Korea Town, now with less Korea

The area of Bloor Street east of Christie Street and west of Bathurst (actually west of Honest Ed's) was known colloquially by Torontonians as Korea Town. Except the thing is that the street signs in this area never used to label this district as such. Rather, it was dubbed the "Korean Business Area":


Photo courtesy of JB's Warehouse and Curio Emporium

The reason for this was quite sensible -- while there are many Korean businesses along this strip, few Koreans actually live the area. The surrounding neighbourhood is actually more of a (slightly) downscale version of The Annex, with similar demographics.

With the new street signage going up all over town, however, it would appear that the unofficial name has now become official:



I suppose it's catchier, but the ironic thing is that this strip of Bloor has become increasingly less Korean over the past couple of years. There has been a sprinkling of Indian restaurants in the area for a while, and of course there is that KFC/Taco Bell on Euclid. But the pace of the invasion of the non-Koreans has quickened considerably over the past year or so.

Some of these new places have a rather disturbing Annex-esque feel to them, such as this self-described "eco shopping oasis":



Right beside this place is a hair salon that had a decidedly non-Korean umlaut in its name:



Mobile phone companies seem to be creeping into the area, perhaps because the real estate here is cheaper than it is further east:





That last one is a Fido store that is rather hard to photograph, by the way.

Everyone's favourite new hipster joint, Snakes and Lattes, is smack in the middle of Korea Town:



Don't pull out your laptop if you decide to go -- you'll embarrass yourself in front of grad students playing Carcassonne (who presumably keep their MacBooks safely tucked away in their messenger bags when they visit).

On the other side of the coin, we have this place that's only a little further west:



The only thing I know about Eggsmart is that there's one in a grimy old building near the bus station that used to be a Coffee Time. It doesn't look much less grimy than the Coffee Time, however. Perhaps it is merely a placeholder until a Tim Hortons moves in.

Oh yes, we also have this distinctly non-Korean clothing store in the area. I enjoy how I managed to position my reflection right in between the headless mannequins in the display window:



We can add more irony to what's going on in Korea Town. The venerable store named Yankee Stuff - one of the few Korean-owned places in the area that sold non-Korean goods - closed a while back. The quaint old sign remains, but the place seems to sell mostly Korean DVDs and handbags now -- that is to say, most definitely non-Yankee stuff:



Yet all is not lost for the Koreans in the area -- they have managed to score one notable victory. On the northwest corner of Bloor and Markham is a building that apparently used to be a McDonald's. That was before my time. When I lived in the area, the building housed a strange Mexican restaurant/nightclub combination called Labios. Well, Labios is gone, replaced by a Koren BBQ:



Score one for the Korean businesspeople of the area. They may be losing the war, but they won this battle.