EnviroTO
Senior Member
Unfortunately even with the signage many people don't seem to get it and make a left hand turn on those lights followed by horns and bells from aggravated streetcar drivers.
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- Thread starter flar
- Start date
Unfortunately even with the signage many people don't seem to get it and make a left hand turn on those lights followed by horns and bells from aggravated streetcar drivers.
Chuck
Senior Member
After living in that area for two and a half years and recently moving out, I can honestly say that the area is all hype, and living there kind of sucks. You quickly realize that your apartment is dilapidated, prices are cheap because everything is junky, you avoid walking on Dundas east of Spadina due to what can only be described as the stench of death, you grow fond of the ROW not as a transit corridor but as the only piece of uncrowded sidewalk for miles, and you cease to buy food at local markets once you realize how unsanitary they are - except for the odd store in Kensington. The area is sketchy and relatively deserted at night and once the excitement of living in Chinatown has passed, you just want to move.
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
Chinatown is in notable decline but interestingly enough I was in scarborough last weekend and it seems that the Chinese businesses there are in an even more precipitous decline. Meanwhile business just to the north in Markham and Richmond hill is booming.
flar
Active Member
The quality of some of the stores may be declining at the expense of suburban Chinatowns, and it does stink, but it's still crowded with people every time I've been there.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
A couple of weeks ago I bought a carton ( 144 bars ) of Bee & Flower Brand soap in Chinatown East for $54. There are bargoons to be had in our Chinatowns, let me tell ya ...
Venti de Milo
Banned
144 bars of soap? Are you really that dirty? 
unimaginative2
Senior Member
I'm definitely very uncomfortable with the notion that making Chinatown cleaner would make it somehow less authentic. The success of Pacific Mall and other Scarborough/Markham Chinese business areas would suggest that Chinese people have a great desire for a cleaner and better-kept place to do their shopping and dining. The untidy, gritty Western idea of Chinese-populated neighbourhoods is a stereotype that is best left to perish.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
It's an authentic Chinatown, not authentically Chinese...
Andrew3D
Active Member
My only beef with Chinatown is how vendors take up so much space with their produce and trash. I tend to walk fast and usually experience a bit of sidewalk rage on Spadina. I've come to expect it and on days when I'm in not such a rush these little grievances I actually try to appreciate.
The city could do more though to enforce proper waste disposal and littering in the area however.
The city could do more though to enforce proper waste disposal and littering in the area however.
yin_yang
Active Member
word man. sounds like a lot of the people hating don't go there or something, because sickness from eating food in chinatown has never been a problem with me (out of many dozens of trips)...i kind of trust the city's health inspectors and the signs they make places put on their storefronts. if you can't trust them, then pretty much every restaurant should irk you as possibly unsanitary.
spanida looks too wide though, they should eliminate a lane/two of traffic and attract kiosks to line the mini-avenues on either side of the ROW.
Long Island Mike
Senior Member
Flar: Good Chinatown tour! I find the pic of the young lady drinking the Arizona Ice Tea interesting-the men who founded that company are from Long Island. Toronto has a lively oriental community-it puts me in mind of Flushing,Queens,NYC. - especially with the graffiti. TO just did not have much of any graffiti of that sort in the 80s. LI MIKE