Dupont St. is not Toronto at its most glamorous but it might be its most useful, a street where you can get a car repaired or buy some lumber. The Galleria Shopping Centre is here too, a squat hunk of brown brick surrounded by a vast parking lot. It’s as anti-glam as a mall dare be, but the row of cabs perpetually waiting out front is a sign it, too, is useful to a lot of people.

Property footprints this big are anomalies in old Toronto, often the leftover space from a former industrial concern or a horse racetrack , both of which Toronto had a lot of once. The Galleria, opened in 1972, was once the Dominion Radiator Company and Dupont St. itself didn’t exist here; like Dundas, Mt. Pleasant, and other streets, it was created by linking unconnected roads, which explains why Dupont has a number of kinks like the one around the Galleria itself. When Dominion Radiator existed railway spurs crossed the street where the Shell gas station is now. The dead end stump of what was Royce Ave., the precursor to Dupont, can still be seen up against the west side of the mall.

The Galleria has been left like a 1970s relic complete with a photo booth, the original selfie-machine. The stores inside, apart from the likes of FreshCo and Dollarama, are independent mom-and-pop type places. One rents tuxedos; some others sell clothes, electronics, or sports and heavy metal memorabilia.

Often people will cheer on the demise of malls like The Galleria, arguing they just aren’t cool or that the era of the mall is done as people’s tastes have returned to fancier main streets. But by being off the radar of anything hip, malls remain affordable enclaves and places of informal community ; there are always groups of men chatting around the cavernous central hall’s benches. It’s overtly happy, in more ways than one.

The Happy Travellers travel agency is filled with tropical plants and has a window display with a selection of souvenir items from around the world that is heavy on the Portuguese. Around back, people stop by the Happy Bakery to buy a bag of rolls, eat the all-day breakfast, have an espresso, or lean up on the counter and sip a Labatt’s Blue while the Jays’ home opener plays on the TV. Some people are greeted by name when they come in, like a Portuguese-Canadian version of Cheers .

The thing about places like the Galleria mall is they service a part of Toronto that isn’t part of a branded lifestyle or fashionable narrative. The Galleria is a bit like the tip of a population iceberg, representative of so much of Toronto.

If you had immigrant grandparents or relatives, particularly ones from around the Mediterranean region, the non-designer brands for sale at a shop like Galleria Electronics might be familiar, gifts from birthdays past. My own Maltese Nana would give my cousins and me an odd brand of chocolate bar I didn’t see in chain stores; it was only when I first went into Honest Ed’s, a very Galleria kind of place, that I saw her brand for sale. Nana probably wouldn’t know what the bongs for sale at Smokers Choice are for, but the rest of the Galleria would be a comfortable place.

As early as 1981 a City of Toronto plan outlined ways to revitalize the site with a mixed-use development that would fill in the parking lots, but the plan was never realized. Now, a decade and a half into the condo boom, parking lots like this are goldmines. And since people keep clamouring to live in Toronto, they won’t be here forever. Plans are in already the works to develop the Sobeys site a few blocks east.

The Galleria website alludes only to plans for a transformation of the mall itself , bringing in “national and regional tenants, while moving away from independent, smaller one-store operators.”

That last part would be a shame if it happened, not just for the indie retailers, but because there are still a lot of nanas left in Toronto.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef

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