There’s so much going on on Ossington we thought it would be useful to put a calendar on the site where we could show all the various events on the strip. So, yesterday we added an events calendar to the site. You’ll notice the sidebar now features a new panel with the 10 most current upcoming events. You’ll also find a page here (and linked from the header) with 2 weeks of upcoming events.
If you’re a regular to the neighbourhood or live nearby and want to keep up to date, keep checking in on this page to find out what’s going on.
If you run a bar, restaurant, theatre or gallery in the neighbourhood and you want to add upcoming events, please let us know and we’ll hook you up.
JB Laundromat at 132 Ossington, in between Ossington Tire and Reposado, has closed. Signs in the window invite customers to visit Hollywood Laundry up the street instead.
For the past few years, we have seen lots of changes on Ossington. What does it mean that we are down to one laundromat on Ossington? Hollywood Laundry looked pretty crowded this morning, so if you need to use their washing machines, I guess you’ll have to give yourself more time, or go on off hours.
We’ll keep you posted when a new tenant takes over 132 Ossington, and let us know if you hear anything, in the comments!
About 9 months ago I wrote about the few Ossington businesses who were using Twitter to market their businesses. At the time it was thin. Rolly’s Garage and Pizza Libretto were the early adapters. In order to expand the target I also made an Ossington mention of neighbour The Black Hoof.
In the meantime a number of other Ossington businesses have joined the twittersphere and the community, Ossington Village blog included.
The community has grown.
Back in the early days, it was PizzaLibretto who was on Twitter. And they still tempt us with their daily specials, as well as their community interactions.
Delux lets us know the changes in their menu and new offerings:
Lab Consignment, out of Silver Falls Vintage, lets us know the celebs that are haunting their locale.
The ever-delightful Cindiloowho helps promote other businesses in the area, in this case @chefRoccoTO, of Pizza Libretto is opening Enoteca Sociale next week.
Our favourite tequila joint on Ossington helps out their neighbour at 134 by tweeting their next exhibits.
We do have to give some honorable mentions to neighbourhood locals and entertaining tweeters @whetmyappitite and @modernmod who keep us entertained and informed.
And let us know if there are other twitterers on Ossington, and of course, keep an eye on @OssingtonVil to keep up to date with us.
We’re excited to announce that we’re one year old today!
It was one year ago that Joe Pantalone, our current mayoral candidate, annoyed me so much by blocking new restaurant openings on Ossington without consultation from the neighbours that I went home and started writing.
We launched our Twitter account only 2 months ago and are keeping the neighbourhood up to date with our shorter updates. Follow us on Twitter here.
We thought we’d celebrate with a new look! The fantastic graphic design of Ananuku Kolar and Better Art Design & Direction put together our first logo, and I spent a beautiful May afternoon in the backyard putting together a new format for the blog. It will continue to evolve and grow as will the neighbourhood.
We’ve had a great time getting to know all our neighbours in Ossington Village and hearing from you our readers. We appreciate everyone who commented and sent us feedback – even if we disagreed.
We love the way this neighbourhood keeps changing and love documenting the evolution of Ossington Village. Keep commenting, sending us feedback, story ideas, and other happenings in the area.
This morning we went for a short neighbourhood walk as part of a North American initiative called Jane’s Walk, in honour of the legendary urban activist Jane Jacobs.
There were a whole series of Toronto walks, which continue tomorrow (Sunday). Ours was called Dundas and Ossington, the past and the future, and started at St. Christopher House, right on said corner. We walked west to Dovercourt, down to Queen and across to Trinity Bellwoods. The tour was led by someone from St. Christopher’s House with commentary from a couple of local Portuguese residents who talked to the group about the local churches and community centres.
We did learn a few great stories from some of the people who came along on the walk with us, including Ron Fletcher, who has written a few books on Toronto, including The Humber: Tales of a Canadian Heritage River, and is working on book on Queen West.
One of the pieces of trivia he offered up was that the wall that surrounds the CAMH was actually erected by patients of the facility, which has been a mental health facility since the 1800s (back then they had other terms for such institutions), in 1850. Tomorrow, there is another learning walk around the wall, given by Geoffery Rheaume. (Check out this little film his students put together)
Another little piece of trivia he offered up was that there was a toll booth at the bottom of Ossington, right near Queen. It was, at one point, the entrance to Toronto if you were coming along Dundas. You’d have to head down Ossington. Some of the locals who were coming into the city often used to duck around the toll booth and go down a little lane to the side. The lane ended up being named Rebecca St., after the Rebecca Riots in which Welshmen dressed up in their wives and daughters clothing and stormed tollbooths in the 17th century.
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 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?
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)
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.
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.
We’re excited to announce that we’re one year old today!
This weekend the 
