Because no one has everything

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December 06, 2007 10:12

Shopping for the connoisseur can often be an arduous undertaking — after all, if you’re not the one with the passion for first-edition sets or bamboo bongs, it can be daunting to find that one thing your obsessive-compulsive loved one doesn’t already have in her collection. To help you find the ideal gift for the hardcore bibliophile or raging pot fiend on your list, we asked local specialists for their top recommendations.

	WALK WITH THE RIGHTEOUS For the conscientious consumer, stop by the three-year-old all-vegan shoe store Left Feet (88 Naussau), which offers holiday gift certificates for cruelty-free shoe lines like Brighton, UK's Vegetarian Shoes and Adbusters' Blackspot sneakers. It's also the only Canadian merchant of Mohop Shoes ($195), a Chicago-based company that presses low-, mid- and high-heeled footbeds out of sustainable wood veneers. The sandals come with five pairs of laces that weave in and out of the bed's eyelets in multiple combinations. "You can wander up the leg for an espadrilles look or make it look like a slide," says store owner Steve Fish. They're the perfect accessory to pack for a two-week eco-holiday in Costa Rica.
NOT THAT HE'LL REMEMBER YOU GAVE IT TO HIM Kensington Market's Roach-O-Rama (191A Baldwin) will sort you out with everything but the contraband. The pothead mecca has a wide variety of Christmas stoner gift boxes ($10-$100) bearing popular paraphernalia like glass pipes, grinders and papers that manager Anna Costa is confident will please "your stoner loved one." 4:20 will never be the same.
	HOW TO IMPRESS EPHEMERA GEEKS Touted as "Toronto's most idiosyncratic secondhand bookshop," The Monkey's Paw (1229 Dundas W.) specializes in old and unusual out-of-print books and the odd manual typewriter or biological specimen. Owner Stephen Fowler is most excited about his collection of "totally weird pamphlets" by Haldeman-Julius (pictured; $8-$20). "They're these pamphlets on the most sundry and obscure and hilarious subjects you can imagine," elaborates Fowler on his selection of little books published via mail order in the 1940s out of a small town in Kansas. "There's one on Sex and Smell, How to Read the French Menu, How to Collect Stamps and The Effect of Castration on Men and Women."
THIS RECORD IS MAGIC At a loss for where to score that rare, fuzz-psych classic by Oregon's New Dawn? Well, you can stop trawling eBay and just pick up a reissue of There's a New Dawn ($30) at Lost N Found (974 College, 416-538-2788), which serves serious collectors of hard-to-find psychedelic and progressive rock vinyl. "As well as, you know, stuff for the average Neil Young fan," adds store clerk Dan Devlin. His current in-store favourite is a self-titled release by Californian St. John Green from 1968 (pictured; $50) that features very “grabbing” album art. "It's got this Asian type of dragon dropping this pill-shaped bomb on the surface of the Earth," Devlin says. Kim Fowley, legendary scenester of '60s LA, is also a fan, and once claimed that "people will start crying and jacking off and smoking dope to it"