James North comes in from the cold
A series of 12 Christmas stories leading up to Santa's big day.
December 15, 2008
Jon Wells
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/482161
Faith, magic, reverence for the past, these are the notes of Christmas -- and also James Street North, a hidden treasure most times of the year, but never more so than during the flash of the season.
To the naked eye there seems little to treasure along the perpetual old artery, the morning wind a cold slap in the face, the scene along her sidewalks grey, as though dawn never broke, and suddenly the canned warmth and glitz of a mall, madness though it is, tantalizes.
Stop. Look down. In a frigid doorway, set in black and white tile, is the word "Oysters." Oysters? It's an art gallery, but was a fish market many years ago.
Look up. A sign reads Loose Canon -- one "n" as in it's near Cannon Street. But it's about art canons -- the "loose" referencing openness, youth.
Inside, gallery owner Dane Pedersen, young guy, speaks of the cultural renewal of James North, the galleries on the street and quirky shops, and laments the coming of his 29th birthday. He wears some kind of floppy winter hat with hanging tresses that should probably be hanging on the wall with other eclectic pieces -- such as a work that looks like a pair of miniscule purple mittens by artist Courtney Lakin, who lives in an apartment above the gallery.
Look up again. It's a white tin moulded ceiling, and it's beautiful, a section of pipe is lovingly exposed and painted gold-leaf.
Circulation returning to your fingers, take a second look across the street, and now the facade over long-ago closed Leon Fur's, and its retro yellow and red L-shaped sign, seems more like art, not blight.
In the Loose Canon window, meanwhile, like many of the storefront windows on James North now done up in lights and bows and holly, is a Christmas display -- a yuletide scene that Pedersen painted, and in front of it tiny characters, elves that his mother made.
She actually made the characters by hand, with wood dowels, green and red felt costumes and glue, as if created in Santa's workshop.
How many mall displays bring handmade decorations to the fore?
Like the Grinch atop Mount Crumpit, you start to get it that James North, it seems, is about something a little bit more.
In a city of streets steeped in history, James North is the godfather.
Once known as Lake Street, it was renamed by Hamilton founding father Nathaniel Hughson after his son. The CNR station at Murray and James was the point from which soldiers went to war, and immigrants first set eyes on their new home. It was the street that connected Hamilton to the harbour, its major artery of commerce.
And now, to those who go there, James North boasts charms old and new. There is lots of the old at a new place called White Elephant, where owners Jane Labatte and Hollie Pocsai sell retro items, everything from your grandmother's vintage kitchenware to toys, ornaments and an Elvis Presley Christmas record of the stone age vinyl variety. They found a vintage silver aluminum tree on eBay for their window display. Perfect.
Labatte and all the fresh young merchants talk about James North as a movement, a rebirth.
"There is a community here, a culture we wanted to be part of," says Labatte.
The spirit and creativity is undeniable, but will enough people discover the charms to make it the next Locke Street, but with an artistic bent, as a merchant put it?
At the corner of Cannon and James North is Mixed Media, and here you find Dave Kuruc, who one merchant calls the "King of James" for his tireless and eloquent torch-carrying for the street. The store is quirky, all of it very James North: arts supplies, black high-top sneakers made of recycled rubber, books for sale like a journal titled "Wreck This Journal."
The store's restored pine plank floor creaks perfectly under foot, round Japanese lamps hang from the restored moulded tin ceiling.
"James Street lets you in on its secrets, but in pieces, you have to look up and around," Kuruc says.
By early afternoon, the sun emerges, warming James North, bathing the spires of Christ's Church Cathedral in light. Across from Sushi Day is a new place run by Sean Burak, called Downtown Bike Hounds. He refurbishes old bikes and fixes them with bells, lights, baskets. Inside, a guy named Mike chats about BMX forks and the economy, among other things, with Jeff, who is out walking his 16-month old daughter, Raven.
Large canvas paintings for sale, bursting with colour, by artist Karen Casey, adorn the walls. Burak's dog Memphis, a beagle-basset hound cross (or a bagel, as they are called) and for whom the store is named -- drags a blanket in his mouth on the hardwood floor.
"I think he brings out the blanket for visitors to show that he's in charge of something," Burak says.
Burak's Christmas window display is the most James North of all -- a mannequin wearing a hard hat perched atop a red bicycle, pedalling non-stop. He hooked an old ceiling fan motor to the back wheel, keeps it going all day long.
"I'm considering just taking off the tinsel after Christmas and let him keep on pedalling."
Oh, and look up. There is - yes - a moulded tin ceiling, silver this time. The signature of James North. Surely only certain eyes could have looked up inside these creaky buildings, noticed the bland dropped ceilings that were there, and had the imagination to wonder if there was something special concealed, that others did not let themselves see.
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