there goes the neighbourhood…

Oh Lakeshore Boulevard. Lakeshore, Lakeshore, Lakeshore, what is going on? I had such high hopes for us, but you’re kind of letting me down. I have given Lakeshore Blvd. first, second and now third thoughts. Lakeshore is the final frontier, the Wild West if you will. In a city like Toronto, it is hard to find any neighbourhood that has not seen the hand of gentrification, no street left without a blow dry bar or artisanal bike store or whatever bullshit on it. So then there was Lakeshore. After all of my years living in the city I had never ventured out that far west, never taken the streetcar as far as it could go. When I finally did I thought, why hadn't I done this before? Such a world of opportunity! How come nobody else seems to know about this place?

I’ll tell you why, because there is nothing there. After viewing some dismal commercial space prospects I've come to realize maybe Lakeshore is not all it’s cracked up to be. It has certainly maintained its authenticity, but maybe too much so.

It’s constantly being touted as ‘the next up and coming’this and that, but what is taking so long? Even the real estate agents can’t spin doctor this one, they know it’s a risky call. There is a distinct lack of retail anything in this area. The neighborhood is a crossroads where many demographics seem to collide and coexist, yet no real identity has been established in the area. I wanted to capitalize off of the blank canvas nature of the neighbourhood but unless tumbleweeds have credit cards I don’t foresee a whole lot of financial success. 

For goodness' sake, there is still a Biway there. A BIWAY! Biway went out of business maybe…15 years ago? I guess Biway Lakeshore Blvd. didn't get that memo.

So, the prophecy came true, I put my cart before the horse and it rolled backwards off a cliff. My Lakeshore Superette seems to be more of a stupor-ette these days. Ah well, it’s not too late in the game to change my name, it may temporarily confuse the five of you who actually read this, but I’m sure you’ll adjust. In the meantime I won’t divorce Lakeshore just yet, but I’ll continue to search the city, there must be a reasonably priced hole in the wall with my name on it somewhere!    

xx

what’s in a name….

So, what’s my concept you may ask? Well, I’m thinking a heady mixture of old and new! I figure if you throw around words like ‘curated’ people usually go for that kind of thing. Over the weekend my brother, an unofficial shopping pro, took me scouting for merchandise for my invisible store. He’s a type-A, go get em’ kind of guy, and I am quite the opposite. On our travels he is asking me perfectly legitimate questions, you know, the usual…what’s your idea? What’s your business plan? Have you contacted real estate agents yet, made appointments, made connections? Etc. And like the consummate professional aspiring business woman I am, I snapped my gum like a surly teen and groused, I don’t know, quit hasslin’ me man. At the end of our day we had amassed quite the collection, a whole station wagon full of shopping bags. As a neophyte to basically everything, the confidence I have in my decision making is in a constant state of ebb and flow. I viewed this budding collection more with anxiety than optimism. What am I supposed to do with all of this shit now? If this thing goes tits up then I’m stuck with all of this stuff AND a mounting credit card bill.

After getting the stuff home and seeing it in the light of day, some of it is unexpectedly awesome and some are duds. How did I miss this huge wine stain on the sleeve? Why didn't I notice the inside of this purse smells like an ashtray? Things that looked massive are deceptively small. So, now I've got piles and piles of stuff, just sitting there, waiting. Our guest bedroom smells like a Salvation Army, it’s like all of the clothes have combined forces to create a super musk of sorts.

    

As for a name, this has been a bit of a bugaboo from the get-go. I have my heart set on the Lakeshore Village neighbourhood of Etobicoke, so the word Lakeshore has been a prominent element in all of the brainstorming. Maybe I’m putting my cart before the horse, as I have no physical store, and may not even be able to find a store ON Lakeshore, but dammit I’m jazzed! After thumbing through the thesaurus, the dictionary, pulling words out of the sky, my ass and other dark places, I seem to be stuck on the word superette, which essentially means super-market, store, whatever. I don’t know why, I just find it…cute. Simply put, cute. It makes me think of eyelet lace and French people on bicycles.

My mother on the other hand, does not find it so cute. Upon hearing it, my sweet superette was met with stony silence and a passive-aggressive, ‘well, if YOU like it…’ She went as far as to call it too vague and hokey! HOKEY? Come on. As she is essentially my only sounding board for anything these days, I was obviously devastated, as I thought I really hit the nail on the head with this one. But, I choose to remain defiant, Superette it is, and Superette it shall be! Until maybe I get a third opinion….

xx

in the beginning....

After years of spinning my wheels in the city doing the post-graduation grind, working to get by, I decided to go the route of countless aimless youth before me and teach English as a second language abroad. As a naturally churlish and reserved person, the idea of me being a facilitator of young children confounded not only myself, but everyone who knew me. After two years of doing this to varying degrees of success, I’m back home with a newly instilled sense of what I want to do in life and what I definitely don’t want to do in life. I came to the conclusion that I know I want nothing to do with children or teaching, in no specific order.

So, here’s the deal, I came out the other side of this teaching thing as a late-twenty-something (I shudder at self-identifying as a ‘late-twenty-something’ but there’s no denying the truth) who needs to get her shit together. I didn't want to dig myself so deep into the teaching/living/working abroad cycle that I felt I could never re-integrate back into society at home again. So, I sat down and thought long and hard about my strengths, interests and goals between the tedious interim of morning and afternoon talk shows. Long story short, I am about to embark on the exciting and terrifying world of opening my own business, specifically a clothing store, because you can’t have too many of those, right? Obviously I know nothing about how to do this. I’m pretty much starting from the ground up, but hey, what is life without taking a few risks and jumping head first into something. I think I just heard my father’s head exploding somewhere after I typed those words, but I digress…

I thought one of the first things I should do is consider taking my online presence from nothing to anything, hence writing this blog! In the past, and present to be perfectly honest, I’d rather drink a bottle of ipecac than write a blog. My reasoning for this being there are so many blogs chronicling the inanities of life that it’s almost like I’m doing the world a favor. But lo and behold, here I am sharing my business ineptitude, and hopefully through doing so I can spin it into some kind of self-actualization exercise and gain some much needed perspective.  

So here we go, the beginning of my journey from business conception to inception and all of the good stuff in between.  

xx