Tag Archives: the junction

Day-trip in the city: Spots to visit in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood

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Sitting inside Crema with a Clover coffee. Photo by Tyrone Warner.

Usually about once a month, I like to take a Saturday to explore a part of the city that I don’t usually get to visit: basically anywhere way West, way east or way North. Last Saturday was my second “official” trip to the hood, but my first real chance to walk around.

The neighborhood, which as you might have guessed by it’s name, has an abundance of two things: old warehouses and rail-yards, which as you can imagine, has attracted the creative-class and those who follow. Yet despite the huge presence of artists, the strip is maturing at a nice, gradual pace, unlike the mess at Ossington and Queen.

The neighborhood more or less starts at Keele and Dundas West, north of Bloor Street, and extends west (though there are a few hidden gems to the east). To get there on TTC, you can get on the 40 Junction bus at Dundas West, or board a 107 Northbound Keele bus up to Dundas West.

First off, four places make the trip worthwhile: Smash (2880 Dundas West), an industrial-vintage place that I’ve raved about before, the “Pure Scandinavian” design shop Mjolk (2959 Dundas West) which I wrote about yesterday, the Electric Revival Antique Lighting store (3075 Dundas West) and home to one of the city’s other $12,000 dollar Clover coffee maker, Crema (3079 Dundas West).

A few other places worth visiting include Pandemonium, a used book/vinyl/CD shop (2862 Dundas West) that while small, and maybe a little pricey, has a great vibe and lots of obscure gems. I picked up a signed vinyl copy of “A New Celebration for All to Sing” (1972) by The Toronto Mass, and spotted one of the greatest album covers on “Gospel Guitar” by Joe Maphis… as you can see, it has a pile of technicolor squares framing a photo of Joe’s double-neck guitar, what I think is an old delay/reverb unit, an old Fender Bassman amplifier, and a copy of the Bible. Sweet.

There’s also another cool diner/coffee shop called “Cool Hand of a Girl” (2894 Dundas West) which I didn’t get a chance to visit, but I’ve heard good things about. Same goes for Rawlicious (3092 Dundas West), an all raw food restaurant that I was going to visit before getting called away for some urgent business during my day-trip. One of the city’s finer selections of DVDs can also be found at Big Daddy’s DVD Shop (3044 Dundas West), which should be seen just for the sweet sign-age outside.

As for bars, because the Junction enduring several years of modern prohibition, they’ve only recently come up to speed, and now count Axis, The Troubador and Margaret as great places to grab a pint. Otherwise, there’s lots of other interesting stores to browse, including lots of furniture places, thrift and vintage stores and various health food joints.

It’s been a big day, and it’s time to relax

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With a day spent in the Junction (post to come) and hearing “Silver Speakers” getting played on CBC Radio (post to come on that too), I’m just about ready to kick back for a while… might as well slip on these brand-new bad boys and paddle ’round the ‘partment.

I’m not really a “slipper” guy, and though I haven’t been shy about lugging around a pair of Vans to people’s houses when it’s party-time, it was time. Normally, this isn’t something I’d normally write about either, but I wanted an excuse to write about John and Juli’s new “pure Scandinavian” shop, Mjolk. I’ve been reading their blog, “KITKA design toronto” for a while now, and it was nice to finally meet them in person.

Since starting their blog in order to enhance and compliment Toronto’s presence of all things design online (inspiring many readers to drop their own notes on interior design, myself included), they’ve now opened a shop crammed with some of the finest Scandinavian selections I have ever seen in the city before.

Despite being all the way out in Toronto’s Junction neighborhood (Dundas and Keele), it’s worth making the trip out there… even just to check out the unique charred wood exterior and stunning wood feature wall. I didn’t waste my time taking photos on my phone, you can check out Juli’s great shots here. (No, this is not an advertisement).

So I knew that when I made it down there for the shop’s first Saturday in business (it opened earlier this week), I knew I had to get something. This is a dangerous affliction I feel all of the time… it isn’t healthy.

What I ended up with were these awesome wool-felt slippers, created by Swedish designer Pia Wallen. Here’s a blurb from their site:

The Unisex slipper was first designed in 1992 for Progetto/Orgetto Cappelini. The slipper was inspired by the Scandinavian tradition of using wool linings inside boots, to survive the cold Swedish winters. Designed with the use of minimal pieces and a clever construction, the slipper reminds us of industrial materials updated with a fine level of finish and detail. Functionality, simplicity and comfort are why this model remains poplular today

Very cool! And this is going to sound strange, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the same price they are listed at on piawallen.se is only about 3 Canadian dollars less than what they were listed at in Mjolk. I figured that because many (if not all) of their items are imported from overseas, that they would be marked up like crazy… but that’s not the case.

And now that someone else in the apartment has discovered how nice and soft they are, it looks like we’ll be making a trip back for another pair.

Vintage find: Metal shower baskets

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baset_metroSo living in our small one-bedroom apartment has presented us with a couple challenges over the years… the biggest one is being stuck with our beige walls (ugh), and the second has been storage. We have a couple of closets, but beyond that, not much else. Eventually we’re going to have to invest in more shelving (so far we’ve tried IKEA’s Billy and Expedit shelves, as well as a massive METRO shelf), but in the meantime, we’re still trying out different kinds of options.

One find that we’ve been experimenting with is are these metal boxes, which were previously used as clothing storage for swimmers. They’re very industrial/locker-y, and up close are barely rusted up, but very aged. It appears they were made by a company called “Lyon,” and come with a loop of string and a brass tag to keep track of their “numbers.” We grabbed eight of them from “Smash” and are still figuring out where to go.

basket_expedit

They look alright on the METRO, but I still think we need to add some kind of back covering or something else to the unit to make it really gel in the bedroom. However, I love the way they fit in the expedit, and I’m tempted to move out some more books to get a couple more shelves in there.

The next big storage project we need to take on next is the music gear. So far we’ve got a couple hangers, but we really need to find some kind of big storage shelf to hold all the misc. stuff like pedals, drum machines and more. Pass them along if you have any ideas!