A Queen Street Icon Finds Its Silver Lining. ⇒
14 March 2012, late morning
Once Silver Snail moves I think that strip is official dead to me. There is almost nothing from when I was in high school left on Queen West. Now, that isn’t bad in and of itself. It’s silly to assume things need to stay the same forever. The thing is, Queen West is objectively more boring now than it was then. It’s a reproduction of the Eaton’s Centre on the street.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
Active Surplus!
by grant on March 14 2012, 12:27 pm #
It’s on the second floor now. I think that move is when the street really felt like it switched from Queen West of old to its modern incarnation. There used to be another electronics shop down the road from Active Surplus too, near the hardware store. Though I think by that point most of the trendy clothing stores were already long gone. I can’t really remember what was on that street now, besides Uncle Otis.
West of Spadina is interesting in how it has changed as well. All the vintage stores that used to surround Peach Beserk moved all the way to Parkdale. (And are now upmarket since buying shitty clothes became trendy.)
by Ramanan on March 14 2012, 1:27 pm #
Ugh. Sigh. Tell me about it. Especially miss Pages, The Bamboo, The Bishop, Bakka, etc. etc.
I was in Kensington last weekend and while it has indeed gentrified somewhat, it’s interesting to notice how little it has changed from my teenage times, as compared to Queen West.
Which is now a stretched-out mall. A flagship corporate flytrap.
by D on March 14 2012, 4:01 pm #
The shop you’re thinking of was Supremetronics, which was the alternative to Active for electronics. It was actually a lot better organized. It was where I heard about 9/11 on the news for the first time.
Queen West was definitely a lot more interesting in the early 2000s. Though there are still a number of hold-outs I wonder how long that will last.
I find the post-fire Bathurst to Portland strip to be unfortunate. It just just seems wrong. The Big Bop replaced by a CB2?
by mk on March 18 2012, 9:36 pm #
That is still probably the grimiest chunk of Queen West till you get way out to Parkdale, but that’s not really saying much anymore. When we were in high school it was garment shops, vintage stores, and Peach Berserk. There is still a tiny bit of that, in between super-fancy Loblaws and things like this.
by Ramanan on March 21 2012, 11:00 am #