# Summer Smiles on the Streets

An episode of [Rose City Politics](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247337855), 26 Aug 2023, 57 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/56599623/summer_smiles_on_the_streets.mp3

Jon, Melinda and Doug have an upbeat, positive conversation about a number of good things happening on and around Windsor's streets. Rose City Politics is brought to you with the kind support of LiUNA Local 625: Building Better Communities. Support the show at Patreon.com/RoseCityPolitics. Read our stuff in Biz X Magazine and online at BizXMagazine.com or RoseCityPolitics.ca.

## Transcript

[0:24] Good evening, everyone, Welcome to Rose City Politics. It is August the
[0:28] twenty sixth. We're recording on a Saturday. We presume you're listening though on
[0:33] you know, the evening hours. The regular panel today includes Doug Sartory,
[0:37] Melinda Monroe, myself, John Litkey, Doug, how you doing real good?
[0:42] You pretty good? Thanks for agreeing for me to cancel during the week,
[0:47] to then have Melinda cancel the next day for us to then go,
[0:50] Let's just do it on a Saturday afternoon. That's what we want to do,
[0:53] right Melinda, because we have no social life and we have, you
[0:56] know, nothing better to do but hang out here on a Saturday. The
[0:59] problem is that I've got a kind of a Saturday afternoon vibe going, and
[1:02] it's I'm just not as stressed out and pissed off as I typically am on
[1:07] a Wednesday after work. So maybe I'll maybe I'll ease into it. And
[1:12] I guess an interesting point. Going for a midweek show versus like a postweek
[1:17] show, the vibes are way off on it, so the blood pressure is
[1:21] not as high as it should be. Maybe we don't bring the righteous fury
[1:23] that we need. Yeah, maybe people think though, Hey, it's good
[1:26] to be tempered. It's a bit more of what we want from Rosy.
[1:29] I don't know, we'll find out. We let us know on a Reddit
[1:32] or on a Rosity to politics dot c Akay don't do it on the windsor
[1:36] Star comments section on Facebook, though, because I don't think that works anymore
[1:41] like much of news on Facebook. So we might have an eye. Do
[1:44] you support us at patreon dot com, forward slash Rose City Politics. We're
[1:48] in print and bizex online everywhere and only banned from some places, and Rosity
[1:53] Politics able to broadcast live on tape thanks to the kind support of Luna six
[1:56] two five Building better communities. Streets, boulevards, avenues, alleys, parkways,
[2:02] esplanades, byways, laneways, side roads. We are talking streets today,
[2:08] the arteries of our cities, but they are so much more than just
[2:12] conduits or corridors for traffic. Streets are the stepping stones of our neighborhoods,
[2:15] the stage where urban drama unfolds, and with good street scaping it can exude.
[2:21] With care and vision, can help the transform a blonde, bland stretch
[2:24] of road into an urban oasis. But not all streets are created equally.
