TOM’S PLACE
FROM APRIL/MAY 2021 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
I was 12 the first time I went to Tom’s Place. My dad drove me downtown, parked on Spadina, and we walked a block or two into the Market, a place I’d never been. It assaulted the senses, then as now, with loud music, fishy smells and an abundance of what he called “characters” moving in every direction. We passed the butchers and cheesemongers, opened a door and entered Tom’s world, instantly dark, quiet and smelling of freshly pressed cloth.
“My son is starting the bar mitzvah circuit,” my father explained to the salesman, who nodded, instantly understanding that every Saturday morning for the next year and a half would be spent in a synagogue, and every Saturday night at some party venue. “He needs suits,” Dad said, and the salesman, knowing his lines, replied, “Well, you’ve come to the right place.”
I stood on a stool, was sized up and followed my dad and the salesman to the racks, where they pulled out suits that might suit me. “What about this one?” I’d ask, pulling out a red velour number, and they’d just laugh, grabbing more neutrals that I tried on in the change room, struggling to figure out why the slacks had a zipper, a button and a clasp. The cloth was stiff and crisp, and I played along in the mirror with my most serious, dashing expression. I ended up with a black suit, and another one in olive, which had double pleated trousers that I insisted, like a real shmuck, I wanted paired with suspenders. Shirts, ties, belts and socks were stacked on top of the suits.
“So,” my father said to the salesman, in a well-practised tone of suggestion that was his birthright. “What can we do about all this?”
“Lemme talk to Tom,” the man said with the utmost seriousness, and he walked over to the gigantic man standing near the cash, conferring with him, sotto voce, as though they were discussing state secrets. Tom nodded silently throughout this, his arms crossed, his chin in one hand, then waved us over, and with great rumination told the cashier, “Okay, give them this suit for 30 per cent off, and throw in the ties.”
Tom Mihalik, the last living icon of the Spadina shmatte district, may be Toronto’s greatest Jewish garmento, even if he is not actually Jewish. When the Mihalik family fled Soviet oppression in Hungary, and ended up in Kensington Market during the 1950s, they were instantly immersed in a world where the life of the hosiery salesman, the hat blocker and the furrier were inseparable from the salami slinger and the kosher butcher who lobbed off the heads of chickens right on the sidewalk, the synagogues and steam baths nearby. Like European Jewish immigrant districts around the world in the early 20th century, from London’s Brick Lane to New York’s Lower East Side, the lifeblood of Kensington Market was the rag trade, better known as the shmatte business, and Spadina, from Front Street up through the market, was its woollen artery.
By the time I came around, Spadina’s garment district was in decline, its businesses moving uptown, or overseas, while the Jewish community migrated north along Bathurst. We still picked up cut-rate socks from the McGregor factory or blue and white Chocky’s pajamas for summer camp at Silverstein and Sons, before having lunch at Switzer’s Deli, or Real Peking, but when it came to suits, everyone I knew ended up at Tom’s Place, which never gave up its spot as the geographic, economic and political heart of Kensington. Nothing in the Market happens without Tom knowing about it. His presence is as solid as his frame, and equally unshakable. Forget Al Waxman (whose statue Tom paid for); Mihalik is the real king.
I wore those two suits to dozens of bar mitzvahs, worming them along dance floors until they fell apart, then returned to Tom for my own bar mitzvah suit, navy with subtle gold pinstripes, purchased in the airy upstairs “annex” of the store, for the truly discerning prepubescent boy. I went back every few years as I grew, going through that ritual at the cash with Tom when I needed a suit for Jewish High Holidays and semi-formal dances, a tuxedo for prom and so on. When I graduated university and was preparing to move to Argentina to be a foreign correspondent, I went to the Tom’s Place warehouse sale, at the Bloor and Spadina JCC, where Tom stood sentry over a gymnasium filled with garments, which he’d sold at the improbable deal of two or three or even four suits for the price of one.
I picked up a trio of suits: a black slender Calvin Klein, a tan Pierre Cardin and a gunmetal Armani with stretchy woven fabric that made me feel superhuman. I wore them interviewing economists, business owners and even a few world leaders. I was 23 and completely inexperienced and out of my depth, but the suits were my armour, instantly adding a bit of confidence where none existed. I wore them to weddings and restaurants, ruined them with empanada grease and red wine, and eventually gave them away to friends.
As I stood in line to pay for those suits, my arms laden with cut-rate shmattes, the looming figure of Tom slowly came into view. He was dressed to the nines, as always, his tall shoulders slightly rounded, his arms crossed, his chin cradled in a fist, as he nodded in contemplation at each deal presented before him. And then, with the practised routine of a seasoned garmento playing his part, he’d crack a slight smile and offer an irrefusable further discount, with a belt thrown in for good measure, and everyone would walk away clothed and content, with the king’s blessing.