One of our readers connected us with a local blogger who collects and compares pictures of old Toronto. The Blog, called Lost Toronto, today posted a whole series of photos of Ossington from the past. We thought these pictures were so cool we wanted to re-post on our site also.
Check out this one of Ossington and Argyle:
This is the corner where Venezia Bakery is today:
This one is at Ossington and Bruce, which is where I Miss You Vintage Clothing store is:
And this is my favourite at the corner of Ossington and Foxley. You can see the old CAMH (999 Queen St) building in the distance.
Take some time and look around the Lost Toronto blog. It’s a lot of great pictures, with their recent comparisons. Have you got any other old pictures of the neighbourhood? Send along the links or the pictures in the comments.
Yes, this week is Social Media Week in Toronto, a global conference connecting people, and sharing emerging trends in social media. And we have a local event right here in Ossington Village.
Some of the businesses on Ossington are well connected to social media including our Dani Elwell of Jaiden’s Petals, who blogs from her site and is very active on Twitter. Opera Bobs keeps people up to date on Facebook. And don’t forget to be tempted by the tweets from Pizzaria Libretto, Union Restaurant and Bohmer who let everyone know their specials in the twitter stream. Want Tattoo advice? There’s even Imperial Tattoo on Twitter. There’s lots more examples on our street and you can check out our Ossington Places twitter stream here. But there are places on Ossington that don’t even have a website including the Crooked Stars and Sweaty Bettys. Are they losing out?
Luckily, without leaving our home of Ossington we can find out, or at least have a good discussion about, the efficacy of the medium. HomeStars(disclosure – my employer – and no, it wasn’t by coincidence it is hosted here – Thanks Shaun!), a social media site designed for contractors and homeowners looking for those contractors, is hosting an event for Social Media Week called Is Social Media Your Prize Winning Pig – Think Again where we’ll debate the effectiveness of social media. It should be entertaining, and could even get hostile. The event will be tomorrow, Tuesday, night from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Garrison, on Dundas just west of Ossington. If there are tickets still available you can register on the Social Media Week site here. Or you can just come by and see whether you can slip in and get on a side of this debate. Because the week may be full of people who are ‘social media strategists’ it’ll be good to have some social media cynics. Are you one? Want to share your opinion? Come out and have some fun, get in on the debate, and join in this global conference on the future of social media.
Take a look through the entire schedule of Social Media Week and try and check out some of the other events. The week will end at a great event close by at the Gladstone Hotel where there will be an evening of Powerpoint Karaoke, which if you’ve never seen, definitely has to be experienced.
We woke up this morning to the first big snowfall of the year in Toronto. Ossington looked beautiful this morning, everything covered in snow. Here are some pictures from this morning:
We’ve had a big year at Ossington Village. It’s nice to look back on the year and see what was popular and what drew people to the site.
These are the 10 most popular posts by site traffic over 2010.
1. Beau Lieu Bistro is now open. – This is one of the unsung stars of Ossington. A low-key French bistro, with really nice food, a good ambiance, and a staff that cares. So we are happy that, at least on our blog, they are getting the attention they deserve
2. Dinner at Salt Wine Bar. – Before this place had a license they were operating on catering certificates. We went over and tried the food and were very impressed. Soon after we ate there they were closed for almost two months. Reader were curious on what to expect when they finally got a chance to taste the food.
3. Ward 19 Candidate’s Debate. – When we announced that we were going to have a candidate’s debate, it was a new thing for us. The debate itself was a lot of fun and there were a lot of folks that ended up watching the UStream video from this post from the night itself. Michael Sims rocked the night and shook some people up.
4. Goed Eton Gets off to a Rolling Start. – One of the quirky, but delicious places that opened on the street is Goed Eten – where the proprietor, Johan, has been putting together a menu of poutine, local fed sausage burgers and other gourmet food. This post we put up right when he open and was still working out the kinks.
5 Salt Wine Bar Looks Open. – Salt Wine Bar gets another place on our top 10 list from our post on Aug 7th when we learned it had opened – albeit without a license.
6 Karen Sun shows good knowledge of Ward 19. – We did a number of candidate profiles over the course of the election cycle, but the big hit on our site was the profile of Karen Sun. Although she didn’t beat out Mike Layton, she was the site favourite in terms of page hits.
7. Call Joe Pantalone, Open Salt Wine Bar. – Again, Salt Wine Bar hits our top 10 list – the frustration with Joe Pantalone’s decision to put a moratorium on the restaurants on the street encouraged others to check out our post.
9. The Evolution of Dundas off Ossington. - This year because of the moratorium, as well as other factors, the Dundas strip to the east and west of Ossington became popular with places like Churchill, Camp 4, Red Light, The Port, Enoteca Sociale and more. This post looked at some of the newer places that emerged.
