John sez, "Honest Ed's, the iconic Toronto discount store ('There's no place like this place. Anyplace') is up for sale and will be closing. You may know it from its appearance in the Scott Pilgrim comic and film, but it's been a landmark in Toronto for decades. Not a surprise, of course, since it doesn't really fit in to today's retail landscape (they have real hand painted signs for all their prices painted by real honest to god sign painters that they employ full time) but of course, that's why it's such an amazing place. It will likely be replaced by yet another condo with ground floor stores that could be in any city in the world and a little bit more of Toronto's personality will be gone."
I had an office facing Honest Ed's for a while — I finished Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town there, and that building has always been an integral part of the neighborhood for me. My grandparents shopped there. My parents shopped there. I shopped there. Toronto, like all the world's cities, is being crushed into a bland, multinational corporate sameness that makes us all poorer, except for a few shareholders.
(Image: Honest Ed's, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from scruss's photostream)
