Chinatown Grannies taking up the West side sidewalk along Spadina Avenue, north of Dundas Street West.
You can't miss them. Yet, during late evenings when they're not there, you do miss them.
Smack dab in the heart of Chinatown on the north-west slab of sidewalk at Spadina and Dundas are the Chinatown Grannies.
They sell vegetables grown themselves, discarded stuffs found hunter-gatherer-like from around downtown neighbourhoods, and anything else they've somehow got at wholesale, often off of trucks that are doing deliveries nearby.
Stand there, observe for a few minutes. It becomes obvious this entire spectacle is altogether social in nature as everyone is haggling, talking, laughing, yelling, smiling, all while hundreds of passers-by navigate the resulting narrow sidewalk pathways.
Their presence is a necessary element in what makes Chinatown... Chinatown. Take it away, and well, it's a slippery slope to what the Old Dundas Chinatown looks like today: Gentrified and Granny free with a whole dash of hurry.
And who doesn't like their Grandma?
Photos
Like the U.S. Postal Service, Grannie here in the Rain.
Early Sunday Morning, one of few Grannie-Free times
Monday Morning, September 23 2013
Additional Links
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Unruly Spadina up against urban renewal - By John Barber, The Globe and Mail, Friday August 17 2001
