Toronto's Honest Ed's will go

boing
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I’m sad when places we like lose their uniqueness… but I have to wonder, what can/should we do? When we order stuff online, we are forgoing our local stores. Stores like Honest Ed’s can’t compete with stores like Amazon and others. It’s sad that this is happening, but how exactly do we combat it while still maintaining our way of life? I went to the honest ed’s website, thinking, maybe if we all ordered something from them, we could help?

Nope. They employ on site sign painters, but have nothing to offer the rest of the world. OH wait. There’s a book for sale about Honest Ed’s. All I have to do is mail my credit card information in plaintext to an email address.

Yeah. RIGHT. Oh, it’s on amazon.

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I’ve found Honest Ed’s to be a frightening maze of overstimulation, narrow aisles, overcrowding leading to an array of “cattle kill” style gates that is supposed to be the checkout. There also seems to be no way to escape the store if you chose to buy nothing.

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“We have not only become…”

A useful question for anyone to ask of themselves is, do you count yourself among the “we” that won? If not, how do you demonstrate your separation from that group?

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This is a very unique store and a local landmark. However, I don’t see anything in the sale about the replacement ripping out the old structure, removing the uniqueness, becoming a condo, or opening 10 chain stores in the same space.

I live in Jersey City and work in Manhattan, and on my commute I walk by two Starbucks, 2 Dunkin Donuts, 2 McDonalds, an Old Navy, a Marshall’s/TJ Maxx, and an Urban Outfitters. However, I walk by significantly more unique, one-off shops. They sell food, drinks, clothing, glasses, jewelry. I walk by 5 other places to get coffee that are more convenient than Starbucks, and that’s just the ones I recognize as selling coffee. The presence of the chain stores seems like a drag, except that the chain stores buoy the neighborhood and have allowed smaller, custom businesses to thrive.

Those businesses still have to be GOOD businesses, not just interesting, of course. If you can’t compete with Starbucks for selling coffee (and, honestly, it’s not hard – first, have good coffee. Second, be nice and have seating and a mediocre wifi connection), maybe you shouldn’t be selling coffee? These big chains may lack personality, but they’re also incredibly good for increasing competition and therefore quality in a local area. The prevalence of cheap burgers from chain fast food restaurants has spurred the creation of gourmet burgers, which are predominantly delicious! If McDonalds hadn’t made the “quick burger” so ubiquitous, stars like Five Napkin Burger and Bareburger probably wouldn’t exist.

Of course, I remember when Five Guys was local to DC. Now they’re everywhere – and they still make great burgers. If your restaurant can’t compete with Five Guys, though, you’re doing something wrong, since their recipe for success is also very simple (fresh meat, free plentiful toppings, plentiful fries).

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What is really ironic is that the public gives lip service to small, independent stores, but doesn’t actually shop there enough to make them viable.

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Sorry–are we really using “rape” to describe the closing of a discount store? Really?

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if you would like to have honest ed’s designated as a heritage site please sign this petition ! http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/save-honest-ed-s

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Oxford dictionary:
Noun
2. the wanton destruction or spoiling of a place: the rape of the countryside

Verb
2. spoil or destroy (a place):timber men doubt the government’s ability to ensure the forests are not raped

so, yes.

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Okay, reading up on this a bit more:

Honest Ed Mirvish died in 2007 and the store passed to his son, apparently “Less Honest Dave.” David has decided to put the entire thing on the market, and cash out, instead opting to build three “towers” in the theatre district.

So what we’re seeing here is NOT some massive conspiracy… it’s a family wanting to cash out and leave an industry.

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Ed was a man of the people, quite literally a self made man. Started selling apples as a child. Seriously. He was beloved the city-wide and his is sorely missed. His son David however was born after Ed made his fortune, and has always been a spoiled nasty man-child with entitlement issues and from all reports (and personal experience) is a huge jerkface.

I don’t know why anyone is surprised by any of this, David is into theatre, not discount retail, and lets be honest, it may be a local icon but its still just a proto-dollar store and none of the Torontonians I know have shopped there in years despite being all choked that it’s up for sale. I’ve been doing a lot of eyerolling this week, put your money where your mouth is people! (sidenote: I literally just shopped there on Monday, I had a meeting nearby and time to kill, whole nutmegs 10 for $1.49!)

