Today at the Leslieville Flea

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The Leslieville Flea Market gets around. I first heard about it when it was being held at the Jimmy Simpson Community Centre on Queen but we caught up with it today in the Distillery District’s Fermenting Cellar.
Great location. Like a giant industrial age attic. Terrific grungy walls, spotty lighting and loads of oversized, rusting iron fixtures. Talk about atmosphere!

The stalls lived up to the ambience. Unlike more conventional flea markets (which are often like sprawling dollar stores), this one had real old stuff, quirky one-off objets and hand crafted oils, lotions, potions, leathers, woodworks and metal fabrications.
Here’s your deer head, ready for mounting on the wall. There are your typesetters’ letters or, if they’re too small, the outdoor sign letters. Need a giant search light for your patio? How about a sweater made of old, cut and resewn sweaters? Some old shoes? A Danish modern lamp? Some cookware from the 50s? You get the idea.

The Fermenting Cellar is, of course, part of the old distillery district at the foot of Parliament. The brick factory buildings have been left nice and raw and the cobbled walks are a pleasure to explore because the whole area is car-free. The flea market is one small part of this rapidly expanding operation, which is filled with galleries, theatres, design studios, restaurants, brew pubs and coffee bars. The whole space is paved in undulating, old brick, with spaces punctuated by large, whimsical sculpture.
In more benign weather, there will be outdoor cafés, live music and people-watching.
There’s more. New condos provide a living community that makes the district a real neighbourhood, not just a tourist trap. Right across Cherry Street, which bounds the Eastern end of the area, HUGE development is going on, preparing athlete’s accommodation for the Pan Am Games in 2015. This will become housing, probably for young urbans but also for empty=nesters who want to stay in the Big Smoke.
It’s a little hard to see the whole picture at the moment because there is still so much construction going on, but the future is promising. Road systems looks practical and coexist with human-scale, walkable streets. There seems to be plenty of parking, above and below ground and better yet, the area is so close to downtown, its easy to reach on foot, by bicycle and by public transit.
There are 3 more Leslieville Flea Markets slated for the Fermenting Cellar… two in March and one in April. Where it goes after that? Who knows? You could get on the mailing list.