20120116

[plonq]

I took this picture through the window of the car while I waited for atara to pick up some dinner ingredients in the store. Since she was only after 1-2 items, I opted to stay in the car and keep it warm.

This picture encapsulates Winnipeg in a single shot. Here you see a shopping car overturned and abandoned in the snow less than one metre from the shopping car return. You cannot see from this angle, but somebody probably gamed the mechanism on it to get their $.25 deposit back without having to return it. The chances are that they just gave it a shove in the general direction of where it belonged as they were leaving, and ignored it when it fell over.

This is the same kind of person who will thump their chests, and claim that this is the best city in the world because we have the Winnipeg Jets back, but don't have the civic pride to walk the extra three steps to throw their Slurpee cup into a rubbish bin, or push a shopping car the last metre into the corral. I have a love-hate relationship with this city. Mostly hate. It has the feel of a backward, small town that desperately wants to be a big city. We have spent millions subsidizing a potentially iconic Human Rights museum, which sits empty because they cannot agree what to put in it, other than about 90% holocaust rehash. We have a mayor who bent over backward trying to get a Super 8-style water park built practically outside its front door because he owned the adjacent land and had no qualms about blatant conflicts of interest. The people here don't care. They will vote in him again when he runs again because he brought back The Jets, eh?

We built a stunning pedestrian crossing over one of the most scenic parts of our downtown waterways, linking two of our most historically significant parts of town. Then we leased the middle of it out to a local, greasy burger chain. We kick over planters, smash the glass in heated bus shelters, and piss in public stairwells. We meander across busy streets ten metres from a light-protected crossing. We kill fellow citizens for the deposit on empty 12-packs they are carrying. We plough the snow in private parking lots before we clear the streets because we contracted everything out, and the malls outbid us. We cream our collective britches when Ikea opens one of their generic outlets of cheap, build-it-yourself furniture in our city.

We abandon shopping carts on their sides in dirty snow less than a metre from the car return.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Sounds a lot like how I used to think of Saskatoon. :-/ Come to think of it, they may be true sister cities (unlike fake "sister cities" where they randomly pick some city in Europe that has no resemblance).
Although Saskatoon never got its more than decade long dreamed of legendary holy grail of The Ikea because some other city you may have heard of got it instead. Squabbling, scrapping sisters.
And the pedestrian crossing over one of the most scenic parts of the river is a narrow wooden walkway hanging off the side of a railway bridge - so close you could reach your hand out, and have it taken off. And that sucker shakes - it's terrifying the first time you're on it when a train goes by. But at least it had a brand new METAL (ooh ahh) staircase put in at one end a few years ago.

Not that Hamilton city council knows what it is doing either, as the Pan-Am velodrome fiasco proved. And new in the past year are our contracted-out garbage and recycling pick-ups... they have forgotten to come by once already.

[kfops.livejournal.com]

Despite the short-comings of the city, I do have faith that things can be done right.

I am optimistic about the Human Rights Museum, both because it is a national museum and that the amount of money raised by donations has exceeded the amount provided by all levels of government combined. There seem to be a lot of strange rumor swirling around about the museum, and I do wish I had a clearer view of the whole thing. I know that construction is still continues despite them being over-budget... but then when has any other federal program stopped from that before? I guess time will be the true test of that one. The evenings where they had the tower lit up for the 100 hour burn-in of the lights was pretty impressive, and I daresay will look pretty good with the re-opening of the revolving restaurant.

That being said, there is an incredibly negative vibe that flows through here like a third river. I don't know if perhaps my optimism just doesn't fit in with the vibe or what. I've accidentally gotten myself into quite a few disagreements with co-workers (when I should've known better). Coupled with that, I see so many people disengaged from not only world but local politics and goings on, and it really isn't any wonder that we often mire ourselves again and again with things like our beloved mayor.

I do think the city suffers from a hereditary "we could've been big, but we lost it" which I daresay may go back to 1920s. But I also often find myself wondering how I can participate and make an improvement.

I've also been told that last thought is a throw-back to living in a small town.