1. Babel is a great store; its location is up and coming, a lot of things are happening in this neighbourhood.

   I would hardly say Ideal is a chain. I ride my bike every few weeks to buy a pound of Prince of Darkness from the Market; the fact that a tiny coffee shop from Kensington is expanding is fantastic for them, if i have ever seen a DIY shop, its them. Starbucks isn’t even an option anymore.
   I just hope they have a Galatica game for the new shop.
   kevbo
   Posted by  on  02/20  at  11:00 PM

2. I couldn’t disagree more with Hal. The couple that started Ideal Coffee live on my street – Mackenzie Crescent, just around the corner from the new location – and they’re just young entrepreneurs trying to make it work. They support Fair Trade coffee growing practices and are renoing that space on Ossington completely by themselves on evenings and weekends. If their business isn’t an example of the kind of homegrown enterprise that strengthens a community, then what exactly is ‘community’?

   Posted by  on  02/21  at  10:26 AM

3. Thanks for the posting Sheldon. I wondered about the history of Ideal Coffee too. Thanks for giving some background on the company. Hats off to them.

   Posted by  on  02/21  at  10:31 AM

4. Franchising (from the French for free) is a method of doing business wherein a franchisor licenses trademarks and methods of doing business to a franchisee in exchange for a recurring royalty fee
   Sorry Hal, Ideal is not a franchise. Find another windmill to tilt at.

   Posted by  on  02/21  at  10:47 AM

5. “Generally local is good and anything else is not as good, but sometimes the anything else helps the local”

   What is this, a Grade 9 essay on Jane Jacobs?
   That’s an empty fetish. All small-time business owners are not saints, nor do they necessarily serve their communities well.

   One more point: I Deal sure isn’t a chain, but there’s nothing “natural” about it either. In fact, it’s a perfect example of gentrification, Wave One: a Locally Run Progressive Business.

   Do middle-aged Portguese construction workers really want to buy coffee from a hipster? Or play a video game while they do it?

   These people make a living selling coffee to their own tribe. That’s not about neighbourhood; it’s about class and social group.

   Posted by TO  on  02/21  at  07:00 PM

6. Since when did a local person starting a small business not be about ‘neighborhood’ but instead be about ‘class’?

   Almost all small companies start by attempting to “sell to their own tribe” – b/c it’s a more predictable economic market. Boiling it down to class is an easy Marxist fetish, and usually just ends up being a code word for race. When the Vietnamese came into the neighborhood and set up their businesses 20 some odd years ago in what was a predominantly Portugese neighborhood I doubt you’d have qualified them as Wave One of gentrification(forgetting for a minute whatever you’re implying with the word ‘natural’ ). This despite the fact they may have displaced some of the Portugese from the neighborhood (which is the definition of the word ‘gentrification’) and that the iconic middle-aged-Portuguse-construction-worker you refer to wasn’t renting Vietnamese videos then any more than he’s buying Free Trade coffee now. That displacement process is happening again in this neighborhood, and it’s not b/c of the hippy-ish DIY couple who run Ideal Coffee They’re just recognizing and trying to exploit a market. Some companies that start by serving one market can end up offering services meet the needs of many. The Nova Era on Ossington also serves coffee, and to different ‘tribes’ and ‘classes’ despite the fact it was no doubt started to serve just one.

   Posted by  on  02/22  at  10:55 AM

7. I stop by that Nova Era on Dundas sometimes. I am not Portuguese, but everything works out fine. Though I wish they let you put your own milk in.

   Posted by Shawn Micallef  on  02/22  at  12:37 PM

8. Sheldon, what are you talking about?

   Gentrification does not mean one (fairly marginal) immigrant group displacing another. If it means anything at all, it’s the displacement of relatively poorer urban populations by richer ones. Like Fair Trade-buying, renovating professionals… who for cultural reasons like to pretend they’re not “gentry.” And shop at I Deal.

   That’s not, in my view, such a bad thing at all. But let’s see it for what it is.

   This issue is often clouded—in Toronto disproportionately so—with sentimentality. Hal’s post illustrates just how.

   Posted by TO  on  02/23  at  12:02 PM

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