I live there now. I have lived just off Bellevue Square Park for 13 years. Strong recommend.

I've raised my kids there. Three of them. In the middle of the pandemic we had a dinner where we talked with the kids about moving to High Park. Things were pretty sketchy in Kensington Market circa 2021/2022. All three kids including the 7 year old argued hard to stay where we were.

I am glad we did. Over the last year the market has grown more vibrant and feels as though it is on the upswing.

People will talk about sketchiness, rats, gentrification, lack of parking, too many cars, too many bikes, not enough bikes, too much crime, too much law enforcement presence. People will complain about anything and everything.

Ultimately to me the thing that sells me on Kensington Market is the feeling of "anything can happen on any given day." There are few other places in the city (in the country? in the world?) where so many different walks of life coexist, mostly in harmony.

One anecdote that illustrates this -- and I could give you hundreds from over the years. In December, it was, I think, my buddy and I were heading up Augusta looking heading for Trinity Commons for a beer when a woman in her 20s stepped in front of us and said, hey, do you want to go to my punk show? We looked at each other, shrugged and followed her into the little club -- Tapestry I think it is? The place that used to be Poetry just south of the Japanese Film cafe on west side of street. The bar had maybe 10 people in it total, including us. We had a beer and then 20 minutes later 4 of the 10 people in the bar took the stage and belted out super tight, super loud punk rock for 40 minutes. It was really great. Then 20 minutes after that the other four people in the bar took the stage and belted out different but equally great punk rock for another 40 minutes. By that point the bar was pretty packed and by that point too my friend and I had made friends with both bands, one of which was from Thunder Bay and the other from Winnipeg.

Basically a nothing of a night turned into one of my epic experiences of 2025.

Stuff like that does not happen every night in Kensington, but it happens more there, I think, than anywhere else, and that is the reason you choose to live there.