Queen Street East is the commercial spine of the Beaches — a stretch of independent businesses that runs east from Woodbine Avenue all the way to Neville Park Boulevard, threading through the heart of the neighbourhood.
Unlike the chain-heavy stretches of Toronto's other main streets, Queen East in the Beaches has remained stubbornly, beautifully independent. The buildings are mostly Victorian commercial blocks from the 1890s and early 1900s, and the businesses that inhabit them have a permanence to match: Remarkable Bean has been serving flat whites since 1995; Ed's Lakeside Scoops has been scooping through summers for generations.
The street is best explored on foot, west to east, starting around Woodbine and working your way toward the quieter, leafier eastern end. Stop for a coffee, stop for a browse, stop for a pint at the Beaches Brewing taproom on a sunny afternoon. There's no rush. That's the point.
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