my arms are numb, but it’s almost done!

Man, who knew painting the walls would be such a strenuous job! After two coats of paint my wrists are limp and my hands locked into gnarly claws. The following night I woke up a few times to find half of my body completely numb, no amount of wild flailing could revive it. My mom thinks it is because I have exercised parts of my body that I don’t normally use, I think I was having a stroke, but whatever. Either way, I guess I need to start using my body more. Good thing I’ll be embarking on a career where I sit indoors for hours on end, that’ll help!  

beginning of the day, robust and positive!

After ditching the terrible beige- peach colour on the walls in favour of white, the space feels more….real. The menagerie of furniture I’ve collected seems to look more at home. I would say 80% of the furniture and fixtures in the store have either been sourced from my parent’s basement, assorted garage sales or the elderly couple across the street that keep leaving awesome stuff on their curb. Ain’t no shame in that game! Super neat industrial furniture and church bazaar tables!? Don’t mind if I do. My neighbors have unwittingly contributed significantly to the Lakeshore Superette aesthetic of displaced furniture.                          

My father, aka head carpenter and chief executive builder of everything, has been a real sport! The remaining 20% of furniture and fixtures that we didn’t find for a dollar in someone’s driveway or in the trash were made by him. Shout out! And shout out to my mother who has been working tirelessly by my side since we were picking potential store names out of the dictionary at the kitchen table months ago. It’s kind of an amazing thing when the visions you have for how you want things to be become realized, you know what I mean? Amazing!

The excitement has kind of stalled for the moment, as the mundane details need to be tended to. If I had a nickel for every hour I’ve wasted this week waiting around for internet installation people, I’d probably be able to pay off the charges I’ve racked up overusing the data on my phone. Word of advice, never accept the 2pm-5pm waiting period, it is the most excruciatingly tedious part of the day to be sitting around doing nothing.  I have a diatribe brewing inside of me about all the foolery I’ve experienced at the hands of an unnamed internet provider, but I’ll save it for another time when they slight me again, which I know they will.

With the way things are going, I figure the target opening time will be August, just around the corner! I need to mentally prepare myself. I guess I also need to brush up on my ability to talk to people, such as it was. More updates soon!

xx 

well, well, well…

It appears to all be coming together. The paperwork is filed, the shipments are starting to trickle in and I have painted a small portion of a wall, progress! I’ve forgotten how tedious painting can be, I’ll be sure to integrate alcohol into the mix next time. It’s been a while since I’ve taken pride in a space. Painting the walls and actually making the effort to not carelessly splotch on the floors, baseboards and ceiling shows a lot of maturity. Speaking of completely normal and attainable life milestones, I’m moving into my first legitimate one-bedroom apartment. That’s right, one bedroom…all by myself… one bedroom, no roommates, actual room separation, just needed to brag a little. Considering all of my former residences should appear in the hovel hall of fame, this is kind of a big deal for me.

Surveying my kingdom

It’s a strange thing being a fledgling business and all. I don’t know when exactly I start to gain some legitimacy, but it’s kind of exhausting convincing potential brands that I am indeed a real person, and I do intend to sell their products in a legitimate manner.

I have a sign! Can’t get more legit than that

But I suppose I am partly to blame as well for appearing like a scam artist. I’ve shot off dozens of emails to brands with products that strike my fancy, and maybe a handful has actually replied. The rest ask me all sorts of questions, such as, what’s my store’s name, address, phone number, website, any social media platforms I participate in, and any specific products I’m looking to carry. I mean geez, it’s like they don’t want to take a blind chance on an anonymous person from the internet or something. How am I supposed to catch a break!? All of these questions spook me and I recede back behind the dark veil of the internet, never to be heard from again. But in all seriousness, I’m very grateful to the distributors, landlords, parents, real estate agents, bank tellers, licence bureaus and everyone else who has taken a chance on me so far. Quite a boon for me and my humble beginnings!

xx

I spy with my little eye a key that opens the door to my very own store!

It’s about damn time. So I finally have a home, and on Lakeshore to boot! Who would have thought? Isn’t she beautiful? I don’t care who you are or where you’ve been, this is arguably the most magnificent building anyone has ever seen, no?

I decided to broaden my Toronto-centric location search and move further West to the Port Credit neighborhood of Mississauga. My brother and sister-in-law bought a condo in Port Credit last year. When I heard this news I thought, what the hell were they thinking? Mississauga? What? But look at me now, Mississauga bound and pretty happy about it! No stranger to jumping into things I know nothing about, I think I might be pretty happy here. All the people I’ve observed on the street seem quite leisurely and content.  Everyone I see is either jogging or in an intimidatingly large group of cyclists in aerodynamic outfits. It’s aspirational in a way, I’ll never be jogging or cycling among them, but it will encourage me to not be as sedate and slovenly as I would be normally, don't want to bring down the community morale. 

Now all the real work begins! I think I’m thinking too much about paint colours and furniture placement and not enough about what is actually going to be SOLD in the store and how I’m going to pull that off. That’s my business acumen shining through. Guess I better get a move on, I've got a lot of paint chips and wood finishes to mull over...

xx

same old story…

So, I’m trying really hard to not sully the integrity of this blog with my shameless potty mouth, but motherfucker I’m mad! I had been holding off writing anything until something positive had materialized, but since that hasn't happened this is what I've got to work with... 

I had found the most perfect location there could possibly ever be. I was ready to go, I had mentally moved in and then, poof! The rug was pulled out from under me. The man leasing the space decided he couldn't get his shit together in a reasonable amount of time and backed out. Devastating. Now I am back to square one!  

A few roadblocks have gotten in my way, all of which are real-estate related. I am aware you can’t rush the process, and I’m trying not to, but in my head there is a little clock that is ticking away and if I don’t act soon I’ll turn into a pumpkin or something. I've yet to tick off any of the traditional life milestones (marriage, mortgage, babies, etc.) so I need to compensate somewhere. Career! Got to get a career and fast!

I guess these are all self-imposed timelines, but it doesn't help that I am constantly being inundated with these stupid “articles” from Elite Daily, Buzzfeed or whatever, that manage to pop up on my Facebook. “10 Signs You’re OK With Being An Adult” or “27 Things You Must Stop Doing When You’re 27” and so on and so forth. These articles basically spout off a bunch of nonsense about how at a certain age (usually 25) you should prefer to be queuing up Netflix on a Saturday night than going out, and about when you’re an adult how pathetic it seems to still be coming home from the bar at 5am. What a bunch of bullshit. I can come home from the bar at 5am because I AM an adult and that is my choice. I don’t need some 24 year old Buzzfeed blogger giving me the green-light to become boring. 

S is for ....sour? superette? 

Anyway…..still plugging away, maybe there is more emphasis on the Superette these days, hold the Lakeshore. Negativity laced entry aside, I remain positive! This thing has to get off the ground sometime, or else I have just quadrupled my wardrobe considerably. Win-win maybe? 

xx

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