Last gasp for downtown gas

Coyotes only drive in emergencies. But we did note with a twinge of passing-of-an-era melancholy that the last gas station in the downtown precinct proper was shuttered a week or so back, at Metcalfe and O'Connor.

The building was boarded, whitewashed, and corporate identities rapidly sanitized to erase all visual clues to the former proprietors' identity. A plethora of big ugly concrete blocks now bars pirate parkers. Since the corporation in question is so obviously deeply ashamed of what went on there, we will respect its circumspection, and discretely state only that their name rhymed with, ummm, "Shell".

I know hair-splitters are at this moment, thinking, "Oh yeah? Aren't there self-serves on Gladstone? And Catherine? Uh-huh. But they're all across Gladstone from downtown, and that's where I draw the line. My post, my rules. Brrrraaaapppp!!! I digress.

It's just another very late chapter in the story of the migration from downtown of actual services and businesses that actually make life work for actual live people. Lotsa bureaucracy, coffee and snacks, but heaven forbid you should want to gas your Vespa (or Buick) without driving halfway to the freakin' 'burbs. Let's not even start on free air. This gas station was perhaps one of the city's last petrol purveyors with a free air hose for all and sundry. (I think cyclists may have liked the place.) Or in another, less fresh but still rankling example, hit a Canadian Tire on your civil-servant lunch hour for a few hardware needs. Gone, gone and gone.

Downtowns need to be livable for cities to work. Even dysfunctional city councils at least claim to understand that. It's why they talk about urban intensification, and push big downtown condo developments in city plans.

Trouble is, the people who buy those condos have to drive to the suburbs to buy nearly anything other than take-out. The everyday businesses that that help make places really livable? Like, not offices, office suppliers, cafes, bars, or tchotchke merchants? They seem to be getting the hell out of Dodge. And leaving Dodge propped up on big ugly concrete blocks with the wheels off...

Free Cheese Magazine

Tired of reading about cheese on the internet? You can get a free copy of the winter issue of All You Need is Cheese mailed to your house by clicking on this link. I think it also gives you a subscription to subsequent issues.

[Just the thing for any one out there who belongs to a post-modern wankfest performance art group.]

Shocker.... mayor hires new mouthpieces.

This morning's local news has informed us coyotes that City Hall last night fired a PR guy. While hardly causing us to spew hot Ethiopian Yirgacheffe at the monitor, it did prompt eye rolls and longing thoughts of stirring in something a tad stronger than half 'n half.

The firing was nuthin' surprising in itself.

Since the last election, appointed staffers within throttling distance of the mayor's office have been, pretty much, reluctant temps. Terms vary, but a remarkable number have been scragged and hoofed out the high-speed revolving door down there, possibly for their curious inability to articulate our Beloved Leader's, ummm, belovedness to the masses.

No, what made our furry forehead wrinkle was the new hires in Fired Guy's place. Forgot his name already... can't keep track anymore. Sorry! I digress...

Anyway, they are (ex) print reporters Patrick Dare and Derek Puddicombe, very recently late of the Petfinder's and the Stun's respective city hall bureaux. Oh, and Chris Day, lately the press secretary for federal minister John Baird's Tory-to-its-roots hair. And possibly the hair of Baird's famously late ex-cat...

I expect that in an ill-lit corner at City Hall, an elected official of less than total competence and far less than total hirsuteness may be congratulating hisself on his self-diagnosed genius in suborning two local newspaper scribes, and buying stronger ties to federal conservatives. At least until he fires them all. Very soon, when he rediscovers that the public still thinks he's unlovable. But right now, I bet he's thinkin' he's finally bought the right mouthpieces for a clear re-election shot.

Both former journos, being who they are, have probably done their due diligence. Even knowing what they're getting into, they must've calculated that job security with Larry still trumps that at the shaky newspaper conglomerates that employed them, Canwest Global and Quebecor. Good, ummm, luck with that.

And maybe they can turn things around in time for the next election. Or maybe, just maybe, the mayor will continue to do things as he has, and we will finally get to vote him into a job for which he's temperamentally and intellectually more suited. Something in the private sector. Although personally, given his record of success in office, dog catcher would suit me just fine...

Cheerup: NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo are almost over

November is the dreariest month. For metabloggers. Because it is both the month that many bloggers pledge to post every day and the month that many commit to writing a 50,000 word novel.

The sky darkens earlier every night and the blogs we follow are filled with whining about word counts and how terrible those words are or we get posts where the author confesses to having nothing to say but then types in several screens worth of Facebook status updates.

But with all this dreariness, I am still optimistic that along with the solstice and lengthening days, December and the holiday season will will bring us the family dysfunction and morality rants that will make reading blogs fun again.

Sand, surf and Cedric

Sometimes I am guilty of judging a gnome by his coveralls. Who woulda thunk that Cedric would have a most delightful time in Barbados?

Just because he's hundreds of years old, has a rather complex facial-hair schema and insists on wearing his little pointy hat at all times, doesn't mean he's not a surfer dude at heart.

Cedric frolicked with sea turtles, knocked back lime-flavoured rum dacquiris and gnawed on coconut, straight from (inside) the shell.

