Ransack the Universe Blog!

Join Ransack at two local events on August 14th!

Visit our table at the Bloorcourt Sidewalk Sale and Festival!
from 1-6pm (Bloor St W and Salem Ave.) featuring local arts and crafts in the Salem Ave parkette. Plus, an all day sidewalk sale by businesses along Bloor St.!

Also, on the same day Ransack will once again be at the Parkdale Bazaar!
from 11-5pm (Parkdale Town Square) an outdoor market with tons of vintage and handmade goodies.

The Parkdale Bazaar provides locals with an outlet for showcase and sales to promote craft, recycled and homegrown merchandise. As a response to the neighborhood’s thriving vintage and craft communities the event will take place 5 times throughout the year and include over 60 vendors.
The summer markets take place along Cowan Ave. at Queen in the Parkdale Town Square.

The New Bloor Festival is coming to Bloor Street, between Dufferin and Lansdowne on Saturday, July 24, from 1 to 9 pm. It will be a fun, car-free space for the neighbourhood to come together and celebrate its wide range of businesses, community groups and cultural producers. There will be all kinds of fun for everyone, lots of activities for children, families, all ages.

Not only can you walk Bloor without having to dodge cars but the whole 69 Vintage Collective will be out strutting their stuff. Can you say deals, deals, deals? You can find Ransack’s tent somewhere between Emerson and Margueretta. We’ll have our best crafts, tees, funky vintage kitsch on display plus a special section of “lower priced items”.

Hope to see you there!

More info at: http://www.newbloorfestival.com/.

July 17th is a busy day for Ransack. Two, count em’ Two events in one day. How we gonna do it?
From 11-5pm we will be at the first ever Parkdale Bazaar. Located in the Parkdale Town Square (Cowan Ave @ Queen ) the Bazaar (a first in a series of outdoor markets) will feature a ton of vintage and handmade wonders. The event will provide an outlet for locals to showcase crafts, recycled, and homegrown merch. Come visit our table and receive a coupon for 10% off that can used towards any in-store purchase.
Back at home base (1207 Bloor st.) is the next event- HOT DOG DAY!
The sun is shining and our garden is growing.. so we’re havin’ a BBQ! With every purchase up to and on July 17th, you receive a coupon for a free hot/veggie dog and pop pop Popsicle. Come in with your coupons on July 17 from 12-7pm because that’s when we’ll be handing out the free treats. We will also be setting up stylish goodies in the garden. Come shop and lunch is on us. Plus, we won’t tell your mom if you eat your popsicle first.

What sort of things can you expect to find at Ransack?  Well, good things.  Pretty things.  Strange things.  Funny things.  Old things.  Plus, expect the unexpected!  We’ve got shtuff you won’t find anywhere else.  If you are more of one of those visual learners, here’s a link to our new Flickr photostream where you will see a sampling of things that are or were in the store.

The title of this post pretty much says it all … for now.  But we’ll be back, oh yes we certainly shall, mwwwa ha ha.  Here’s a Facebook link.

Ransack has recently been the beneficiary of a magnanimous gesture.  Nestled among our wares, like a baby placed gently in a cabbage patch by an innebriated stork, was a little bundle of joy!  Was it brought as a replacement for our missing Eiffel Tower?  Who knows!  And what would we find inside?

So we commissioned some Hazmat suits from The Make Den, surrounded the Improvised Edible Device, and then opened the lid.  Not since Geraldo was about to crack open Al Capone’s safe have we felt such a thrill up our leg.

Lo!  Some kind of potato-cheese curd-gravy concoction de la belle province.  If you would like to sheepishly claim your snack, we will hold it for 26 weeks, not a day longer, after which we will make crafts out of it.

Fab new local shopping portal 100 Mile Finds has blogged about us over on their blog, so we are giving a shout-out right back.  We met the folks involved before Christmas and now they are up and running, so check it out, tons of stuff to explore.  We just did a search on their site for farmers’ markets within 25 miles of our postal code, pretty cool.  They say they plan to cover the whole planet eventually — which should leave the extra-terrestrial universe available for ransacking we hope.

Answer the Call of the Wild: Recycle your Old Cell Phones at Ransack and save a Gorilla!!
Ransack has joined the Toronto Zoo’s Eco-Cell phone recycling program. We are now a drop off location for your old cell phones, pagers, and related accessories.

Coltan is a mineral used in all cell phones, laptops, pagers and other electronic devices. It is currently extracted in the deep forests of the Congo, home to the endangered Lowland Gorillas. The out of control Coltan mining business has led to dramatic reduction of animal habitat and slaughter of apes for illegal bush-meat trade.

By recycling your old phone you’ll be helping to:
*conserve natural resources *limit toxic electronic waste in landfills *protect endangered gorillas and other wildlife and their habitats

No donation will go to landfill!! Cell phones that can be refurbished are. Units that have passed their useful life are sent to a Canadian mining group who refine out the useable metal.

In 2009, the Toronto Zoo was the leader out of 175 other zoos, aquariums, and wildlife organizations participating in this program, collecting 4060 units. Let’s make sure we’re #1 again!!

Look, when we rented a subterranean dungeon we figured we would get ourselves a little privacy thankyouverymuch, but if the media are going to continually give out our name and location with pictures of our cool stuff, how the deuce are we going to keep our Best Kept Secret status?!?!

Thanks BlogTO!

Yum, t-shirts! All 58 of 'em!

Welcome to the launch of our new Web Log, or “Blog”.  Here’s where you’ll find news about the store, events, featured crafters, musical interludes, recipes, and in general, a Cavalcade of Whimsy.  Stay tuned.