[URBAN NOTE] "“It always felt like a crazy maze”: Honest Ed’s shoppers say farewell"

[rfmcdonald]

Roxy Kirshenbaum's paragraph-long interviews with individually photographed shoppers at Honest Ed's touches on the meaning of the store for so many.

When Honest Ed’s closes up shop for good on December 31, it will do so in traumatic fashion. Not only is the 68-year-old store going out of business, but it and many of its neighbouring shops and restaurants will soon be razed to make way for new apartment towers.

The closure has been years in the making—Ed Mirvish’s passing in 2007 probably made it imminent—and the store has been looking increasingly shabby as business winds down. Even so, many Torontonians aren’t quite ready to let go of the proudly garish landmark, whose blinking marquee has bathed the corner of Bloor and Bathurst in incandescent light for as long as most of them can remember. We dropped by Ed’s (and the Fabricland in the basement of Ed’s, which will be closing with the rest) to ask shoppers to tell us about their most memorable bargains, and how they’re feeling about the place’s demise.