Store Guide: Spacing, the independent city magazine’s first Toronto-centric retail outlet
Name: Spacing Store
Sells: Toronto-themed merchandise
Contact info: 401 Richmond St. W., spacingstore.ca
Hours: M-Fr 11-7, Sa 12-6
Spacing, the city’s independent urban-landscape magazine, has just opened its first Toronto-centric retail store. (Actually, it’s the city’s only strictly Toronto-centric store, if you don’t count tacky souvenir shops.) The mag’s been selling its wildly popular subway station buttons (500,000 of which have been sold since launching ten years ago), transit t-shirts and other merch online for years. Now, city enthusiasts can browse all kinds of Toronto paraphernalia in person, including screen-printed pillows of the Great Lakes, neighbourhood toques, vintage maps and posters, and a variety of cycling gear (we quite like the six-pack beer caddies).
Says Spacing’s publisher Matthew Blackett, “We wanted to uphold our ethos, which is trying to change the city in a positive way.” The retail project they’re the most proud of? Screen-printed skate decks designed by students enrolled in alternative credit program Oasis Skateboard Factory’s wood-shop class. (Visitors can grab one for $120, and know that 70 per cent will go to the teen artist.) For literary urbanists, there’s a reading nook in the corner stocked with 50 titles, including photography books on the CN Tower, foodie books like Edible Toronto and, of course, Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs. (Clearly a fan of the author, the shop also carries t-shirts that read “What would Jane Jacobs do?”) Pretty much everything in the store (aside from the Ikea furniture) is made in Canada or the States.