[2:29] Poor street usage can disconnect communities. Think of in winds or wide cars dominated
[2:35] avenues that prioritize speed over pedestrians and active transit and everything in between. They're
[2:40] unforgiving if you're not in a car, and they make it really challenging to
[2:44] foster's senses of place. So it's not surprising that from small towns to world
[2:47] class cities, many are rethinking their approach to streets, with many opting for
[2:53] pedestrian friendly redesigns and mixed use zoning. But streets also serve beyond just a
[2:59] role for transportation. There hubs that can shape our lives and communities with art
[3:04] and culture, social interaction, commerce and recreation. So we're gonna be diving
[3:07] into all things streets, but we're all gonna be talking about how cities can
[3:10] fail communities through neglect and poor planning when it comes to street escaping. So
[3:16] let's dive into this. We've got four topics that we wanted to look at
[3:21] this week that all sort of relate to this theme. The Sandwich Street redevelopment
[3:25] is where we're going to jump off of right now. It's the most pressing
[3:30] timely news story that we have. Then we're going to talk about an interesting
[3:34] development on Olette Avenue downtown with a new volleyball court, and we're going to
[3:38] look at Dropped on Drew Lard Festival, which just took place last weekend and
[3:43] by all accounts, very well attended. And then we're going to look forward
[3:46] to Open Streets, one of the most celebrated events in the city. So
[3:51] let's lace up our shoes and go for a proverbial walk. Everyone, Welcome
[3:55] to Rose City politics. The Bridge Authority has reverted to an original plan for
[4:00] Sandwich Street after pushback from local leaders and business. The Bridge Authority wanted to
[4:06] speed up constructions from an original fourteen week timeline to an eight week timeline by
[4:11] shutting down Sandwich entirely, but after the community found out and pushed back on
[4:15] that, they've now decided not to do it. That plan would have diverted
[4:19] traffic from Sandwich onto Prince Road, near schools and healthcare facilities, and the
[4:26] business community on Sandwich Street was incredibly frustrated that they'd be losing access for that
[4:31] fourteen week period, especially considering that the next fourteen weeks are you know,
[4:38] the holiday season, like when you really start to see a lot of your
[4:41] foot traffic coming in. So this was spearheaded by Ward two counselor Fabio Costante.
[4:46] We'll talk about the politics of this all of course. Ward excuse me
[4:49] wins their West MP Bryan Massey and MPP Lisa Gretzky were also on this file
[4:56] and all the work was to be part of the community benefits plan for Sandwich
[5:00] Town for the bridge. So there's the quick rundown of our first topic.
[5:04] And Melinda, I mean you had the first response when I had asked about
[5:09] this in the chat, that the first response that I enjoyed. Sorry to
[5:13] I realized saying that that you actually responded first. I have nothing to say.
[5:19] That's it's a Saturday. I figure I'm gonna let the cool vibes keep
[5:23] going. But get that get that heart rate elevating a little bit topic by
[5:26] topic. All right, that's the excuse we're going to use that one.
[5:30] Listen. I get the bridge authority wanted to push things forward. They've got
[5:33] an aggressive timeline that they want to get through. They saw an opportunity to
[5:36] expedite things and they moved at it. My question, just right off the
[5:41] bat is how the hell could administration have greenlit a fourteen week closure of Sandwich
[5:49] Street, diverting into residential neighborhoods near a, putting trucks into those areas,
[5:56] and of course not taking into consideration any of the businesses whatsoever, who,
[6:00] by all accounts, didn't find out about this until it was almost too late.
[6:03] You would expect almost the bridge authority to work in their own best interests.
[6:09] That makes sense. They're rational actors, but so is the city administration
[6:14] and they serve all of us. How how could this have happened? It
[6:18] Is it incompetence, is it maliciousness? Or is it just it's years of
[6:24] how we do things. I was trying to answer that question. I think,
[6:28] you know, realistically, anytime we're doing any kind of you know,
[6:30] every street in the city is going to have to be rebuilt at some point
[6:33] or other. Right, So I lived near Ottawa Street and that was been
[6:36] a bit of a mass for much of the year. But at least it
[6:39] was one lane going each way, and so realistically there was always going to
[6:44] be trouble there. There was always because this is this is a euro project,
[6:46] Because I keep saying, right, this is the biggest one of the
[6:48] biggest infrastructure projects in the nation's history in some ways. But I think the
[6:54] issue that was puzzling for me part of and perhaps less so on the on
[6:58] the city administration and more so on the Bridge administ is they've been doing such
[7:00] a good job of trying to be the hero. Right We've always had the
[7:06] bad Angel Bridge of the Maroon family, and now we have the good Angel
[7:10] Bridge of the Bridge Authority. And they've been doing such a good job of
[7:14] trying to do community community benefits and Indigenous art and having partnerships in the community.
[7:18] And then to go and do something like this without actuality consultation, I
[7:21] think it was pretty shocking. So it's more on their side. Have they
[7:25] reached a point where their project management is such that they they didn't think about
[7:30] talking to the community because it was really more important to get it done fast.