His only unfortunate encounter involved that bottle of Bajan hot sauce I happened to leave open. He will never mistake the stuff for maple syrup again. I really must teach him to read.

Look up. Wa-a-a-a-a-a-ay up.

Something we coyotes notice about many Ottawa residents is that they don't seem to look up much. We do, because we're just like that. It's survival instinct. Ya never know when one of them crows is gonna swoop in and try to swipe your bag lunch.

Anyway, this being the nation's capital, when we're swivelling our heads around, we often see stuff that you rarely see in other places, apparently unnoticed by everyone around us.

Things like a whole team of guys in black helmets and jumpsuits, from who knows what tactical team and who knows what paramilitary/military outfit, casually rappelling down the side of the Westin Hotel on a sunny November afternoon. Taking lotsa pictures of themselves doing it, presumably for their Top Sekrit Taktical Skrapbooks...






...so I took some for my Top Sekrit Taktical Skrapbook too. We coyotes are just like that.

OC Transpo and the Strollers

On Wednesday, the City of Ottawa's Transit Committee will be asked to consider OC Transpo's report on a new policy for the seats at the front of the bus that used to be called Courtesy Seating and are now called Priority Seating.

The report is called Priority Seating - Managing the Front of the Bus. First of all, they're going to rename the seats at the front to "Co-operative seating". If people who should give up their seats don't they can still be charged with an offence under s. 18(2) of the OC Transpo by-law, but that will be a last resort.

The "co-operative" versus "priority" seating isn't why this is going to Council. The real controversy is with the strollers. On the list of stupid things people in Ottawa get worked up over, big strollers clogging the front of buses is right up there with the use of lawn chairs at Blues Fest.

The problem for OC Transpo was that dealing with strollers was left to the discretion of the drivers. This led to the unfortunate baby-napping incident of 2008. Now this will never have to occur again because the new policy has detailed criteria for baby buggies. It starts off with:

An open stroller occupied by a child will be allowed on the bus if:

1. It is capable of being folded
2. It is capable of being safely stowed
3. It will not interfere with other passengers or with the safe movement of passengers within the transit vehicle; and
4. It can be wheeled, or (when folded) carried, through the aisle without contacting the seats.

The policy carries on with wheelchair priority, and what to do with double strollers. Although I've never tried to navigate the City with a stroller it all seems to make good sense to me. Still I have to say that their plan on what to do with the strollers that can't go inside the buses caught me by surprise. Rack'n'Stroll is the sort of innovative thinking that we don't often see in this town.

Update: Looks like City Council didn't go for the new plan.

She's a soul (sole?) woman

Overheard at Hartman's IGA:

Young woman to clerk: "Can I get 100 grams of soul, please?"

I did not stick around long enough to find out if she was trying to divine the spirit of James Brown, or merely had a hankering for a certain kind of fish.

Now, in the movie 21 Grams, one's soul was said to weigh the amount reflected in the title.

That would leave our shopper just short of five full souls.

This just in...

John Baird's cat dies. I had nothing to do with it, honest. But unlike most cats of my acquaintance, it was pretty much the exact opposite of delicious. I suspect environmental factors...

UPDATE: And Billy Bragg is my hero...

Cue the evil lighting...

An elliptical voicemail led me late last night to the doorstep of Mister Sloppy's evil world domination HQ in Centretown. After I buzzed the intercom and the reinforced door silently swung open, I let myself into the computer room. There, Mister Sloppy looked ineffably smug.

"Oh, hi, Slop! You called?" I said.

"Indeed. I brought you a gift from my trip."

He pushed a small corrugated carton toward me. One heady sniff and I opened it. Two dozen extremely fresh bars of Cailler Ultrafine Dark. None of that Tobler crap... Mister Sloppy's taste in gifts is legendary.

"Thank you!" I said gratefully. "And how was the vacation?"

"It was... very fine," he said. "Ate great ice cream. Sailed a private yacht on Lake Geneva. Took an excellent Swiss train to visit the Large Hadron Collider..."

"And how did that go?" I asked, an alarm ringing faintly in the back of my mind.

"It's working again, isn't it?" purred Mister Sloppy, fixing me meaningfully with a bright blue eye. "And good thing, too. I'm gonna be needing it."

"Eep! So you're still on the world domination thing?

"Does the mayor think he's finally a real civic leader because he hung out with Prince Chuck and John Baird's hair for a photo-op? I'm all over it!"

"Ummm. Oh. Look at that! It's bedtime for little coyotes. Thanks for the chockies. Gotta go! " I yelled over my shoulder.

"Oh, I know." Mister Sloppy's voice followed me out the door. "But you'll be back... I have more chocolate."

Fiend.

why am i riffing on fourth dwarf's gig

First 10 menu pulldown choices upon entering the word "why" into Google:

why is the sky blue

why do men have nipples

whyville

why do cats purr

why men cheat

why do dogs eat grass

why did the chicken cross the road

why is there a dead pakistani on my couch

why did michael jackson turn white

why am i so tired

Finally, a sprinkling of public art

Ottawa's new watering can sculpture at the corner of Kent and Slater streets. Perhaps the can should be filled with vinegar given the nearby chipwagon.