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Kensington: P.S. I love you

Babies can’t stay babies forever. They grow up.[rssbreak]

Kensington Market, Toronto’s most loved progeny, has come through her immigrant infancy, survived her defiant toddler and tween years and is currently battling an awkward adolescence.

Nobody knows what will become of our most cherished neighbourhood, but it seems everybody wants a say.

Like parents, those of us who live in the ‘hood aren’t at all shy about saying what direction she should be heading in and the kinds of people we think she should be hanging around with (i.e., not the Starbucks crowd). The land speculators dream of Kensington becoming like her sister Yorkville, farther north.

I’m of the view that our wild child will become what she will, and rather than interfere in her inevitable maturation, I’d like to appreciate her just as she is and not worry about what she’ll be like all grown up.

So, on a recent weekday afternoon, I thought it appropriate to take a few snapshots of our baby before we don’t recognize her any more.

In Kensington Market, it’s hard to differentiate the hipsters from the people who are simply wearing the clothes they acquired in the 80s. You need to look closely to see if jeans are torn from wear or by design.

An Italian man who speaks no English, wearing a full, vested suit, sips espresso at a local café beside a young hipster (aka Downtown Outgoing Urbanite Characterized by Hip Equipage). They’re wearing matching fedoras.

Beside them, a lesbian couple discuss all things metaphysical. A man dressed in full athletica can’t help but interrupt. He breaks the ice with “So you meditate?” Opinions on the virtues of seeking your inner essence alone or in a group are exchanged.

They wonder if it isn’t cosmically inspired that the name of mindfulness meditation guru John Kabat-Zinn sounds so much like “Zen.”

A few metres away, the “Community Vehicular Reclamation Project,” a car gutted of all its innards, refilled with soil and plants and tagged with Matt Groeningesque graffiti, hugs the curb.

Stickers reading “Art, Not Apathy” and “That SUV Is Making You Look Fat” grace the back bumper. Surprisingly, there are no parking tickets on it, and it seems the city has heeded the request written on the car: “Please Do Not Tow.”

Onlookers stand puzzled.

Outside St. Stephen’s Community House, the sidewalk is sprinkled with some of the people who use its services, and mummies swerve their strollers to avoid contact of any kind with them, speeding to the edgy Loblaws also known as Freshmart.

A man whistling a tune while skipping down the street passes a bearded guy listening to Come On Eileen on a ghetto blaster propped beside his head. Two underage cigarette-smoking girls in vintage cowboy boots chase the ghetto-blasting man down the street, hoping to reel in a fish of whom Daddy would not approve.

In Cobs Bakery, I order a white chocolate and berry scone. When the man behind the counter asks if that’s all, and I tell him yes, he says it’s on the house because he hasn’t given anything away today.

A Greenpeace sidewalk aggressor stops me outside and asks why I’m carrying a notebook. I tell her I’m just observing things, and she nods in artistic approval. She says the creeping gentrification of the neighbourhood is a “real bummer.”

I’m relieved that she wants to chat about things other than donations. When she manages to bring our conversation (very impressively) around to Greenpeace’s financial needs, I politely decline.

“Not today. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t,” she snaps back. “How is it?” I apologize, show her my bank statement and promise to chain myself to a sequoia soon.

Bikes dart up and down, drivers curse the swamp of humanity blocking their way, and pedestrians count the days until the next Pedestrian Sunday, when the streets will be free of the four-wheeled.

Everywhere, people hug, shake hands, greet and bid adieu to one another. Many of the pairings prompt the question, in what world do these two people even know one another?

In Kensington Market, that’s where. And only as she is right now.

The next Kensington Pedestrian Sunday, on August 16, will honour the sixth anniversary of the blackout.

news@nowtoronto.com

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