It’s especially fun when I finish things on
this list without even really trying.
At the end of April, I had rare weekend
off of work, and I spent part of my Saturday in Hamilton down on Locke Street
with my Mom. Locke Street is probably my (and most other people’s) favourite
place in the city. It’s clean, it’s pretty, it has interesting independent
businesses that seem to be thriving, not to mention some of the best
restaurants (Earth to Table Bread Bar and Chuck’s Burger Bar, for example). Locke
is generally just a pleasant place to be.
To be totally honest, at this point I’d
pretty much forgotten about #10...until we stumbled upon this strange and
unusual little shop down on Locke.
Spencer’s Mercantile is a shop I’d heard
about from one of the many historic re-enactors I meet through my work. It’s a
place where you can buy replicas of objects used in the past – like muskets, beaver-pelt
hats, chamber pot sets, pocket watches, wool socks, dress patterns, clay pipes,
teas, spyglasses...the list goes on.
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| Inside the shop |
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| "...And Some Others" Laziest title ever |
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| The grand old music box with an ominous warning: |
We both enjoyed looking through the assortment of antiques, reproductions, and modern ye olde tyme-style products – especially the muskets and flints. I’m not a gun
fan, but I am a history fan and using a musket is one of the things I’ve had
to learn in order to teach history at the museum. So I gave my mom a little
freebie lesson on how to use a flintlock musket using one especially nice one
being sold in the shop (much prettier than the beaten up one we have at the
museum; psshhh that thing is ANCIENT).
The store is kind of easy to overlook; from
the street it looks more like a nice red brick house than a shop. But if you
see it, do go in.
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