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f all the holiday traditions I regularly see people tweeting about, the one I understand the least is the Hallmark Christmas movie marathon. For about a decade, the greeting card company s TV channel has been cranking out aggressively sexless holiday-themed films for its annual Countdown to Christmas, inspiring books, podcasts and even fan conventions. Without ever having seen one, I felt like I somehow knew the conventions of the Hallmark Christmas Movie anyway. Your standard HCM centers on a generically attractive hetero couple, usually played by a former soap opera star and a 90s sitcom actor, and they either A) fall in love despite their initial reservations, B) mend their relationship because the spirit of Christmas demands it, and/or C) team up to rescue their rural hamlet from a Scrooge-like land developer. These films (if you can call them films ) are G-rated excuses to show off luxurious sweaters, cozy living rooms and glistening piles of artificial snow.
Ali Haberstroh started her directory of local shops as a convenient cheat sheet for time-strapped family and friends. Two weeks later, Not Amazon exploded and now features more than 4,000 businesses. Here, Haberstroh explains why local businesses are the backbone of Toronto, her
You’ve Got Mail-style beef with big-box retailers, and why her haters need to get a grip.
You are a social media and content manager. How did the idea for Not Amazon come about?
Nick, a friend of mine who owns Expo Vintage on Dundas, put up an Instagram post pointing to other vintage stores offering curbside pickup. I started thinking about how I could apply that more broadly to all kinds of places that were losing business. I spent a very snowy Sunday afternoon in November making a Google spreadsheet of about 50 businesses a mix of general, booze and clothing and accessories stores with with a focus on BIPOC-owned businesses which I then posted to my Instagram. Normally my posts get about 70 likes; thi