[7:32] On the city administration side, it's a puzzle. I mean, why
[7:35] would you look at a change like this and think it's not going to get
[7:40] negative feedback? And you know, maybe it all comes down to this new
[7:45] kind of way that the city thinks about the bias, that the bias are
[7:47] kind of nonentities in a way that they might have been in the past,
[7:50] so we don't have to talk to the Sandwich BIA about what they need because
[7:55] the mayor's office just tells us what to do. I'm not getting the sense
[7:58] from reading the stories any listening to Counselor Coustanti or Brian Massey that the Mayor's
[8:03] got his fingerprints on this, But it does feel like the administration perhaps didn't
[8:07] think that the word counselor was sufficiently important to be consulted as to whether this
[8:11] was going to be useful or not. That's really interesting, Melinda, because
[8:16] that's kind of where my thoughts landed to the way that I was that I
[8:22] was thinking about this. I was kind of asking myself, have the political
[8:28] instincts of administration atrophied a little bit in the Dilkins era. This seems to
[8:35] me like like something that if you were in the if you're in public works,
[8:41] if you're in that department, you got to know that road closures always
[8:48] make people hot, and and changing a plan like this without without any kind
[8:54] of consultation or or really anything beyond the minimum, like the bare minimum of
[9:01] notice items, it just seems like it would be out of character for an
[9:05] experienced bureaucrat who's seen it all before. So I just wonder if maybe the
[9:11] shifting political winds have an impact on that, you know, maybe so,
[9:16] And speaking about shifting political wins, I saw Counselor Constante made a first post
[9:20] about this last week. Last Wednesday, he started, how does it make
[9:24] sense to close a road and redirect heavy truck traffic onto residential neighborhood streets and
[9:28] school zones and start the project on September fifth when school resumes, especially when
[9:33] it doesn't need to be done. So he poses that rhetorically, and there's
[9:37] a response that came two days ago from as we're recording right now. Councilor
[9:43] Francis responds, simply, it doesn't so interesting to me to see this kind
[9:48] of political alignment happening, just that it's I mean occurring. And you know,
[9:54] people that listen to the show won't be surprised that we see the division
[9:56] that is seemingly breaking down a little bit between you know, the Francis Dilkins
[10:03] Francis Camp successionally speaking that we've been discussing, but to also see it playing
[10:09] out not now behind closed doors. I could see Francis calling Costante being like,
[10:13] you're right, let's get this done. Something's wrong here. We can
[10:16] fix this and if it doesn't go right and be quiet about it. But
[10:18] if it does go right, we can do a handshake thing when we're all
[10:20] happy here. But instead we're seeing very public posturing on this, and Counselor
[10:26] Francis distancing himself from this as well, or at least seemingly so. So
[10:35] I really think that what you see here it is a really good example of
[10:41] what I think is some adroit maneuvering by Counselor Francis. I think that he
[10:48] is looking for opportunities when it doesn't cost him much to do a bit of
[10:54] relationship building around the council table, and that would be consistent with someone who
[11:00] was planning, perhaps to seek the mayor's chair in twenty twenty six. That
[11:03] would be very sensible stuff for him, Like this doesn't cost Francis anything.
[11:09] To Melinda's point, I agree. I don't get the sense that this is
[11:13] a you know, this is important to Dilkins in any way, or that
[11:16] it it you know, is something that he cares about. So you can
[11:20] you can be supportive of a council colleague. It's not going to piss off
[11:26] anybody in your ward. No one in your reward is going to care if
[11:28] Sandwich Street is closed or not. But it's it's kind of a cost free
[11:33] way to do a little bit of relationship building, dare I say, a
[11:37] pretty good way to do politics. And it's just it. And it's I
[11:39] guess so interesting that we're discussing it in this sense because it seemingly is different
[11:46] than politics and windsor well we forget that Mayor Francis was pretty good at relationships.
