I live pretty close to First Markham Place (hwy 7 & woodbine) so I get them from there. The spot I frequent has 5 for $20 or 8 for $30.
Pac mall has been kinda locked down w/ all the raids, it's getting rather dodgy at some spots. You have to tell them what you want and they pull it out for you in those bulk spindles. Not recommended, gwailos done blew the spot up.
I live pretty close to First Markham Place (hwy 7 & woodbine) so I get them from there. The spot I frequent has 5 for $20 or 8 for $30.
Pac mall has been kinda locked down w/ all the raids, it's getting rather dodgy at some spots. You have to tell them what you want and they pull it out for you in those bulk spindles. Not recommended, gwailos done blew the spot up.
I'm out at FMP once in awhile. My gurls parents have a spot in there.
I use to pick up my stuff at both malls you mentioned, but this one spot downtown is killin' it, so I only pick up there as of late. 6 for 20 and 9 for 30.
And the covers are really well done.
Yeah, pac was kinda busted last time I was there. It's kinda sad...
I don't think you'll beat those prices anywhere in the city, whereabouts in chinatown is this at. Would be nice to know but I'll be too lazy to trek that far just to get 1 extra dvd.
Food court in FMP is awesome, I just had some Shanghai spicy beef noodles. Although I think I'll take the food discussion to pm before we get too sidetracked.
my friend (occasional lurker) actually did an interesting piece on the bootleg phenomenon in the Globe & Mail a few months back...
On Highway 7 just east of Woodbine Avenue, First Markham Place is the less
architecturally exotic sister of Pacific Mall. It's anchored, like many
suburban malls, by a Home Outfitters, a Golf Town and a Cineplex Odeon
multiplex. Unlike most suburban malls, it also has, at current count, seven
stores doing brisk business selling pirated DVDs.
Last Saturday, the same day the Toronto Police was seizing 11,000 illegally
bootlegged DVDs and making 10 arrests across town at the Downsview Flea
Market, it was business as usual at First Markham: Cinephiles, hockey moms,
Asian film aficionados and bargain hunters alike jostling to scan the racks
and cardboard boxes, snatching up everything from flickering,
camcorder-filmed copies of the current box office hit Wallace & Gromit: The
Curse of the Were-Rabbit to pristinely duplicated Sopranos box sets.
"No," a father says firmly, placing Pooh's Heffalump Movie back on the
shelf. His son, about waist high with a brush-cut and glasses, picks it back
up. "No," the father repeats. "It won't look good on a big screen." He
points at the opposite wall, the wall with the more professionally packaged
DVDs, and ropes his kid out of the shop.
The seven stores - Image & Sound, Mainstream, Jadeite, DVD Palace,
Musicalplex, Music CD VCD DVD and a new store which hasn't seen fit to post
a name as of yet - operate without the cloak and dagger furtiveness their
trade might suggest: Their storefronts are wide open for business, their
counterfeit booty displayed unabashedly on the shelves, price lists spelled
out on brightly coloured Bristol board. Although none of the owners would
comment on record, the competition between the stores - particularly the two
most prominent, Mainstream and Image and Sound - speaks for itself.
For over a year, Image and Sound had been First Markham's go-to spot for
pirated movies. In a space about the size of a small Radio Shack, it crams
seven-foot shelves of DVDs, a varied selection of new releases, Asian films
and art house flicks, and a helpful staff.
Then, two months ago, Mainstream opened with a fresh bright-yellow paint
job, a giant LCD screen suspended from the ceilings playing a constant loop
of action movies and an aggressive push on five-for-$20 "clearout" titles -
mostly poor quality, illegally taped copies of the latest theatrical
releases. Mainstream is aptly named.
Cardboard signs bearing percentages in black marker highlight some films: A
Good Woman, 98 per cent; A History of Violence, 85 per cent; The Constant
Gardener, 80 per cent. It's a measure - somewhat arbitrary - of the quality
of the DVD in question. In the case of The Good Woman, a Scarlett Johansson
vehicle, the 98 per cent will only hurt the non-English speaking buyers, as
the just-below-perfect rating indicates its lack of subtitles. The movies
without percentages, like The Merchant of Venice, are perfect duplicates of
the retail DVD.
