Sonic Boom and Yorkville IceFest

We took a walk from Yonge & St. Clair en route to Sonic Boom, the eclectic music and movie store across from Honest Eds, which is currently displaying a collection of vintage 1970s "Exploitation" movie posters - more on that later.

For us, a walk down Yonge St usually involves stopping in at our favourite shops and galleries.

Muse Gallery (1230 Yonge St) always has interesting paintings and sculptures on display. Of the current exhibits, I like the smaller bronze diaramas by Won Lee that depict various scenes that tell a story, as well as the wood-inlayed sculptures by Susan Valyi that seem to be part bird, part man.

Our next stop is usually L'Atelier (1224 Yonge St), the home decor shop that contains multiple rooms of furnishings and nicknacks that range from elegant to quirky. As we browse, we usually play the game of "if we had infinite money and space in our home, what would we like to own". Rich has always yearned after a cabinet with beautiful marquetry, inlaying different shades of wood to result in a Venice-like scene. Lately we've been admiring a pair of bright red chairs, and if we had room for huge whimsical items, I would be bringing home the full sized wicker man. I had also had my eye on these cast iron sculptures of a man on a rope, scaling a wall. However next time I looked for them, they were gone, as the inventory changes frequently. This makes it fun to return to L'Atelier repeatedly to see what's new.

Continuing south on our walk, we stumbled upon the IceFest ice sculpture festival going on in Yorkville. Many intricate sculptures lined the sidewalks along the "Mink Mile" on Bloor St. and throughout Cumberland St. For some reason there were multiple clown sculptures, perhaps this year's theme for the festival. Several ice sculptures were still being created and it was interesting to watch the artists use both chainsaw-like power tools to cut through the ice and more delicate chisels to carve the details. On one block of ice that was further from completion, we could see the charcoal outline of the intended sculpture.

Several other stores caught our attention. The Lululemon store (153 Cumberland St) had "live mannequins" in the storefront window, demonstrating exercise and yoga moves while a DJ blared music. I was more taken with the facade of the store. The tiny colourful mosaic tiles reminded me of stainglass patterns by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Holt Renfrew (50 Bloor St W.) always has interesting display windows. Currently they feature quotes from various Canadian personalities declaring what items they "Can't Live Without". This included the predictable makeup, shoes, designer clothing and accessories, plus one person who couldn't live without lemons??? The merchandise in the windows are colourful and vibrant and the text makes you stop to read. Too bad they couldn't find more famous celebrities to give them quotes.

After our long walk, we finally reached our destination of Sonic Boom (512 Bloor St. W.). The collection of about 20 or more 1970s exploitation B-movie posters depicted the typical advertising for such flicks - big breasted scantily clad women often depicted in perilous situations, big guns, fast cars (sounds like an episode of Charlie's Angels?). The cheesy taglines that promote these movies are so outrageously over the top that they make you laugh rather than take offense - "Their guns are hot and their bodies are hotter.." These type of movies seem to have gone out of vogue by the end of the '80s, although recently Quentin Tarantino directed a pair of movies that he called the "Grindhouse" series (Death Proof and Planet Terror) which played homage to this genre.

Sonic Boom is a great store for audiophiles looking for that hard to find album. It buys and sells a wide variety of recent and older music, dealing in CDs and vinyl, DVDs and VHS. Its walls are lined with jacket covers of old LPs (long playing vinyl record albums) that take you on a blast from the past. There are some interesting groupings such as Teenage Head hung next to Scott Baio - I didn't even know that Chachi could sing?? The store is filled with funky decorations hanging from the walls and ceiling, including a drum set, giant insect, a huge cassette tape, and cardboard cutouts ranging from singer Erykah Badu to Batman to Super Mario. Free live concerts are regularly held in the lower level.