotch bonnet peppers! How on Earth, she thinks, burning with jealousy.
The young man notices that she's still looking at him. He seems to think that she's admiring him. He seems, quite foolishly, to think that this could ever be the case. He finishes handing papers to vendors on this block, and steps back on to his bike, balancing smartly on two wheels as he swings his leg over. He does a tight circle in the congested street, narrowly missing a box of okras before heading back her way. A world of news in his satchel, the burnt chocolate darkness of his shins. It's been so long since she's seen anyone with such skin. Like wet earth. Like molasses.
About 20 yards in front of her and nearing fast, he raises a hand to be sure of her attention. He then lifts both hands off the handlebars and stands up on the pedals. His arms stretch outward for balance, waver for a couple of moments, then become perfectly still. He glides like this for seconds down the congested street, his eyes long-focused in concentration, past a dozen transactions in almost as many languages and dialects. A tightrope act in the worlds around him.
This seduction might not have worked at all, but fate intervenes. A self-liberated chicken darts unexpectedly in front of him. There's a tussle of feathers and a fall as spectacular as any Charlie Chaplin could ever attempt. The man bounces up to reassure everyone on the street.
"Is only a pothole," he says. "Is nothing. I alright."
There is no pothole. Nobody on the street seems to notice or care. There's a chicken feather plastered upon his wet forehead. She falls in love precisely then.
-Excerpt from Soucouyant by David Chariandy. © 2007 by David Chariandy. Published by
To market, to market
National Post
Published: Saturday, September 13, 2008
On Oct. 17, the winner of the Toronto Book Awards will be announced. Established in 1974, the prize honours authors who have written books that are evocative of Toronto. Over the next five weeks, we will run excerpts from the books short-listed for the award. Today, a chicken crossed a road and a girl fell in love in David Chariandy's Soucouyant.
They met in a city that doesn't exist any more. A city that perhaps never really existed, though you'll sometimes hear people talking about it. A city where people were always good and children could play outside unattended. A city before the new darkskinned troubles and the new darkskinned excitements. A city where rice and pasta were still considered "ethnic foods," and one of the few places where a newcomer might have a chance of getting her hands on breadfruit or fresh coconut or the sunny heft of a mango was at the Kensington Market.
It was early one morning at the height of summer. Adele was walking through the congested lanes of the market, and she had passed vendors calling out to her from behind arrangements of plantain or dried shrimp or okra. She had glimpsed under a rude canvas tent three live chickens and a goat, their freshness unchallengeable. She felt alive in this place, attuned at once to dozens of different voices and smells, but she didn't notice him at first, the dark young man in short pants, on a bicycle and carrying a massive satchel of flyers and newspapers across his back. He peddled recklessly near, a blur of khaki and pumping knees, a waft of something discomfortingly familiar. She wheeled to look back at the young man cycling away down the congested street, his satchel swaying with each near avoidance of crates and small children, his calf muscles black-brown and pulsing with liquid energy.
"Coolie fool!" she shouted. "You almost run me down!"
He stopped and turned around. They didn't know each other, but there was history between them all the same. There were mildewed explanations for why they shouldn't ever get along. An African and South Asian, both born in the Caribbean and the descendants of slaves and indentured workers, they had each been raised to believe that only the other had ruined the great fortune that they should have enjoyed in the New World. They had been raised to detect, from a nervous distance, the smell that accompanied the other. Something oily that saturated their skins, something sweet-rotten and dreaded that arose from past labours and traumas and couldn't ever seem to be washed away.
"Sorry, sister," answered the man on the bike.
"Who the hell you calling sister!?"
Adele watches now as the young man begins his dismount by swinging a leg over the seat of his still moving bicycle. He sails on one foot for a couple dozen feet before stepping off, parking, and walking to a stall in one fluid gesture. She watches him tug a paper from his satchel without looking and pass it to a vendor with an enormous brown moustache. The vendor immediately rolls the paper into a tight stick and uses it to conduct his banter. How long has it been? the vendor asks, gesturing about with mock seriousness. What kind of trash is this and why isn't it ever on time? If it's trash, it should at least be on time. He says the word "trash" in a pleased way, as if he has just learned the word, and the young man laughs along with the whole performance. He moves to another stall and then another, handing out more papers, and she sees, now, that they are in many different languages. One vendor, an old Asian woman, unsmilingly receives a paper in what looks to be Chinese characters and then carefully counts out four Scotch bonnet peppers into the man's hand, which he slips into his pocket.
Scotch bonnet peppers! How on Earth, she thinks, burning with jealousy.
The young man notices that she's still looking at him. He seems to think that she's admiring him. He seems, quite foolishly, to think that this could ever be the case. He finishes handing papers to vendors on this block, and steps back on to his bike, balancing smartly on two wheels as he swings his leg over. He does a tight circle in the congested street, narrowly missing a box of okras before heading back her way. A world of news in his satchel, the burnt chocolate darkness of his shins. It's been so long since she's seen anyone with such skin. Like wet earth. Like molasses.
About 20 yards in front of her and nearing fast, he raises a hand to be sure of her attention. He then lifts both hands off the handlebars and stands up on the pedals. His arms stretch outward for balance, waver for a couple of moments, then become perfectly still. He glides like this for seconds down the congested street, his eyes long-focused in concentration, past a dozen transactions in almost as many languages and dialects. A tightrope act in the worlds around him.