10. Havana Cultura Starts Today. – Our 10th place post is about a festival that took place in August celebrating Cuban Culture. We have a number of places on the strip as well as just off that joined in the festivities with Cuban food and music.
Last weekend we stopped by the showroom for the new developments that are going in at the corner of Ossington and Rebecca St. It is a condo building with both loft suites and townhomes which face out onto Rebecca called Motif – Lofts and Towns.
What we found fascinating about the experience is that the marketing of Motif is all about the Ossington experience. There was a wall with a map and pictures of all the great places we talk about in the neighbourhood. Pictures of Bohmer, YogaSpace, the Crooked Star and Sweaty Betty’s are what sells this new condo development.
And that caché of living in our little neighbourhood comes with a price. The loft suites start around $350k or so, for about 650 sq/ft and go up to $725k for the ones with decks and are as big as 1400 sq/ft. The townhouses go between $800k and $1.2M. As a comparison to local houses, ZooCasa shows houses close with by 3 bedrooms for in the $450 range, including driveways. According to their website, it looks like half of the units have already been taken, and almost all the one bedroom lofts, so clearly this is a place people want to be, and are willing to pay for it.
According to their architectural drawing it looks like there will be some retail space below. We asked about whether there were any retail tenants who had signed on to take the space and were told that there was nothing yet, but that they are picturing a clothing retailer. Now that the moratorium is over, will a chef come and look at the space? or will the Starbucks scouts be looking for the next location? or will it be another great retail spot like Jonathan + Olivia?
I’ll bet our local merchants are happy their spots are being used to sell these upscale condos. This will certainly change the neighbourhood again, and we’re looking forward to what’s next. It’s hard to imagine 3 years ago being able to sell something like this on Ossington at all, let alone for premium prices.
No one says that the merchants of Ossington are dim. And some of them have great taste and creativity in the light fixtures in their shops, restaurants and bars. We thought we’d have a little fun and see how well our readers know the neighbourhood.
We’ve taken some pictures of the cool and creative light fixtures on the street. There are 10 of them, and some are more obscure than others. How bright are you and how well do you know the luminescence of the local spots? Can you name all of them?
Feel free to post answers in the comments. We don’t have any prizes for the winners (unless someone on the street wants to offer one up), but you will have the satisfaction of being someone who knows the bright spots in the neighbourhood.
If you were walking around the Ossington area this Saturday afternoon you probably came across people dressed up as zombies. This was the 7th annual Zombiewalk in Toronto. This is an event that started in 2003 and is now in New York, Adelaide, Ottawa, Vancouver and other cities around the world.
A group of folks dressed up like zombies got together in the bowl in Trinity Bellwoods Park and did a march, stagger/shamble across Dundas, through Kensington, and then over to Christie Pits.
We wandered around and took some shots of the great costumes of people walking around before they started walking. We saw nurses, McDonalds employees, chefs, and all sorts of other characters.
Where Hesco Electric, the wholesale electrical equipment company that left the Ossington strip about a year ago, was there is now a new sign for a condo development that is going in called Motif.
There is a brand new arty looking sign with pencil drawings of young people dancing, running, doing yoga and going to work. We assume the old retail space on the main floor will be used as a showroom space until they start actually building the real thing. Right now is unfinished new drywall.
According to the website it’s going to be a place “for those who prefer to live where creativity reigns” and “eschew the traditional in favour of modern and eclectic” – and in our traditional Toronto reverence to all things New York, it will be where “life takes on a distinctly Soho vibe”.
UrbanToronto reports that there will be commercial space at grade level, with 4 stories of residential – 12 residential condos and 9 townhouses on Rebecca Ave. So potentially there’s a chance for some good retail space below.
If you’ve been walking down Ossington the past couple days you’ve probably noticed it looks a little bit like Chicago. Because American film makers think Ossington is not quite hip enough for them, they make the area look different. It turns out the film they are shooting is The Vow, with Rachel McAdams. There have been cars parked outside with Chicago taxi logos on them as well as USA Today and Chicago Tribune newspaper boxes placed around the neighbourhood, close to Argyle.
According to IMDB the storyline goes something like this: A newlywed couple recovers from a car accident that puts the wife in a coma. Waking up with with severe memory loss, her husband endeavors to win her heart again.
Joe Fuda, of Oz Studios, took out his camera and caught a couple shots and posted them to his Tumbr account.
Yes, that’s Rachel in the distance.
Dani, of CindiLooWho, caught some of the chaos and posted it to facebook, and was relieved to know that the flower store they had set up in the old salon beside Frantic City Books wasn’t real, but was just part of the set.
And this is my favourite at the corner of Ossington and Foxley. You can see the old CAMH (999 Queen St) building in the distance.
The press has been covering Ossington again, with stories about new and existing retailers and a new building project.
