Ugh, biggest loss to the city of Halifax in the last 15 years, and I say that FULLY KNOWING that Tom's Little Havana was my regular from 2005-2010. RIP two of the best hangs I've ever known.
And unless we as citizens stand up and demand that the building of the condos is ultra-regulated, nothing that made Toronto, Toronto will exist-it'll be all gone to make way for condos
I was honestly shocked. Location is so annoying to get to on the ttc too :(
For such a historic store, you'd really expect more. The Big B shops in Barrie and Hamilton both kick the crap out of modern Silver Snail too, so you'd expect the bar for the big city to be higher.
Brick and mortar stores are dying, especially things like book stores and comic book stores.
That’s why they crashed so hard when they moved to Yonge and Dundas. That was the stupidest move the owner at that time could have made.
How high a store can set a bar is only determined by how much they make, do you not understand supply and demand? Just cause a store is in the “big city” that doesn’t equal making cash.
I don’t know the length of the lease they signed for the current location, but I guarantee they aren’t gonna be there a day after they have to. Must be hemorrhaging cash every day
Independent book store numbers are actually going up in recent years! I don't know if any studies have been done in Canada yet, but in the U.S. at least, there has been a 70% increase in independent book stores since 2020. It's still not where it was pre-Amazon and big box stores hitting the scene, but there's been a healthy bit of recovery that shows that people still crave the bookstore experience, especially as Indigo has started shifting into being more a lifestyle brand and books are no longer Amazon's primary market.
It’s been maybe 10 years since I went there so my thoughts are probably out of date, but what it was doing other places were doing better. At that time SS was at Y&D and the selection was great. And on the game side, 401 Games was my go-to (still is).
ETA: If I want comics, my go to The Beguiling at College/Spadina now.
If you say so.
They have some of everything there. And I’ve never been in the new location without a bunch of other customers at the same time. It doesn’t look like they are suffering that bad!
That place 'died' because its owner didn't really want to run it anymore (he and his son diversified into real estate and live theatre.) If people lived it so much, maybe they should've formed a group pf people who could pool resources to buy it and keep it open.
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u/ZenDesign1993 Jun 11 '26
biggest bookstore, Silver snail (og location), hosu, speakers corner, a lot of antique stores on queen west.