{"id":63480,"date":"2021-04-09T08:30:29","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T12:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=63480"},"modified":"2021-04-09T17:27:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T21:27:52","slug":"vacant-queen-street-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2021\/04\/09\/vacant-queen-street-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacant Queen Street West: a pandemic photo essay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queen Street West has always been a revolving door of independent businesses. Starting at the bottom of Parkdale, Queen Street is an entryway to the downtown core with a colourful mishmash of fabric stores, live venues, trendy fashion independents, record stores, the whole gamut of bars and restaurants, and a couple David\u2019s Teas for good measure.<\/p>\n

But these days, Queen Street is disappearing.<\/p>\n

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That is to say, it was already disappearing before the COVID-19 pandemic struck Toronto the Great. Due to higher-than-Drake-on-the-CN-Tower rents along the hip Queen West strip, the independent shops had already been uprooting to the more affordable Dundas Street. Then the match strikes. The gasoline is poured. A global pandemic hits. One year later, Queen Street sports a badly bandaged face. A littering of For Lease signs. Swaths of brown paper spanning storefront windows. A mashing of metal security fences. Crude graffiti tags marking the carcasses of long-vacant businesses. Something of an urban tombstone inked in block letters with cheap white spray paint.<\/p>\n

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Like many a Torontonian, I love to walk Queen Street. It\u2019s always held an air of creative independence, a delightful collision of art and culture. Where weird is accepted. The charm and stories run deep on a strip like Queen Street West, which Vogue magazine named the second<\/a> coolest neighborhood in the world just over five years ago. That\u2019s why it\u2019s tough to see more and more businesses disappearing behind For Rent signs.<\/p>\n

There are store-sized puncture wounds piercing the woven landscape that is Queen Street. At the beginning of March 2021, I noticed more than the usual number of closed businesses along Queen West. Dozens upon dozens of closed storefronts, sometimes three to four stores in a row. I walked along Queen Street from Parkdale to MuchMusic to photograph every permanently closed business I saw.<\/p>\n

This is what I saw.<\/p>\n

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Every day we see the daily infection case counts for COVID-19. The \u201cdaily COVID numbers\u201d we call them. What we don\u2019t see, however, is the daily tally of businesses, especially the independent mom-and-pop shops, that are going under. I see Queen Street as a metaphor for all the other independents not just in Toronto, but across Canada, that just can\u2019t hang on any longer. And that number is growing, daily. Here\u2019s a visual representation of one year into the pandemic along Queen Street West.<\/p>\n

All photos\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a9 Ryan Bolton, 2021 (ryanbolton.ca<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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