Monday, 29 June 2015

Featured Shop : Blue Banana in Kensington Market

In my previous post (here) I wrote about a nice afternoon spent shopping and eating in Kensington Market with my old friend Stella.

I showed her one shop that I especially like called Blue Banana Market, located at 250 Augusta Avenue (just south of College on the west side).

I can’t think of another place that is quite like this store. Basically, it is a huge hall divided into many small booths, and each booth is set up like its own little shop. You’re welcome to just go from booth to booth and chose what you want. Then you pay for everything at one central check-out desk. I have been to a similar type of place before, but only for vintage/secondhand things, but in this case the things for sale are new.

Something that makes the shopping experience particularly enjoyable at Blue Banana, (aside from the extremely wide variety of things to choose from), is that since each booth is not individually staffed, you can look around without that awkward moment when you walk away without buying something. I always feel uncomfortable giving a vendor false hope for a sale at more traditional Farmers’ or Craft Markets, where the person selling the goods is standing right there. I had to do it last weekend at a Flea Market after looking at some jewellery handmade by a teenage girl — I felt so badly looking at all her things laid out in front of her and then leaving without buying something. I’m sure I have no reason to feel like that though because, of course, you can’t buy everything, but still, I find the lack of individual shopkeepers for me to disappoint to be a plus when browsing around this place.

Stella liked it too, and ended up finding a nice pair of jeans and a new purse.

I picked up some beeswax tealight candles by Cheeky Bee Candle Company. I’d been looking for these since we only burn beeswax candles inside nowadays, after I read that they purify the air as they burn instead of polluting it like more common paraffin candles do. They’re quite a bit more expensive – I got these 10 tealights for just under $20 with tax – but being the allergic type, I’d rather pay more for good air and light a candle less often. That said, we burn a lot of candles outside but I’m not so picky about those.

While we bought things for ourselves, a walk through this emporium of interesting goods will undoubtedly give you lots of gift ideas. There are so many fun and useful things on offer.