Where I Write: Hailed Coffee in Riverdale

We're starting a new series here on the blog - one where, if you're game, we'd love to welcome you to share in as well. We're hoping to share photos of where we write, because sometimes the spaces around us can give us inspiration to get us dreaming and writing - what we love about that spot, or what is happening in our lives, why it's just the place for us. If you have a beautiful desk or a back porch or a local cafe or hidden nook somewhere in the city or rock out on a trail that you have a few great pictures of, please send them in - wonderliz@wonderpens.ca - along with a few words about how you discovered it or what makes it special for you. We would love to share a few on the blog.

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Our first one is a cafe in Riverdale, Hailed Coffee, which has been around for a year or two - so it's sort of new, but sort of quietly well-established in the neighbourhood as well. It's on Gerrard, just east of Old Chinatown, and actually very close to the place we originally wanted to open the Wonder Pens shop - if you know the area it's the corner shop across from the Beer Store on Logan and Gerrard, which was abandoned at the time we started the business. We liked the location both because it was close to old Chinatown, which was and is a rapidly changing strip of Gerrard (and one we'd fit right in to! sort of...), and Riverdale itself is a really great neighbourhood. With hindsight, our place on the west end, 906 Dundas West was just the perfect place for us, in some ways our first home, but it's always fun to imagine how things would've turned out for us here. Maybe we'd be getting coffee from Hailed everyday instead of Ella's! We've been in the east end now for almost two years, but it seems like with Caleb's short legs we stick pretty close to home, and with the shop, we don't get out much anyways. I discovered this place on the way to Caleb's weekly gymnastics class. Occasionally on the long walk home, particularly on cold winter days and after an exhausting class for both tot and parent, we stop by for a pick-me-up. There are two really great things about this place: one is that they're very friendly, also very kid-friendly, which I've discovered is (understandably) two separate things when it comes to cafes, and two their chocolate hazelnut croissants. They heat the croissants for you, and they're really, really good. Caleb has been getting better and better at sitting still and waiting, particularly when there's a croissant and a cup of milk and a view of the streetcar zooming past - and I've been getting better and better at taking in sips of writing time in between life zooming past.