use your nostrils

i just want to comment on the different smells one will encounter while travelling... i find every city or small town has its own distinctive odour..in every city i have been to in north america i find a different smell...and after all that, maybe because edmonton is my home, i miss the smell of this city most...due to the refineries i know that sometimes we can get some disgusting reeks blowing around, but for the most part we are blessed with nice clean prairie air that refreshes...there is also something nice about the river valley that is engrained into my nasal memory...so ya, next time you're going to a different city, smell this one and keep that memory, then smell the one you go to...maybe i'm just weird but i find it very distinctive...

inside the pocket of a clown

after reading the Gregoire piece the other day, i was struck by how much a love and adore the idea of taverns like the ones she writes about... at one point in time these taverns/bars/hotels were the central place in the neighborhood. They were where everyone would meet after work, where those who didn't work had a place to spend their afternoons digging themselves deeper into the 'pocket'. They in a sense, gave the community a place to congregate and thrive...But as it happens, all good things must fall and these once beautiful and cherished pieces of our community were left by the wayside...progress opened the door for further development and the older buildings were occupied by those that could not afford to go anywhere else, which in turn lowered the standard of living within them...i still remember the Cecil right on Jasper ave, about 15 years ago you could walk down that block and have 10 to 15 people ask you if you wanted to buy drugs...they would just open their hand and be holding a bunch of hash...it's almost as though it was accepted like it is in downtown Vancouver...it was more or less a crack house right on Jasper ave, fit only for the mice...i also think the smoking ban, as much as i accept it, has taken away from the authenticity of being in a bar like that...now instead of the scotch, smokes, and urinal puck stench of the commercial, it reaks like puke and booze...without the haze of tobacco, the aura is gone...

what a city

i still remember coming downtown in the early 90's from sherwood park, i was around 14 or 15...i remember there was a line of buildings where the epcor building is now...one of them was deserted and it always seemed to smell like urine back there...we tested our luck and snuck in one day to find the second floor was completely graffittied and people had even made a little fire pit...i'm surprised it didnt burn down before they tore it down...anyway, its just funny how the city changes in such a short time...
the bar buddys used to be called area 51, a metal bar in which my band played many many times...and as for flashback, i do believe the space it was in was turned into a bar again a few years ago and there were shows there....i might be wrong as i am not completely sure where it was...
and if i am correct, the first movie house in edmonton was on jasper ave and until only recently was used by ink machine tattoo, and i also practiced with one of my bands there...it was an old building and you could feel the history

cashman vs. hagen

Though i found cashman's book to be interesting, i did not feel it gave a view of edmonton that was accurate. By this i mean that the notion of the underworld was not looked at. Cashman's book basically gives us funny, short, almost anecdotal scenes of a city that not only saw hardship, but was founded in a part of the world where the weak would not survive. i hate to compare it, but the growth of a city like edmonton kinda reminds me of Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil". out of nothing sprang everything, and the underbelly is what made it all happen. Hagen, on the other hand, jumps right into the underside of our city and exposes the debauchery for all it was. even though some of the details may be embellished to make the story better, i still feel that in writing the history of anything, the writer must do away with the pretenses of the normal.

what is normal is what is accepted, normalcy in many ways can never be achieved