[11:52] Yeah, And and it's it's it's kind of an anomaly to have this
[11:56] misanthropic weirdo as the mayor. We just have had it for eight plus years
[12:01] that we have forgotten that actually there was you know that Eddie Francis was very
[12:07] good at the charm offensive and certainly at protecting that part of the city in
[12:11] some ways when we look back on Greenlink and how we wound up with this
[12:15] bridge being what it is in the first place. But I think there's another
[12:18] kind of interesting element. I mean, this is perhaps you know, a
[12:20] bit more speculative on my part, and probably two speculatives to explain the Council
[12:26] of Francis's decision to be supportive on this. But when I look at the
[12:30] larger, the longer term geography of Windsor and I think about, we've got
[12:33] the battery plant going into the east side, We've got a hospital going into
[12:37] the east side and the south side. Then I kind of and we've got
[12:39] the bridge changing so that it's moving away from being in the middle of a
[12:43] residential neighborhood. So once we've that's happened, suddenly the center of gravity in
[12:50] some ways moves, industrial gravity moves to the east, and I kind of
[12:54] see that within twenty twenty, you know, maybe not even that long fifteen
[12:58] twenty years sat which is actually going to be the place people want to live.
[13:03] It's going to be beautiful. It's going to have these gorgeous old houses
[13:07] that are there, and people are going to want to choose to be.
[13:09] It's not going to be the have Not Award anymore. It's actually going to
[13:11] be kind of it's not necessarily the Walkerville, but thinking of like a you
[13:16] know, places in Mississauga, what is it Credit Bill or whatever that are
[13:20] really beautiful on the water or former industrial lands that Sandwich has the opportunity to
[13:24] do that. Once all that truck traffic is taken away from here on Church.
[13:28] And so if I don't know if your long term thinking about the future
[13:31] of the city and being the mayor of the city, are you thinking about
[13:35] sandwiches being one of those places you have to court in the future. I
[13:37] think it's probably way too spected to him, but I do think that's a
[13:39] reality that we need to be thinking about. Well, when we were talking
[13:43] with the Hammer about this is that what we called Laurie the Hammer was a
[13:50] weapon. Laurie the weapon, and we heard you know that she said that
[13:54] she was in formula. You're not gonna like the Sandwich Street redevelopment all the
[13:58] way to the bridge. It's not going to be an ideal situation. So
[14:01] that's obviously the next fight that's going to come up. But if let's say
[14:03] that does get resolved and there is a nice beautification that can actually happen along
[14:09] Sandwich Street along too that, what's what is it around the right around the
[14:13] windsor salt plants, primarily where the Picket Beach Brighton Beach area, where the
[14:18] bridge does you know, let off that whole area that is industrial developed on
[14:22] the waterfront. And when I say industrial developed. It's just a dumping grounds.
[14:28] They just offload all of the rock and stuff off of the barges,
[14:31] put them onto trucks and drive them out. That can all be sold off
[14:35] and turned into exactly what you're talking about, can be condominiums, it could
[14:37] become more parkland. The opportunity is immense for actual development there for the first
[14:43] time. Dare I say ever, because it's never been developed before. Yeah,
[14:46] for sure. And I think actually looking ahead to our next topic,
[14:52] Ford City kind of shows the path that revitalization of a post industrial section of
[15:01] the city. And I think you're right with with truck traffic moving and the
[15:07] situation in Sandwich Town evolving, it could well be due for exactly that kind
[15:13] of thing, and and that would be a really good thing. It would
[15:18] be a really good thing for this city. West Windsor is an area that
[15:24] I think is in many ways the gateway to our city and will be in
[15:28] the future even more so with the with the Gordy Howbridge sort of moving the
[15:35] entrance to the city west. And I think it's in our best interests collectively
[15:39] to have every neighborhood in the city be vital and vibrant and a place people