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The Toronto people I know have told me, regarding “Honest Ed’s”, if they wanted cheap chinese imported crap, they’d go to Walmart, because it has a better return policy. And yet, they were all sad that a landmark is going away.

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The ad engines served me up an ad for Toronto condo stuff on this story. Kind of illustrates the issue nicely, no?

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Good thing you didn’t pick up some Skittles too.

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Never been in, wish I had. I’ll always remember it tho, going to a dresden dolls concert right across the street at some theatre and seeing that hell of a building. it looked like an indoor canival.

rip original cool shit & fuck you whomevers raising the rent & building million dollar condos while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

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Even if it sells, you still have between 2 and 5 years before it closes. And there’s no “raising the rent.” They are the ones selling.

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@Ogilvy,
If cities moved heaven and earth to help and subsidize them like they do with chains/big boxes than maybe they’d have a better shot. There are a lot of us who are pretty good about prioritizing local mom and pops over chains.

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Is this a troll? Honest Ed’s is ugly, sells a generic assortment of cheap chinese stuff you can get anywhere, is badly laid out, and the employees all seem to be one prozac away from slitting their wrists. Individuality != good. Or maybe you don’t know the place?

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Perhaps it depends who you know :wink:

But overall, you’re right. As a business it is flagging and no longer unique (there is a Dollarama just kitty-corner, as well as two other “dollar stores” within a block). What gets my goat is the planned sale of all those houses along Markham that constitute Mirvish Village – because they do contribute something special to the neighbourhood. They will be forced to move and I doubt than many will be able to succeed if they stay anywhere nearby given the grossly inflated rents along that bit of Bloor.

One of the real problems with the new condo developments is the way they handle their retain space. It makes it near-impossible for non-chain stores to flourish in them. This was discussed [in this article in Spacing][1] last year. Although the neighbourhood both likes and frequents the businesses in Mirvish Village there would almost certainly be no place for them in a new development – and that, not nostalgia for the past, is why this news is upsetting.
[1]: The condo retail we need - Spacing Toronto | Spacing Toronto

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Walk down Bloor St in the Annex, or College st near Bathurst, or Queen West. The city is exploding with new life and creativity, with plenty of blight left over for those who prefer it. You’ll see dozens of independent coffee shops, boutique clothing stores, great restaurants, people walking around all over the place. Toronto is blooming.

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And of course, this is why I said when I submitted the article that it doesn’t fit in the landscape of today, and likely why it’s going. Of course, the place doesn’t need to make that much money, since all the property and everything was entirely paid for decades, but when you have a place that pays it’s bills but doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot if any of profit, may need millions of dollars in renovations and repairs because the province is trying to make retailers be more accessible, which if you did would irrevocably change the character anyway, and you never were particularly interested in selling stuff, and you can make $100 million for selling it, well, it’s not a tough decision. At its heyday it was the largest self-serve department store in the world (according to the signs inside), but now, like you said, it’s nothing special as a store, which is why it always existed, not as a landmark.

I think overall it’s sad that it’s dying, but over the last few days I realized that Ed’s is something that grew organically not only with itself but with its proprietor and with the city around it - it’s not something that could ever be planned (nobody would ever plan something like Honest Ed’s). Because of that, and if it’s not growing, living, changing, evolving, then it really should end rather than just… existing as some sort of decaying monument to a man that I don’t think would want it to begin with. It perhaps should have been closed the day Ed Mirvish died. I’m just going to think of it as something that lived, grew, and died, like everything else worthwhile. Or as some sort of 75 year long play, with thousands of performers creating something amazing, but that has to have an end.

Anyway, my maudlin ramblings aside, I do have to wonder what the Toronto Fringe festival will do considering that they had their home base and beer tent in the alley behind the store. There’s not a lot of space for that kind of thing around there other than behind the store.

Also, Yay! Something I wrote made it on to Boing Boing!.

Also also, I need to now find another place where I can give my 4 year old $5.00 and tell him he can buy whatever he wants with that money - he loves Ed’s for that reason when we go.

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