first off, i kind of wonder if freshcutgrass is my building super. i am leaning towards yes.
secondly, ostroff's article in huffpo tears perks a strip up and down, but i agree with perks. i worked at the economic development corporation, and then at the business improvement area; recalling how business owners would stroll into parkdale in 2005 and eye properties with visions of little italy dancing in their head (or maybe the club district, or something - my prime example is the owner of kit kat who bought club ov and did zip with it [probably because sylvia watson forestalled a massive lounge/club/restaurant/bar, as she was fending off lots and lots of complaints about caddy's patio being too noisy with live bands or even just the dinner crowd leaking into after 11pm drinking noise]), gives me an idea of what perks isn't saying in the article. do we want more bars under the guise of a restaurant? i don't see the point in being needlessly restrictive for the sheer bureaucratic fun of it, but i also don't see the benefit of just letting the market run wild. it's not a free market. the markets are disposed to favour those with privilege, as well as wealth, and are very tilted towards those players with a lot of history behind them. people live in the apartments above storefronts, and in the houses on gwynne, elm grove, brock, cowan, triller, dowling, sorauren, and callender. heck, when i lived on callender, most friday and saturday nights between 1:30 and 3am there would a couple of rowdy drunks whooping it up after they left the bar. were they leaving anna's place, or parts and labour? six of one, half dozen of the other. sometimes that gravelly rough older voice trawling up the street told me and my girlfriend that it was a local; other times, the voices were young enough that it was pretty clear these were either very new neighbours or tourists. i live on dowling now and every once in a while a couple of young guys and girls will make their way from pharmacy along king and make sufficient noise to be heard after the bar closes.
thirdly, i think parkdale needs a balance of new businesses. restaurants are notorious for having a low success rate. i want to see some stability in the influx. i'd also like to see a little bit more variety - maybe even some franchises of larger chains that have lower prices - for various retail. for instance, i can buy clothing in parkdale but it is either really cheap and abysmal quality - think fulworth's, or the couple of stores that eke out a bare existence flogging knock-offs (i think the place with cheap panties in the window is gone now, but like them) - or it is vintage, or it is really super expensive. hey, i like philistine's look and feel, but it is out of my price range, and i'm an overpaid lazy public servant.
i'd like a fishmonger. de la mer is so close but even still somewhere on queen would be great to buy fish. cattlemen's, as much as i love the surly/nice service, could use some competition too. and it's been a constant piss-off for me, living in parkdale for about 7 years now, that there is still nowhere to buy a new cd or god forbid record.
* i'll try to focus a bit and talk about residential and commercial landlords, like ram, and their influence on the BIA and the various residents' associations and the politics of parkdale. later. meetings are about to start.
