Where: Bloor Street between Dufferin and Lansdowne
Average house prices: Between $325,000 to $375,000.
Transit: Bloor subway line, 24-hour Dufferin bus.
Schools: Closest primary school: Pauline Junior Public School, where 81% of students have a primary language other than English. The school offers international language programs in Cantonese, Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil and Urdu, along with Black Culture classes. Closest secondary schools: Bloor Collegiate Institute and Western Tech.
Crime: There's only been one murder in 14 Division (which includes both Bloordale and Parkdale) so far in 2006, compared with eight in Scarborough's 42 Division. But 14 does have a major drug problem (1011 Lansdowne, at Dupont, is a high-rise crack den).
Shopping: The Dufferin Mall. Don't flinch - it's not nearly as trashy as it used to be. Over the past year, it's undergone a major renovation. H&M opened recently, along with several other chains - a sure sign the mall has become hip. Dufferin Grove Park, right across the street, is home to an excellent organic food market every Thursday from 3 to 7 p.m. Be prepared to elbow your way through hordes of yummy mummies pushing designer strollers.
Restaurants/bars: This strip of Bloor is dominated by take-out joints - but don't let their slightly dumpy exteriors put you off. You can find great South Indian, Ethiopian and Portuguese chicken around here, and Vena's (1263 Bloor St. W) serves excellent, and cheap, roti, homemade by Vena herself. As for bars, expect a naked lady to serve your beer - two "gentlemen's clubs," the House of Lancaster 2 and Club Paradise, dominate this stretch.
Closest Starbucks: College and Dovercourt, 2.5 kilometres away
Not long ago, my partner and myself were living in a neighbourhood known as Crackville. Dealers sold weed off our lawn. On weekends, we'd sit out on the porch and watch a steady stream of Jaguars, Mercedes and BMWs pull up at the crack-house across the street. It was all great fun and really quite amusing - until our house got robbed. The cops said there was a pretty good chance of finding the thieves, because there were so many known criminals in the area. Alas, they couldn't get a clean print.
Three weeks later, we moved into our new house, in Bloordale Village. It's only five blocks east of our old digs, but it may as well be another planet.
Sure, Bloordale isn't exactly a destination. It's that strip of Bloor you pass through on the way to other, nicer villages, like Roncesvalles and Bloor West. But walk a couple of blocks north, and you'll see a whole different neighbourhood. Little kids play outside late into the night, and teenagers hang out at the basketball courts and community centre up the street. Old men sit on their porches in the evenings, singing and playing the accordion. We chat with the folks next door. There is a neighbourhood cat.
It's a largely working-class, overwhelmingly Portuguese neighbourhood, along with a growing number of South Asian and East African immigrants. More and more young professional couples are buying in the area, as well, likely because Bloordale is one of the few areas left in Toronto where you can buy a decent-sized house for under $400,000. And in the case of our four-bedroom semi on a corner lot, complete with two-car driveway, well under $400,000.
But this 'hood is about to change. A huge condo development is being built just west of Lansdowne, which is bound to drive up housing prices and draw more shops and restaurants to the Bloor strip - though it'll likely still be a couple of years before Starbucks comes sniffing.
Dawn Calleja