[15:46] want to live. And Sandwich Town has suffered for like way too long with
[15:50] a reputation and some some real heavy sort of counterweights that are dragged it down
[15:56] and made it very difficult to make progress. And I'm looking forward to seeing
[16:00] what the people of Sandwich can do when those counterweights are taken away. Yeah,
[16:04] Sandwich Town proper itself has been really nicely redeveloped over the past what five,
[16:11] six, ten years. You got the brewery, there's new eateries,
[16:15] it's it's a really nice area. It's as you get closer and closer to
[16:18] the Gordyhue Bridge, you realize that it's not an area that's stuck in time
[16:23] ten years ago, twenty years ago. You're going back forty years ago in
[16:27] some cases in that area and you realize nothing has been upgraded, nothing has
[16:30] been updated. There's a gas station that looks like it's you know exactly what
[16:34] I'm talking about, the old Art Deco one that's been closed since I can
[16:38] remember, at the age of thirty four. All that to say, there's
[16:42] a lot of opportunity there. And I think you're absolutely right. You looked
[16:45] to Ford City and you just you see what's been going on there for you
[16:49] know, the past ten years more top down driven, but twenty five years
[16:56] where it was that grassroots coming up as well. And when I say top
[16:59] down right now, I don't mean through a pushed city focus. I mean
[17:03] top down through the community that's already been built out there. But probably a
[17:07] good time for us to shift this conversation a little bit directly over to Ford
[17:11] City, with the dropped on Drewlard Festival having taken place last week, live
[17:15] bands, vendors, classic car show. There's food and drink, mural paintings,
[17:19] skateboardings, a light projection display and a fire show. Shane Potvin is
[17:23] the BIA chair in Ford City. He's also a local business owner and he
[17:29] has said to The Windsor Star that the resurgence was remarkable of the area.
[17:32] He said he was at a loss for words and that the neighborhood has rebounded
[17:36] from a place where the reputation was an unsafe district. It's now been vanquished
[17:41] that idea and it now welcomes people from across the city. The growth of
[17:44] businesses and the area has given energy to the resurgence, he said, which
[17:48] was apparent during the event. Last Saturday when we played my band a couple
[17:53] of years back before COVID at the first dropped on Drewlard festival. Higher Limits
[17:59] was a we were I think we were a sponsor at the very first one.
[18:03] But they had a shopping cart race and Higher Limits designed to Thomas the
[18:08] tank engine shopping cart and it was like smoking out of the smokestack. Of
[18:11] course we'd lounge, but so when it was a shopping cart race, there
[18:15] were people in the shopping carts and then someone pushing it and there were like
[18:19] twenty of them and it was like seven and eight nine o'clock at night or
[18:22] something, so it was dark. The street lights are on, it's all
[18:26] lit up, dangerous as all hell. It's now become a bit more institutionalized.
[18:30] I see they don't have the shopping cart festivals. But what a great,
[18:34] you know, building block for a community. Do it gritty, do
[18:38] it the way that you want to do it. Let that become the buildings
[18:41] stones for the community rather than you know, and we've talked about the esplanade,
[18:48] We're going to create a space for you to come to do your things,
[18:51] or the riverfront, the same type of idea. People will do things
[18:53] where they want to do them, and then if they get to the point
[18:56] that they need to do them at the big multimillion dollar venues, awesome,
[19:00] But in dropped on Drew Lard. It's doing a great job, attractive group
[19:03] from around the city on a four blocks strip with very little municipal infrastructure other
[19:10] than the lightings and the roads and the sewer. So I want to just
[19:18] frame this conversation, and I hope you guys don't mind what has, in
[19:22] your opinion, has been the municipal government's input into the revitalization of Ford City.
[19:32] They do have a CIP, so there is a CIP in Ford City.
[19:36] Beyond that, downtown also has a CIP beyond that, Like, what
[19:41] do you guys think that the city has like a fingerprint on this resurgence?