The boxes at the front of the store carry approximately 360 titles, and on
weekends, twenty dollar bills pass over the counter at a rate that suggests
the movement of water. This Saturday, four people are working, with an extra
body watching the surveillance monitor. It's a business of high-volume
turnover. At $4 a movie, the titles sell themselves.
Most of the other stores have followed suit. But Image and Sound's response
has been an object lesson in how a mom-and-pop operation can fend off a
louder competitor, even in the murky business of pirated goods. It's
accepted the demands of the wider market, constantly expanding its stock of
current theatrical releases. (Its newest releases include The Man, with
Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson, David Cronenberg's A History of Violence
and the recent Al Pacino flop, Two For The Money.) But the store has
balanced this with a passion, and eye, for great cinema. Its selection of
art house films, B-movies and documentaries could stand alongside Queen
Video or Revue Cinema.
At Image and Sound, bad misspellings (such as "Comderalla Man," aka
Cinderella Man, at Music CD VCD DVD) are at a minimum and all DVDs are sold
in proper cases, as opposed to the colour photocopies and plastic bags of
some of the other stores. On weekends it's a tight squeeze between the
aisles as the shop has become known amongst First Markham habitu??s as the
destination for picture-perfect copies of such obscure finds as Mathieu
Kassovitz's 1995 cinema verit?? drama La Haine and a Criterion Collection
edition of the 1970 Alain Delon heist flick Le Cercle Rouge.
So far, both Mainstream and Image and Sound - and, to a lesser extent, the
other five purveyors of piracy - are thriving. If the threat of a bust looms
overhead, the store clerks seem unconcerned.
And they continue to adapt. At Image and Sound, customers even call ahead to
see if a title is in.
Director Guy Ritchie's latest, Revolver, is in. Sadly though, the quality
isn't there, so several young customers sate themselves with the much
superior UK gangster film Layer Cake.
"[Revolver] will be in Tuesday," the salesgirl says. "The first copy was
missing the ending. This copy has it. But wait till Tuesday - it will be DVD
I'm more surprised by how many outdoor stalls I see downtown now. Dead of winter and dudes are selling flicks left right and center. I can understand summer with 10 tables set up and dudes even selling in lil Italy. But the dead of winter? I could care less if I was selling a crazy amount of copies. I wouldn't freeze my ass off like that.
Comments
Pac mall has been kinda locked down w/ all the raids, it's getting rather dodgy at some spots. You have to tell them what you want and they pull it out for you in those bulk spindles. Not recommended, gwailos done blew the spot up.
Wow! Are these authentic releases or do they come in those cardbord slipcases?
Peace
h
I'm out at FMP once in awhile. My gurls parents have a spot in there.
I use to pick up my stuff at both malls you mentioned, but this one spot downtown is killin' it, so I only pick up there as of late. 6 for 20 and 9 for 30.
And the covers are really well done.
Yeah, pac was kinda busted last time I was there. It's kinda sad...
Whats ur #1 food spot up there?
I sat on my SPL box and ferked it up!
I don't think you'll beat those prices anywhere in the city, whereabouts in chinatown is this at. Would be nice to know but I'll be too lazy to trek that far just to get 1 extra dvd.
Food court in FMP is awesome, I just had some Shanghai spicy beef noodles. Although I think I'll take the food discussion to pm before we get too sidetracked.
my friend (occasional lurker) actually did an interesting piece on the bootleg phenomenon in the Globe & Mail a few months back...
I'm more surprised by how many outdoor stalls I see downtown now. Dead of winter and dudes are selling flicks left right and center. I can understand summer with 10 tables set up and dudes even selling in lil Italy. But the dead of winter? I could care less if I was selling a crazy amount of copies. I wouldn't freeze my ass off like that.
wait
for
it
nnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggnnnnnnnnngggggggggg
hold it
wait
pftAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH[/b]
But somehow I'm guessing that you don't need to eat that to make ur farts stinky...
which reminds me, my homie hooked up a spanish xmas meal and i swear to buddha spanish chorizo [sin homo] is a helluva drug.