Last week I had the opportunity to write a nice, long post for Torontoist on Kensington Market's impending BIA designation. (The link is at the end of this post.)
This is the third piece I've written about politics in the Market. The first of the three was one of the first I wrote for Torontoist. At the time, I was just developing a sense of how to approach newsier posts, and so my angle was not... ideal for the subject matter. My plan was to interview lots of people in Bellevue Square Park, as a kind of impromptu Kensington ethnography.
Unfortunately, as soon I stepped into the park with the photographer, we got rained out, big time. I went ahead with a badly truncated version of the post, which regular readers rightly perceived as a cop-out. I got savaged in the comments--lesson learned. The article's still up:
Kensington Market Brews Both Storms and Coffee [Torontoist]
Not long after that article went up, something legitimately newsworthy happened in the Market. The storefront at 234 Augusta Avenue--which had been the center of some controversy, about a year prior, when real estate agent Phil Pick attempted, unsuccessfully, to install a Starbucks in the space--was suddenly listed with a new real estate agency, and a new agent. I was tapped to write about it.
Determined to redeem myself, I made an effort to exercise due diligence in contacting sources. That meant trying to get in touch with Pick. This was somewhat problematic, because Torontoist had published some unflattering things about him in 2008's "Heroes and Villains" feature:
Heroes and Villains 2008: Phil Pick [Torontoist]
Pick did eventually respond to an interview request, and we had a chance to talk on the phone. That's how this happened:
A New Lease on Life for 231 Augusta [Torontoist]
This latest Kensington piece was an order of magnitude bigger. Where "A New Lease on Life" dealt with the fate of a single business in the Market, last week I had to contend, in my way, with the fate of ALL business in the Market. Kensington's BIA designation had made it through its evaluation period unopposed, and I knew it was imperative that I interview widely enough to ferret out dissent, if any existed.
At the same time, I knew I was going to have to work to ensure that the final piece reflected the popularity of the BIA. It's tempting to play up controversy wherever it exists, but the fact of the matter was that the designation had been popular in Kensington, by all accounts. I wasn't going to let myself distort that.
I'm satisfied with the piece:
Kensington Market's Business, Soon to be Improved [Torontoist]