JOLA SOBOLAK

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Jola’s Good Catch was a much-loved and truly one-of-a-kind general store located at 1556 Queen St. W. Its owner and namesake, Jola Sobolak, brought a fiercely independent and idiosyncratic vision to Parkdale retail, stocking everything from antique board games to organic maple syrup to eight-track tapes. [Full disclosure: Andrew worked at the store from 2015 right up until its closure the following year.]  This past April, we talked with Jola about the store, Parkdale, and her experiences in retail.  

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How did you come to open the Good Catch? What were the circumstances?  

 

In 2005, I got the crazy idea in my head to start a food business. I was living near Queen and Dowling Ave. at the time. Across the street from where I lived, there was a big “For Rent” sign in this storefront; and I thought, “I’ve got nothing to lose, just to call the number.” The landlord showed me the space, and I realized, “with my entrepreneurial spirit, I could do this.”

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The landlord agreed to sign a lease with me and my then-partner, and I just started filling the place up. There was always the idea that it should be a general store. Back then, there were many types of goods that stores in Parkdale simply didn’t stock: books, good quality food, various pop-culture objects… I figured we could fill all of these various niches. So  basically, I cashed in my lines of credit and stocked up the store. I lost my partner within the first year and a half, but luckily the other staff I had hired were becoming like family. And the customers became family. And the larger community is family. Each and every year, the store regenerated itself and changed, offering new and different goods. We lasted ten years, and that certainly wasn’t due to following any established business model.

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And you know, I didn’t realize how unusual that was, until customers kept pointing it out. People would come into my store, walk around for a few minutes, and at the end they’d ask, “Did you just decide what you liked and decide to sell it? Is that what this store is?” Whereas, you visit a corporate gas station, or most convenience stores—every single one is exactly the same as all the others. The placement of goods is exactly the same. Everything is dictated to the managers, rather than the managers themselves curating the business. So the grab-bag, improvised nature of Good Catch was actually very important. It helped me to understand the massive influence of “Big Retail” on the look of stores; we’re so desensitized to that influence.

 

To my mind, one of the things that made the Good Catch truly special was its tab book. Can you tell us a bit about how that got going?  

 

You know, I’m not even sure how we started the tab book. It just seemed like such a natural thing to do. The tab book was just a really handy something for people who were waiting for their next cheque. Some people needed help fronting the cost of their grocery purchases until they could afford to pay the bill, and it just seemed so natural to let them pay on credit. I couldn’t imagine not doing it. I don’t understand why that should be forbidden, or considered “going against a business model”. My bad debt quotient was actually very low. I mean, once in a while, someone would literally forget that they owed, you know, fifteen, twenty dollars. But it was very, very rare.  

 

Besides, the risk was worth it. i found, over time, that the tab system made for more dedicated customers. People would regularly tell me what a difference it made in their lives. And the same principles of trust sometimes worked the other way. At certain times, customers would lend me credit, just to keep the store going. I’d say, “my business is about to shut. Can you lend me some money?” And certain customers would loan me five hundred, one thousand, two thousand dollars. Some people might think that’s crazy; but that’s only because we’ve lost touch with basic principles of trust. We’ve lost the ability to understand that humans can want to help other humans. They’ve forgotten that it can feel good to serve other people’s interests, or to become part of the community fabric.

 

The store permanently closed its doors on March 31st, 2016. What was that last day like for you?  

 

Well, the store was already half empty by that time, a lot of stuff had already been sold. One of the most beautiful things about that day was that the goods that I had to sell off—people insisted on buying them at full price, in order to support the closing of the store. Customers were coming in droves, waiting in long line-ups, purchasing way more stuff that they would ever really need to buy. What a privilege that was for me, to have a community quietly come together like that. It really made me feel like a special somebody.  

 

Do you see the closing of the Good Catch as being at all connected with larger economic changes in the neighbourhood?

 

Well, street retail is dying. A lot of businesses like mine are drying up. Online technology is certainly having an impact. With Youtube, you can listen and watch any concert you want for free. And you can buy a lot of other things from home now. For another thing, small businesses simply can’t offer the kind of “grand sales” that Big Retail can. Local store owners don’t have warehouses full of 48-inch flatscreen TVs to mark down, or anything like that. We carry good products at a fair price, and we rely on a dedicated customer base that appreciates what we do. The locals who haven’t yet walked in our doors, who are still going to the shopping malls—they need to be lured into local stores, in a positive way.

 

What, if anything can local communities do to help their local businesses survive?   

 

As I was saying before, first and foremost we need to find ways to get local people through that front door, through that barrier, and help them to understand what they actually have at the end of their street.

 

Think of our local schools—they represent a huge population of children and parents and families who don’t know what street retail on Queen street is all about. I’m sure of that. We’re probably only tapping into 5% of that particular economy. So what if we found ways to reach out to the school communities, and give them some kind of incentive to explore local businesses? Maybe we could even organize field trips, so that students and parents can learn about their local grocery store, say, or how a coffee shop runs. “How do small entrepreneurs survive each day? Ii think that that in itself would be a huge service.

 

Are you concerned about the direction the neighbourhood is heading in?

 

I feel sorry for the Roncesvalles stretch of Parkdale. [Roncesvalles Ave. is widely considered to be the neighbourhood’s western border.] I think a lot of that street has been gutted,  in the sense that many of the small local businesses have been forced to close. The traditional Polish delis are all but gone; the Asian-run fruit and vegetable stores are all but gone.

 

But the Queen Street stretch of Parkdale is still a magical place. We’ve got lots of grocery stores, which is a very important indicator of neighbourhood health. And we have so many local services—community centres, social support services, a health clinic, a legal clinic, the library, various children’s centres, schools. So i think we’re okay. All of that infrastructure is here to stay.

 

The only major problem I see is that people are having to move into homes half the size for the same rent that they were paying before. So people are starting to find that living in a decent-sized apartment is becoming unaffordable. Bottom line. And I can’t stand that so many apartment buildings are being bought out by arms-length companies, who are just out to make big profits. The same holds true for storefronts. Over the years, I’ve found that empty spaces have become much pricier.

 

Has the store’s closing affected your belief in Parkdale, or the resilience of its communities?

 

Not at all. Parkdale is a beautiful place and I’m very grateful to still be living here. The neighbourhood supports me non-stop, and that is such a beautiful thing. Neighbours continue to stop me on the street, sometimes just to offer a positive words, sometimes to invite me out for a coffee. At the moment, I’m do cleaning and organizing around the neighbourhood. And really, it’s a mostly a lot of my old customers. I’ll run into someone who used to come into the store, they ask me what I’m doing, and I find work that way. So in a way, I’m still serving the same people—but without all the overhead!