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By Brians, February 21, 2010 8:56 pm

This weekend the National Home Show is taking place at the Direct Energy Centre in the Exhibition Grounds. The show is absolutely enormous. There are over 700 exhibitors, and have a fancy dream home and such D-List Celebrities as Ty Pennington. The real fun of the show is checking out the new stuff around the show. I was there working on the booth for HomeStars, my day job, manning a booth we have down there. One of our local Ossington businesses has a full booth down at the show which I stopped by and said hi.

It seems that our local supplier of everything from paint, to tiles, to lumber (everyone should know they have a big lumberyard behind, down the alley, where they keep all sorts of building material too big for the store) has a full booth at the show. They do more than just being the local retail location. They are also designing and building kitchens and bathrooms with their design centre.

On the HomeStars site they’ve got a good lot of reviews, but it’s all for their retail work rather than their design work.

I like all the neat tubs and hardware they’ve got on display.

One of the booth visitors:

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By Brians, February 15, 2010 8:57 pm

On the way home tonight we saw this sign on a storefront beside Opera Bob’s on Dundas.

It looks a little small to be a full sized grocery store but perhaps a fine foods shop? The name of the store seems to be City Store, with small print below that says “Groceries.” Can anyone fill us in on what’s going in here?

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By Brians, November 20, 2009 2:06 pm

With all the hoopla going on around how ‘hot’ Ossington is, it was interesting last weekend to walk down the street and see the reality of the situation. There are still a lot of places on Ossington not leased, nor will they likely be leased in the near future. Only 6 months past the moratorium it seems that the street is starting to close for business.

Below are a few photos of the recent devestation:

Empty Storefront on Ossington

The Long Awaited Saint closes - is Joe Pantalone to blame?

Get Real awoke to the new Ossington Reality.

Does Ossington need another mechanic now that Rolly's will be closing?

A Fantastic Potential Restaurant Location - but no more

(will I have to change this blog to be the DundasVillage blog? – or is that the next local target)

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By Melinda M, November 18, 2009 6:57 pm

When an upscale travel mag like Travel and Leisure writes a glowing article about you, you have arrived! Congrats to our own Ossington Avenue then for hitting the bigtime. The article is titled Exploring Toronto’s West End, but only covers Ossington.

Along with Pizzeria Libretto, also mentioned are Watusi, Ministry of the Interior, Virgina Johnson, Union and Jonathan + Olivia.

Nice to see some good travel press about Ossington.

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By Melinda M, November 17, 2009 6:59 pm

Amidst all the talk of bars and restaurants, Ossington is also home to the Lower Ossington Theatre. This weekend the theatre is hosting an event for gamers called Gamercamp.
Everyone is apparently welcome to attend.
According to torontoist, there will be unlimited arcade freeplay.

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By Brians, October 29, 2009 10:51 pm

I was invited to sit in on a get-together tonight at one of the local Ossington businesses where about 25 of the local business owners came together to discuss the future of the neighbourhood. It was a powerful group of people, not by wealth, but by conviction and love of the neighbourhood. A true group of local entrepreneurs supporting both employment and the arts.

They were there to put together an organization to counter a proposal being organized by Deputy Mayor, Joe Pantalone. After a first strike at enterpreurship in May when he, pretty much single-handedly, stopped growth on Ossington with a moratorium on new businesses on the strip, he intends to push through a proposal to drive a nail through that coffin by imposing a harsh new set of bylaws which, essentially, kill all potential for the neighbourhood to grow and develop.

Local entrepreneurs are, as you can imagine, enraged.

The new proposal being floated before council will essentially end entrepreneurship in the area of the city. The proposal include such restrictions as:

• Limits on Restaurant Size to less than 1800 sqft – hardly enough to make money. (as a former restaurant owner, I can confirm this)
• Removing any potential of the restaurant use to ‘entertainment purposes’. Currently 20% of the eating area of restaurants can be designated.
• No patios are permitted anywhere. Whatsoever! (too bad for summer lovers in the city)
• No second floor restaurants. (where’s the cool local flavour in that? and what about cool rooftop patios? – and there are no other current restrictions on that anywhere else)
• Limits on window and door openings. (these don’t consider in other places)

The moratorium was imposed in May and I can’t see where there’s been any local study take place. The restrictions proposed replace the moratorium and are the same ones that have been imposed on College, Queen West, and Queen East. There’s been no discussion with local owners or residents. In fact, these regulations have been imposed suddenly, with a sense of local malice.

As a resident of the neighbourhood I haven’t been polled, asked, or even invited to a resident’s association to talk about how the great entrepreneurship and development in my neighbourhood affects me.

While the people I met with tonight seemed like a bit of a rag-tag group – busy, and struggling entrepreneurs struggling against comfortable local, government and, perhaps, corporate interests – I think they are genuinely protecting the vibrancy of the neighbourhood. If its a good neighbourhood in the day, at night, and on the weekends for residents and visitors, they succeed, and we all succeed – as residents, businesses, as a city, and as a culture.

Let’s hope they do, for all of our interests!

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By Brians, September 16, 2009 9:22 am

Micheal Lewis Johnson, the notorious organizer of the Ossington Blackout Party is celebrating World Car Free day next week just off Ossington, on Queen. World Car Free day has been a global movement which was started in 2000 to show the world what a day without cars would be like.

This Sunday, on Queen West, between Dufferin and Bathurst it’s time to pay a parking meter and do what you want. Come by bike, TTC, foot – but just don’t drive. It’ll be a great day.

Then, on Tuesday, gather at the south gates of Trinity Bellwoods Park for a World Carfree Day parade along Queen Street ending up at City Hall. It’s sure to have music, dancing, bikes, and much more.

Don’t forget to tell them your coming at the FaceBook page.

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By Brians, September 15, 2009 10:10 am

I monitor the twitterstream for mentions and activities going on on the Ossington strip. There are a few regulars who appear often, but only a couple of local establishments who seem to tweet regularly. Are there more?

Rolly’s Garage, the local indy art joint (what do you really call this place?), which was a car repair shop, tweets regular updates on events and happenings at the venue.

Up the street, Pizza Libretto often tempts me by tweets to walk over and enjoy a meal – if I could only stand the long lines – with updates on local produce which just arrived and tempting seasonal menu choices.

Straying a little further from Ossington, but still local, The Black Hoof, which took much of August off, is now back also highlighting some of the charcouterie and menu items they are putting together, as well as discussing some of the local action.

Who else on Ossington is Twittering that we should know about? Let us know.

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By Brians, July 27, 2009 9:57 pm

FoodTV has blogged about all the places. Just issued the second in a series which started June 1st.

Check it out.

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By Brians, July 21, 2009 7:49 pm

I may be straying somewhat from the Ossington village – at least one block – but one of the benefits of the neighbourhood is being close to farmers markets. We often go down to Liberty Village farmers market on Sunday mornings, but during the summer we also have the Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market weekly.

On this rainy Tuesday night, the first market of the season, I walked over to check out the vendors. The booths are somewhat scattered throughout the northwestern portion of the park near Dundas, but all looked full of fresh organic produce. Lots of lettuces, kale, and berries were on display. Somewhat hidden in a corner was a  trout dealer where I picked up a couple of fresh whole trouts plus a pint of wild blueberries, from the first harvest of the season.

Now off to make dinner!