Spacing associate editor Shawn Micallef wrote the current lead city article in Eye Weekly about the dramatic topographic and social changes The Danforth experieces along its length.
Head east from where Bloor Street becomes The Danforth and one moment the pavement is soaring above the Don Valley in midair, the next it’s part of dense urban street. The change in topography is unmatched in Toronto. What’s most remarkable is how flat and straight the road is throughout these changes — it’s as if the road came first, and the Prince Edward Viaduct and Earth rose up to meet it.
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The Danforth has been the hardest stretch of “destination†road in Toronto to cozy up to. It seems perpetually one lane too wide for walking and one too narrow for driving, and the trees are either stunted or nonexistent, so the summer sun is too hot and unrelenting, the winter wind too bitter and unbroken. At first glance, the retail strip between the Don and Pape is dominated by too many Paul Frank-underwear emporiums, fancy stationery shops and upscale knick-knack stores. It’s boring. How many kinds of oddly shaped vases does one family need? It’s also the best place in Toronto to be run over by a yummy mummy pushing a ridiculously oversized SUV stroller.
Read the full article and see why it’s worth dodging those strollers for a visit and find out where on The Danforth you can have a Great Gatsby moment. Shawn’s Stroll column is now a monthly ambulatory outing through the psychogeography of Toronto.
5 comments
One unaddressed thing re Danforth mythology is how it earned its rep between and well after the wars as Toronto’s “automobile row” (and serving the middle and working classes, as opposed to the carriage-trade dealers along Bay). A lot of present “infill” development, from 60s/70s-type retail strips to Carrot Common, is on the site of old dealerships.
Shawn, why do you and other people insist on calling them SUV strollers? That term brings with it a negative connotation that is not justified. Here’s why…
This is Toronto. In Toronto, it snows in the winter. Sometimes, the snow can be quite deep, and unfortunately, there are many lazy people who don’t shovel their sidewalks. The city isn’t that much better, sometimes taking well over a day to clear sidewalks in some areas. Have you ever tried pushing a small umbrella stroller (the kind I assume you would approve of) through 10cm of snow? I doubt you have, but I have, and it doesn’t work. The mid-sized plastic-wheel ones (not sure if you approve of those) are a bit better, but you better have some strong arms if you want to be able to get through the snow.
We bought a so-called SUV stroller (they are actually called jogging strollers) for precisely these reasons, among others. Just last Saturday morning, we went for a walk from our house down to the Danforth with our 3-month old boy. There is no way we could have done that with a dinky little stroller – the snow was too deep and of course, being Saturday at 10am, almost no one had shovelled their sidewalks yet.
So anyway, I hope this gives you a better perspective on these strollers. Comparing them to SUVs is nonsense, and I wish people would stop doing that.
Those strollers are probably our closest cultural connection to Kitsilano in Vancouver. See the “kits” entry in Douglas Coupland’s “City of Glass” 😉
people call them SUV strollers because they’re bloody gigantic, and rightfully so. what’s the point of a stroller that’s good in the snow and terrible everywhere else? (eg. in stores, hallways, on narrow sidewalks, etc.)
Funny, I’ve never had a problem with our stroller in stores, hallways or any sidewalks in the three months we’ve had it. Granted, I can’t get on a streetcar with it, but buses and subways are fine. In fact, I find that bikes on buses and subways are far more intrusive and inconvenient for other people than our stroller is.