RiversdaleReporter.ca

Welcome, friends, explorers, and weary internet travelers! This is the unofficial local newspaper for Riversdale an upcoming area of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

News on!

Long ago when my aged parents were still reasonably young I would sometimes get my hair done at Salon Williams, which has to be the longest continuously operating hair shop in Riversdale if not Saskatoon. A few years later when my two eldest were in their tender years, a Filipino woman opened up a second shop on 20th Street. It was a great place to get quality, affordable hair cuts. Ultra-cuts was also operating on the corner of 22nd Street and Avenue H. It's still a good place to get affordable hair cuts.

The Filipino woman moved her shop to the Confederation Park area of the city after several years, so Riversdale was back to just having Ultra-cuts and Salon Williams. This way things stayed for the longest time.

Saskatchewan and Riversdale started to prosper again, no small feat with the way the Federal Government screws this province, screws all of western Canada in fact, over.

Local business property owners renovated run-down and decrepit properties and really cool restaurants moved into the neighbourhood. The South Downtown promenade was completed, an old city building on 19th Street and Avenue A was fixed up and the Saskatoon Farmer's Market relocated into same. The AKA/Paved Arts moved onto 20th street into a building that had formerly been a Chinese restaurant.Entrepreneurs, locally and Vancouver based, completed new housing and condominiums. The population density of Riversdale increased, so did its income base.

Gentrification!

Entrepreneurs involved in the hair styling and cutting business believed they saw opportunity and started moving into the community as well. A new place, Studio Roots, opened up on the corner of 20th Street and Avenue, when my eldest was still in high school. One of his friends from high school goes there for his haircuts. And thus Riversdale had three places at which a person could get a hair cut or style and thus it remained for several years.

Shortly after my eldest daughter started university there was a Permianesque explosion of hair stylists and salons in the Riversdale community. Guide Hair Salon opened up across from the Farmer's Market in The Banks. Eager entrepreneurs also opened up Red Shear in a new building that had been constructed across the street from The Banks and diagonal from the Farmer's Market at the corner of 19th Street and Avenue B. Soca Studio opened up on the corner of 20th Street and Avenue D. Sacre Space YXE opened near 20th Street on Avenue C. Blush Salon and Studio also opened up in the Blok, a newly completed commercial space on Avenue B.

The commendable, glorious optimism of these entrepreneurs! Riversdale went from having just two hair styling businesses for the longest time, to three and then, to eight, seemly almost overnight. I was anxious to try them all, or at least all of them I could in good conscience afford.

Unfortunately, my hair, now thinning, only grows so fast.

Eight has become six. The space Red Shear had is now available for rent. So too is the space Sacre Space YXE occupied.

What has happened to the eager entrepreneurs that opened these establishments? I will likely never know. I can assume that like so many who dared to dream in Saskatchewan, they racked up debt, saw their dream die, and have since bugged out of Saskatchewan for Alberta, BC, or Ontario. Saskaboom. Boom, boom, boom.

The Blok and The Banks still both have a lot of commercial space for sale, the latter now discounted at 50%.

Perhaps our provincial government should entice some of the Chinese -- the BC NDP are now haranguing and making things unpleasant for -- to move here.

ADDENDUM 10-18-2020  Studio Roots contributed to community building and Riversdale's unique cultural milieu by hiring musician buskers to perform on the street in front of their place of business. Always wanting to give Studio Roots some business I headed for same with my covid hair when the lock-down ended thinking it would give them a great canvas for some hair art. It's business space is now an art gallery. Conversely, the space formerly occupied by Sacre Space YXE is again occupied with a very interesting shop.