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Home » Snapshots

Kensington Market

Written by on January 6, 2010 – 12:26 pm14 Comments | 13 Read this

Past Chi­na­town, we ended up in another cute mul­ti­cul­tural neigh­bor­hood: Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket. The eclec­tic shops and cafés are stuck between Spad­ina and Lit­tle Italy. We spot­ted Latino, Euro­pean, Middle-Eastern and North African shops.
 
There was an artsy feel­ing in the air. Murales, graf­fi­tis and trendy hip­pie chic clothes, along with numer­ous bikes and nar­row streets that — gasp! — can’t prob­a­bly be nav­i­gated by car easily.

This neigh­bor­hood reminded me a lit­tle bit of some New Zealand cities such as Christchurch or Queen­stown: relaxed and easy-going, with a thing for organic and home­grown food and pro­mot­ing a some­what alter­na­tive lifestyle.
 

Bikes On Spadina

Bikes On Spadina

Graffitis

Graf­fi­tis

Tease Who?

Tease Who?

Skyline From Spadina

Sky­line From Spadina

If The Environment Was a Bank...

If The Envi­ron­ment Was a Bank…

Pothead Ad

Pot­head Ad

Murale

Murale

Nuts

Nuts

Street Signs

Street Signs

Bike Parked

Bike Parked

Geisha

Geisha

CN Tower And Shops

CN Tower And Shops

Stop Sign

Stop Sign

Small Alley

Small Alley

Related arti­cles:

  1. Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket In The Spring
  2. Night And Day In Toronto’s Chinatown
  3. St Cather­ine Street
  4. The Great Melt
  5. Pic­ture of the Week: Red Bikes

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14 Comments »

  • Zhu says:

    @Gabriel — I didn’t even know you lived in Toronto at the time! Did you notice, they have quite a few latino shops there.

    @Bluefish — Really? I didn’t have this feeling.

    @Agnes — Funny the per­cep­tion we have of places… looked fine to me!

    @Lizz — I love it too!

    @Nigel Babu — I know, it caught me eye right away!

    @shionge@hotmail.com — Happy New Year Shionge!

    @Tulsa Gen­tle­man — That is really cold… and unusual I guess! Stay warm.

    @Linguist-in-Waiting — I kinda of like urban decay actu­ally, as long as there is a mes­sage. I hate this silly graf­fiti sig­na­tures (except when there are a bunch like in the pic­ture, it becomes art then!) but murales are fine to me.

    @RennyBA’s Terella — You’d love the place — the food looked awesome.

    @London Caller — Yeah, not quite the same Kens­ing­ton ;-)

  • Seraphine says:

    i’m pretty sure i’d like kens­ing­tom mar­ket. i love all the stick­ers and graf­fi­tis– espe­cially the one about if the envi­ron­ment was a bank, we would have saved it by now. wish you would have taken some pho­tos of the lit­tle restau­rants and cof­fee shops too. because that’s proably where i’d be hang­ing out. some­place warm with some cof­fee. blow­ing on the steam.
    .-= Seraphine´s last blog ..Pretty / Ugly =-.

  • Seb says:

    This looks like my kind of place! I love bikes :) That parked bike looks very funky, I won­der if some­one put it together or if that’s how it was made. Has the banana seat, which is very cool…
    .-= Seb´s last blog ..Bear and I Visit The Lou­vre =-.

  • barbara says:

    Salut Zhu,

    Hey, this is the FUNKY part of town ! FUN !!
    The types of signs and adver­tis­ing in a place tells you a lot about the type of peo­ple who live/ fre­quent the place.

    This feels of course young,perhaps student,artistic,and original.

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