City Symphonies The Dufferin Mall

Cities are alive. And a city’s constituent parts often say something about the whole. City Symphonies are short, personal essays about the neatest, weirdest, or otherwise definitive corners of Toronto. 

Yes, Dufferin Mall is just a west-end mall spanning College to Bloor with a Walmart, a Mark’s Work Wearhouse, a No Frills and a store for plus-sized ladies called Voluptuous. But it’s also an immutable concept. For many impoverished twentysomethings who’ve escaped their suburban trappings and gone west to Bloorcourt and Brockton Village, it’s an odd reminder of home, as well as an inside joke based on an uneasy sense of classism.

Dufferin Mall is a place to meet cute over frozen President’s Choice entrees at No Frills, it’s the place to TwitPic photos that say “Can you believe that we’re at Boston Pizza right now?!”, it’s the place to smirk at fur ponchos while your boyfriend picks out his Y-fronts at Winners. Unlike Eaton Centre and Yorkdale, which just keep getting bourgier (what with their J. Crews and Topshop Boutiques and $48 million “Urban Eatery” food courts), Dufferin Mall has the audacity to brand themselves for the lower-middle class. And so there is always tension, always the hustle from Wind phone merchants and the ladies in the kiosk from that discontinued makeup line Faces, and always an uncomfortable reminder that this mall doesn’t belong to you.

Entitled west-end Torontonians may not like to acknowledge the populations of immigrants that live in the largely Portuguese neighbourhoods of Bloorcourt and Brockton Village. There are far too many emerging espresso shops and curated “vintage/vinyl shops” for that. But even though there’s an organic farmers' market across the street in Dufferin Grove Park, Dufferin Mall serves as the best microcosm of the neighbourhood, since it’s completely utilitarian. Everybody goes there—distressed single moms, Portuguese gangbangers, bored teenagers on terrible dates who’ve skipped school to look in Foot Locker.

Previous to its rebirth as a mall, the Dufferin Mall was a racetrack in the model of the Woodbine Center, and you can feel it. Walking through Dufferin Mall has an air of despondency to it, even if you really like the earring selection at Aldo Accessories. When a former roommate told me about working out at the mall’s ladies-only gym, it was no surprise to learn that it was staffed with heavily made-up ladies doing the elliptical machine in high-heeled pumps.

A while ago, a team of savvy marketers had the genius idea to label Dufferin Mall’s supposed makeover with the slogan “Really.” The corresponding image of an Audrey Hepburn-ish well-dressed brunette was a misguided attempt at boasting that the place had an H&M now. It turned the mall into a bigger joke than it had ever been before. And this was around the time the mall set up a giant colon installation outside the Walmart that visitors could travel through to promote colon cancer awareness. Cue the “but I thought the Dufferin Mall already was a giant colon!” punch line that I’ve heard from a dozen standup comics, already. Making fun of Dufferin Mall is some entry-level bullsheeett. Rhapsodizing about it is the new ragging on it.

This is why Dufferin Mall has to stop being a source of bleak material for my particular people, even if they’re trying to cater to our demographic with the recently opened David’s Tea. It’s not cool to surreptitiously snap photos of a lady’s bad weave and flip-flop combination and post the image to Facebook. You’re both shopping in No Frills, aren’t you? Aren’t you glad that it’s there and that the produce is dirt cheap, if also a bit clammy? Dufferin Mall, despite its connotations of ghetto-ism with a Cinnabon on top, should be a place where one can pick over the sale rack at Costa Blanca and eat Kernels' popcorn in peace. Toronto is fully staffed with depressing malls (up next: Gerrard Square), the last vestiges of the emerging city it was in the ’70s and ’80s before we started in with our determinism to make it “world class.” The nearby Galleria and Crossways Malls—where the only thing worse than the vampiric food court is the sexual health clinic, ugh, never again!—are desolate wastelands of discount fabric stores and shady bars with a patio in the parking lot titled “P.M. Toronto’s.” Compared to these succubae, Dufferin Mall is practically an oasis of glamour.

Practically speaking, you need Dufferin Mall more than it needs you. It’s right there, smack dab in the middle of your neighbourhood. When you have to go shopping for a baby shower, or you need to buy new bed sheets or track pants for ball hockey, or you just need to kill an hour between developing your disposable camera photos at Black’s, you will peruse the Gap Factory Store with a strange sort of pleasure. Before you knew who you were, you came of age at the mall. And so it’s okay to be a Dufferin Mall-rat. Really.