This seduction might not have worked at all, but fate intervenes. A self-liberated chicken darts unexpectedly in front of him. There's a tussle of feathers and a fall as spectacular as any Charlie Chaplin could ever attempt. The man bounces up to reassure everyone on the street.
"Is only a pothole," he says. "Is nothing. I alright."
There is no pothole. Nobody on the street seems to notice or care. There's a chicken feather plastered upon his wet forehead. She falls in love precisely then.
-Excerpt from Soucouyant by David Chariandy. © 2007 by David Chariandy. Published by
Alley Kat
Active Member
http://www.saultstar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1198736
New life breathed into Kensington Market
Posted By BRIAN KELLY, THE SAULT STAR
A Sault Ste. Marie musician is resurrecting a legendary Toronto rock group he helped form.
Keith McKie and Alex Darou, also of the Sault, helped launch Kensington Market in 1967.
During the group's brief two-year run, they released a pair of albums, Avenue Road and Aardvark.
Darou took the band's split hard and locked himself up in his apartment. He died of malnutrition in 1970.
McKie was invited to reform Kensington Market and play at Luminato, or Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity, in 2007.
"People asked us if we'd do something," said McKie in a telephone interview from his Toronto home.
"We didn't actually decide to start the Market up."
Fellow original players Luke Gibson (backing vocals, rhythm guitar) and Gene Martynec (lead guitar, piano) were joined by other musicians with whom they have longtime ties, including drummer Mitchell Lewis, who joined McKie at Bell Border Jam in the Sault in August.
"We were a little all over the place a few times, but sometimes it was great," said McKie.
The band has reunited before, but those previous gatherings were limited to just one song.
A second show followed in June 2008 at Hugh's Room, a Toronto nightspot. Martynec, now in England, did not join the band for two full sets of old and new material. A second Hugh's Room appearance is expected in January.
"It's low key," said McKie of the reformed band.
"It's mostly just seeing what we can do. Can we still do something? It's like taking an old car out on the road. You take it out and see if it still works because it's fun to drive an old car.
"We're not going to be the same band as we were then. I'm not 20 years old. None of us are anymore."
McKie wants to record an album, but also plans to release other tracks as downloads online.
"We won't necessarily have to be caught into a style," he said.
"We can try various things -- maybe even three or four versions of a tune or do other peoples' tunes that we like."
Pacemaker Entertainment Ltd. released Avenue Road and Aardvark earlier this year after more than 10 years of negotiations with Warner Brothers.
The successful effort followed two other failed attempts to get the band's albums on disc including an effort by the man who helped launch the group, Bernie Finkelstein.
"I think they did a pretty good job," said McKie of the Pacemaker reissue.
"Their mastering was good. The CDs looked attractive. We were pretty happy with it."
But 40 years later, McKie lends a critical ear to his performances on the two albums.
"I'm very neutral about the past. You want to do what you're doing now," he said.
"The Market stuff I never really particularly cared for my own performances. Some stuff is OK."
New life breathed into Kensington Market
Posted By BRIAN KELLY, THE SAULT STAR
A Sault Ste. Marie musician is resurrecting a legendary Toronto rock group he helped form.
Keith McKie and Alex Darou, also of the Sault, helped launch Kensington Market in 1967.
During the group's brief two-year run, they released a pair of albums, Avenue Road and Aardvark.
Darou took the band's split hard and locked himself up in his apartment. He died of malnutrition in 1970.
McKie was invited to reform Kensington Market and play at Luminato, or Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity, in 2007.
"People asked us if we'd do something," said McKie in a telephone interview from his Toronto home.
"We didn't actually decide to start the Market up."
Fellow original players Luke Gibson (backing vocals, rhythm guitar) and Gene Martynec (lead guitar, piano) were joined by other musicians with whom they have longtime ties, including drummer Mitchell Lewis, who joined McKie at Bell Border Jam in the Sault in August.
"We were a little all over the place a few times, but sometimes it was great," said McKie.
The band has reunited before, but those previous gatherings were limited to just one song.
A second show followed in June 2008 at Hugh's Room, a Toronto nightspot. Martynec, now in England, did not join the band for two full sets of old and new material. A second Hugh's Room appearance is expected in January.
"It's low key," said McKie of the reformed band.
"It's mostly just seeing what we can do. Can we still do something? It's like taking an old car out on the road. You take it out and see if it still works because it's fun to drive an old car.
"We're not going to be the same band as we were then. I'm not 20 years old. None of us are anymore."
McKie wants to record an album, but also plans to release other tracks as downloads online.
"We won't necessarily have to be caught into a style," he said.
"We can try various things -- maybe even three or four versions of a tune or do other peoples' tunes that we like."
Pacemaker Entertainment Ltd. released Avenue Road and Aardvark earlier this year after more than 10 years of negotiations with Warner Brothers.
The successful effort followed two other failed attempts to get the band's albums on disc including an effort by the man who helped launch the group, Bernie Finkelstein.
"I think they did a pretty good job," said McKie of the Pacemaker reissue.
"Their mastering was good. The CDs looked attractive. We were pretty happy with it."
But 40 years later, McKie lends a critical ear to his performances on the two albums.
"I'm very neutral about the past. You want to do what you're doing now," he said.
"The Market stuff I never really particularly cared for my own performances. Some stuff is OK."