Come In And Get Lost!

So there's this crazy, crazy shop in Toronto called Honest Ed's. It's a massive discount shop, started by this Ed Mirvish fellow - a true rags to riches story - he ended up bringing many well-known live theatre shows to Toronto and owning a couple of fancy theatres to boot [his sons are still very involved in the arts/culture scene in Toronto]. The store is...not classy and yet, it has become this landmark of sorts in my fair city [even listed as such on Wikipedia and they obviously know everything]. I'm not sure why @ all - if I was a tourist and someone recommended that I visit Honest Ed's I would hope that they were advising me to do so ironically and for no more than fifteen minutes [their website compares it to London's Harrods and NYC's Macy's - no...just say no]. The shop is perhaps most famous for having dozens and dozens of Elvis busts for sale all the time...and yet, when a former housemate went looking for just that she came up with nothing - it's a very large [one city block] and confusing shop. But today, I took the plunge and, while I'm still not a fan - I bought something from Honest Ed's for the first time.


Aren't they supercute? They cost $3 each! I'm tagging this as "free stuff" because $3 shoes is as close to free as it gets, kids. I've been looking for cheap, canvas summer shoes that were slightly more shoe-y than sandal-y and these were all that and more - they were in my size [that's why I bought two pairs]. I was wooed by them weeks ago when I was returning videotapes to Suspect and I saw a window display of them. Cute! Thankfully, the window display was still up today [they change them frequently] as it provided the directions to the shoes [this is key]. I found them on the top floor of the west block in a gigantic pad table [it's a retail term]. After about fifteen minutes of searching I found both pairs, in my size [one of the pairs was disconnected from its mate, this made the search a bigger challenge] and in relatively good condition [some of the shoes were already scuffed up and/or had nasty glue bits on the glued parts of the shoe [strangely enough].

In truth, this was only my second visit to Honest Ed's during my time in Toronto. My first visit was back in the autumn of 1998 when a small group of us went to try to find a fan for one of my housemate's rooms. After a lot of searching and people getting lost [I think we might have permanently lost a frosh] we stumbled across several housewares sections...but none contained the elusive fan. This failed expedition left a mark on me - it would have been fantastic to live so close to a legit discount store that had consistent and easy-to-find goods...Honest Ed's is not so much. But still, I love the puns and stupid knee-slapper type jokes that are all over the place and the old time-y old Hollywood photos that decorate the place.