While in Toronto this week, I managed a some time away from the track and took a little side trip to an area called Yorkville. Yorkville is comprised of two parallel one-way streets, Yorkville Avenue and Cumberland, located at Bloor W. off Avenue Road, in the city proper.
In the 60's, Yorkville was Toronto's equivalent to San Francisco's Haight Ashbury and Detroit's Plum Street. However, where Haight Ashbury cycled through generational changes and Detroit's Plum street ushered out the summer of love by becoming overrun with drugs, bikers and the 12th Street riots, Yorkville entered the mid 70's with a renaissance of upscale shops, restaurants and ultimately, high-end condominiums. It was an incredibly vibrant area and saw a huge real estate and economic boom.
I spent a lot of time there in the 70's and 80's… so I thought I'd go and see how the turn of the century had treated the area.
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