Room With A View

On Thursday, I arrived at my two-month sublet. Located in the East End of Toronto, it was in between Little India and East Chinatown. Over the next several weeks, I plan to explore areas that as a West-Ender I haven't visited as often. But first, time to check out my temporary lodgings.

At $1250/month, it was a great deal for Toronto. When calculated in absolute dollars, I would have spent at most $1500 for train and hotel if I added up all the dates that I needed to be in the city. But on a per-diem basis, around $50/day (with additional expenses like toiletry, etc.) was too good to pass up.

The second-floor apartment was all that I could have hoped for. Well-furnished and filled with personal mementos from work and travel, it was the sort of city apartment (seen in movies and TV) that I thought I would own. But I myself never got beyond the bare minimum at my old unit.

The leaser gave me this great price because they actually owned the small semi-detached house. They had the upper unit with other long-time tenants occupying the main floor and basement. A bit of snooping on house sigma revealed that the house sold for $316K ($26K below asking) in 2007. This triple-threat theatre actor seemed to have made a wise decision back when affordable down-payments was still a thing. In contrast, during my walk after dinner, I found a recently sold semi a few streets away on Badgerow Ave. That place went for $340K in 2006. Two days ago, it had just closed at $1.73M ($531K over asking)! In any case, a 2-month gig on the West coast for them and a serendipitous ad on Craigslist for me worked out for everyone.

With those real estate prices, gentrification was taking furious pace in South Riverdale. From the make-up of the pedestrians, it was clear that the Asian immigrant and older working-class folks were being replaced by a younger, mostly white, crowd. This was also the case for the local businesses.

I actually knew a little bit about this area. So it was interesting to see what has changed in 10 years. Some regular joints like Pizza Pide were still around (though prices have gone up around 50%), others (e.g., dive-turned-bistro-bar Maple Leaf Tavern) were doing well, but a few including movie theatre Projection Booth/Grand Gerrard seemed to have shuttered. There were lots of new trendy places though but I'm going try and stick to old-school and/or POC-owned stores.

To that end, my first visit was to Banh Mi Huy Ky, a Vietnamese sandwich shop. They had other food besides banh mi but for now, I just wanted a veggie tofu for $4.50. It was an alright lunch but their condiments were sweeter than I preferred.