Indescribable

[c9]

Welcome, friends. Once again here at Channel-9, we set out to bring you the stories that matter. The stories that you don't get anywhere else. The stories that are almost entirely not made up.

Tonight, we'll meet a young (Cut to couple: "yes we're still young. Write down young!") couple in East York ("No, say Toronto. East York is so passé. Is that Case Ootes over there? Duck!") who recently moved to the city, and wanted a way to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon.

First, they rode the streetcar to Little Italy, only to find that almost everything was closed. Not just normal closed, but kind of The Quiet Earth closed. There was a church with a SOLD sign on it, and a notice on the door about the city cutting the power to the entire neighbourhood for most of the day.

Next, lunch at a little bakery that was in fact Portuguese. Really European too, in that "interesting approach to the concept of customer service" kind of way. Yummy cakes.

Next, a walk to Bloor and Bathurst to work off perhaps 3% of the cakes. Why Bloor and Bathurst? What can be found on this fascinating corner? Why, Honest Ed's of course!  Honest Ed's is a Toronto ... ummm... the normal word here would be institution, but that should maybe be used in the mental institution sense.  Perhaps landmark. That's safe and neutral. It hardly begins to convey this, though:

No, this is not Las Vegas.  This is also not the whole thing. This is perhaps 25% of the place. No seriously. It's so big we got dehydrated, and not just because of the really-dry, "leftovers bin at Zellers" atmosphere. It made Vinny's knees hurt. I ended up buying a fun t-shirt for $6 which you may see in a later photo.

 

Ed Mirvish, owner of Honest Ed's, is someone I rapidly learned about in his store today. It seems he pretty much owned Toronto for much of the last 59 years. I found a newspaper ad for a new restaurant he opened like 20 years ago, and it listed five other restaurants -- plus the Royal Alexandria Theatre of course -- that he'd opened previously. Wikipedia doesn't mention them, so they may be all gone now. Maybe I'll research them on a day off sometime.

His theatre experience led him to meet many actors, famous and non. The store is wallpapered with framed, signed photos from the many many names, big and small. There were dozens and dozens I didn't recognize, and many that I did. Frank Schuster was stuck in the basement, so god knows how the ranking was determined.

I'm not really sure what my point was in all of this. Clearly it was in fact describable, but I'm done now. Hope all are well.

Comments

[thespos]

Sounds like a fun adventure. :-)

I wonder why Little Italy was closed, tho. Hm.

[zedinbed.livejournal.com]

The weather I would say. Its mostly bars and restaurants with outdoor patios and lots of street life. The cold weather Toronto's been getting lately can't be too good for what's supposed to be spring business.

[skeezix1000.livejournal.com]

The Mirvishes closed all of their restaurants about 7 or 8 years ago. They opened them originally (starting in the 1970s?) so people going to a show at the Royal Alex could go for dinner beforehand or afterwards. They were located in all those warehouse buildings to the east of the Royal Alex, the ones painted white/grey. I remember when I was small, on a family visit to Toronto, my parents really wanted to eat at Ed's Steakhouse, or whatever the main restaurant was called. It was "the thing" to do.

As I understand it, or as the newspapers reported at the time that the restaurants closed, tastes changed, the neighbourhood gentrified, and much trendier competition opened in the surrounding area. Yet, the Mirvish places remained stuck in a time warp, evocative of a 1970s-idea of a fancy restaurant. I guess the minute that the Mirvishes figured out that more money could be made by leasing the properties to other businesses, rather than running restaurants in bad need of a makeover, the places were doomed.

[canuckboy.livejournal.com]

Having been born in Toronto and grown up in the city, I had the pleasure of eating at all of Ed's restaurants at one point or another. The thing I loved most about Ed's restaurants is that it didn't matter which one you went to, they all had the same cheap faux-Chinese decor.

Cam, the restaurants were:

Ed's Warehouse, Ed's Folly, Ed's Italian, Old Ed's, Ed's Seafood and Most Honourable Ed's Chinese Restaurant. Yes, typical for a Jew, a Chinese restaurant. ;)

[saviolo.livejournal.com]

Hey, you were in my neighborhood! I work at the Flight Centre just down Bloor towards Spadina from there, and I live just about straight south of there, just south of College. Woot!

-Daniel

[vorpal.livejournal.com]

I love Honest Ed's. I went there with frantic_crow and we must have spent about half an hour cackling in front of their wonderful distortion mirrors. Furthermore, it answered the age old question of where old ladies get those tacky things that's almost mandatory for them to own but any self-respecting store adamantly refuses to sell, like Kleenex box covers and hideous statuettes. Fun mirrors and elderly enlightenment makes for a good afternoon, it sure does.