he abandoned space on the northeast corner of Queen and Bathurst sat vacant for months, paper covering its windows and stoking local curiosity. Now, a coffee behemoth has quelled the neighbourhood's inquisitiveness. This week, a familiar green sign emblazoned the building with a contentious denotation: Starbucks.

Gentrification aside, at least it is a good time to be a barista.

Queen Street has her way with King at Roncesvalles in the west and flirts with the Lake at Victoria Park in the east; in between, the renowned roadway changes tenor like an off-meds bipolar artist. Bobos, bohos, faux-hos, hobos, no-shows, big-shows, and everyone in between haunt the Street, falling in and out of bars, restaurants, shops, cinemas, parks, treatment centres, apartments, houses, streetcars, and myriad other doors and porticos.

Like many of Toronto's streets, Queen has a brazen diversity, both of terrain and thought. This thoroughfare in particular manages to spark perpetual debate as its fast fluidity sees daily changes. Parkdale went from affluent to dilapidated before its latter day semi-reinvention; ditto its neighbour to the east of the Dufferin Bridge (aka Stoberville). By Trinity Bellwoods, loft converts upped rents and altered facades. Similarly, the east end - notably Leslieville and Riverside - has seen a slow renaissance, partly because of an influx of west side expatriates. Perhaps the most changed stretch of all, Queen between University and Spadina Avenues went from iniquitous to - shudder - gentrified in a sneeze of stellar 1980s music. Despite all the recent changes, the section of Queen between Spadina and Bathurst Street managed to maintain a lovably dingy aura, at least until recently.

Though shops and boites changed names and owners constantly, the area stayed largely chain-store free, fostering an organic, DIY mood (nothing has more "keeping it real" cachet than DIY). Textile shops and goth-kid bars intermixed in a strange mélange and rents stayed peculiarly affordable; although, the last year has seen a shift. While American Apparel long ago set up shop on the block, other chains took longer; besides, Dov Charney's sweat-shop hating venture long had a skinny kid-sponsored palatability. And then, amongst rampant rumours of forthcoming box stores, a historic section burnt down.