After I picked up my tickets (one of probably ten thousand free give-aways), I headed over to the Merchants' Market. I have read about this ethnic bazaar located on this site and it lived up to its great reputation. True, the food court wasn't quite as eye-popping as I had hoped, but instead of fast food chains you did have your choice of Jamaican, Filipino, and other immigrant food. I had a medium soursop smoothie ($4) sweetened with sugarcane from Juicy Hut to go with a lunch combo of Jamaican rice and peas, oxtail, and ackee ($9) from Mama Original. If I had known there were other food vendors without the main area (Filipino waffles!), I would have saved some room.
The stalls had everything imaginable: CDs, cell phones, furniture, jewelry, kitchen stuff. In fact, with so many vendors, I have to wonder how anyone can make a profit. But that's not all. There was a large, open-air fruit and vegetable market filled with cheap greens. If only there was such an eclectic space downtown. It was also nice that the often-touted 42% visible minority status of Toronto was reflected in the diversity here unlike most events I have attended.
As I made my way back to the music festival, the line-up was already a thousand strong. That was only the "pre-line" where you wait your turn to get into another line for the actual entry. Without a must-see act (from my point-of-view), I decided to exchange my tickets to a "middle-man" for an honorarium and headed home. Thereby learning a nifty fact. I have always thought that the absolute cheapest you could get from these independent sellers was a mark-up on the lowest price. But if they are re-selling free/contest tickets, then you could get tickets "below cost" (as they are wont to cry out). That is, they would sell for less than the $179 official price. And I'm certain even cheaper than the $99 early bird option which sold out weeks ago. Something to keep in mind for the next big show.
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