Tulse
Senior Member
^ your comment confuses... Yonge Street's "iconic status" as you put it, was built on an urban stew of music clubs/stores, strip clubs, head shops, buy anything et al... Yonge Street is Fun Street.
I suppose that's true to some extent, but don't forget also the legitimate theatres (e.g., Elgin/Winter Garden, the current "Panasonic"), the movie houses, the higher-end shopping, much of which was either lost or greatly reduced by the '70s and '80s. Yonge Street really did fall into seediness from its glory years (heck, I've seen it happen over the time I've been in Toronto), and it is only in the past decade or so that we've seen a rejuvenation of it.
I'm not suggesting that the city somehow force out the dollar stores and head shops and strip clubs and junky electronics shops, but at the same time those kind of businesses really show how undervalued the street is.
Of course, while saying this, I'd be devastated if we ever lost the Hairy Tarantula comic/game shop, which is about as authentically tatty as they come...