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.