Halifax's urban skyline is old. Dated. Lost and dreary, nothing new or interesting added since the milk cartons...I mean Purdy's Wharf Towers, were built.
Twenty years of nothing. Like some people's lives I suppose, but a city can barely survive that kind of stagnancy. A city is an organism, it requires renewal, reinvestment, repair, and rebirth.
One hundred years from now, people will look at our city and wonder what the hell we were doing on our watch. All of our investment in buildings in the past 20 years has been, with some rare exceptions, to make pure crap. Tilt up concrete and metal buildings for Bayers Lake, the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it repetitious sprawl of Clayton Park and CP-West, and, coming soon to a multiplex theatre near you, Dartmouth Crossdressing.
I suppose if I was one of those self assured, self righteous, heritage people who KNOW beyond a doubt that the architecture of 1950 is far better than what the architects of the past 20 years might have built here, I might be happier. I would like to know how they can be so sure of themselves about that, though.
I find myself wondering what might have been. What if the development community (you know, the people with money who build things) in Halifax had been allowed to spend money in the downtown, rather than running out to BLIP and now Dartmouth Crossdressing to invest in Big Box Bull Shite? I suppose the heri-terrorists are happy because really, you can't easily walk or bicycle out there to be offended, so they are the ignorant type of happy. Like, la la happy.
It may now be easier to pedal to Dartmouth Crossdressing, though, and maybe Osama Ban Pacie, her probone lawyer and the gang who know for sure what is best for the rest of us might finally be able to witness the destruction their actions have wrought, however inadvertently, on our built heritage. Imagine the terror on their faces when they see what they have created. Or better, when they realize that what they have left as a built heritage for future generations, to stand for their time here, is all single story, land hogging, car requiring, energy sucking, greed driven, multinational funded, short term tax generating, downtown suffocating crap. I have one question. Do you want fries with that shit? I am sure that this is where their souls will rest when they pass on, and this nourishes me.
Architecture in Nova Scotia now consists of little more than a school from which people graduate and then leave the Province. Modern Architecture does not matter here. Too clean, too stable, and it certainly has no chance of attracting squatting vagrants. And that means it won't fit in, in our downtown. Look on the bright side. Pretty soon you will be able to live just about wherever you want to on Barrington Street! I like the third floor of what used to be Sam the Record Man. (Maybe Sue hid some old Loudon Wainwright the Third CD's in the walls....) In about five years, the way we're going, all I'll need is my sleeping bag and a gun, and I'll be fine there.
At least the pubs sometimes work in the basements of the places that the owners can't rent but can't replace. So my habitat is secure. Until they rot and fall down, that is.
Note: Research In Motion (Crackberry people), needing Class A office space in a hurry, knew better than to trust our 23 member Hydra-council with their investment by trying to locate in our downtown. Heck, some of them are so challenged they don't understand what a downtown means to an economy of a city and the region around it. How is it that Chicago, the best run city in North America, reportedly, manages with only 7 councillors? Surely more politicians has to be better? That must make some kind of sense? Oh Christ, I need another drink....
Wait, is the Granite Brewery moving to Windsor? In the valley? Not Windsor Ontario, Windsor Nova Scotia?... My brain hurts.... More beer please...
Rogues Roost gone in September 2008 to make way for condos? Pass the scotch....
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