[19:48] Not more than that. I mean, I think, perhaps to be fair
[19:51] to the city, having open streets go from Richmond and Drew Lard all the
[19:55] way down to Sandwich and including them in that loop was a big you know,
[19:59] it was a help because it kind of normalized Okay, ride your wife
[20:02] from here to there and go down to Jeweler. But you know, in
[20:04] terms, it's really been I mean I think the local property owners. There
[20:08] are people who bought property, like you know, Michael Say, I can't
[20:14] remember the the Artisan would guy and the Grand Cantina guys and those who bought
[20:19] property and who really invested and brought other businesses down really have been the driver
[20:25] of that. And maybe the CIP was what made it possible for that to
[20:27] happen, But that's been you know, it's been the local business owners who
[20:33] bought in a fire sale and said we're going to try and transform this neighborhood.
[20:37] Well, they didn't only buy in a fire sale, though, they
[20:38] also bought a risk in a fire sale, right because there was no guarantee
[20:42] that the neighborhood would you would rebound, and you're sure you were buying shells
[20:45] that had good bones, but you were also looking at needing to drop two,
[20:49] three, four or five hundred thousand dollars into a neighborhood that had no
[20:52] reason to ever think that it would become anything other than what you were seeing.
[20:56] So I give the credit to you know, Grand Cantina specifically Michael,
[21:02] Yeah, Michael Fasio. And then you know Randy Diestelman who's no longer with
[21:04] us. He was such a driving force in that community. He was single.
[21:08] He was like a Mark buskarreal for a Ford city specifically. I mean
[21:11] it was a risk and yet and it's got it's got some really good things
[21:15] going for it. I mean it's not that far. You know, you
[21:18] could practically walk there from Walkerville. It's not that far from downtown. So
[21:21] got some issues around, you know, through ways getting there. But but
[21:25] it's got like excellent buildings and it's got interesting things that downtown has and Walkerville
[21:29] has. Where you look at new neighborhoods, we don't have, which is
[21:32] the building's front right onto the sidewalk, right, so there's all this energy
[21:36] happening on the sidewalk, and there's apartments above those buildings, so people come
[21:40] out onto the sidewalk. If you look at neighborhoods like you know down the
[21:42] south windsor for example, where you've got parking lots in front of the buildings,
[21:47] So all the way down Doogal you've got giant parking lots in front of
[21:49] the shopping So you don't have a neighborhood people walk to to go shopping or
[21:53] eating or whatever. You don't have it where people would want to live above
[21:57] our Canada Pizza or Live Above Toscana or whatever you don't have. You're not
[22:02] creating that energy in the new neighborhoods. But this neighborhood had all the pieces
[22:06] that all the planners know this this neighborhood. If you can, you know,
[22:08] light the spark, it will work and and you know that we're going
[22:14] to hear. The complaints about the gentrification is that it becomes too expensive.
[22:17] It's already. I mean, I look at the realtor dot c A when
[22:19] I'm down there, and it's expensive to buy houses now off of drew Ard.
[22:22] My office was at Palette and wind On, and it's getting to be
[22:26] expensive over there too. But so it was a risk, and yet it
[22:29] wasn't a risk. I mean, the population was going to come back.
[22:32] I remember when I was at the city in twenty ten, the planning department
[22:36] at that time was writing reports basically saying Windsor is going to hit this fire
[22:40] cell moment and then it will research and it's exactly what happened. Yeah,
[22:47] I think that's really interesting. The the the point that I want to make
[22:55] about that, about the neighborhood revitalization is that it reinforces my theory that all
[23:03] progress and everything good in Windsor comes from the grassroots. It comes from ordinary
[23:07] people rolling up their sleeves, coming together and finding a way to solve the
[23:12] problems that are in front of them. There are a whole lot of people
[23:15] besides the entrepreneurs that you mentioned, there are a whole lot of people who
[23:18] believed in Ford City. I particularly want to single out Carl Nielsen of the
[23:23] who did great work at Ford City Neighborhood Renewal and was one of the early
[23:30] believers in You can't forget Marina Clemmons either. Yeah. Absolutely, Like there's
[23:34] there are some great people who have put in the time and brought change without
[23:41] a whole lot of money and without a whole lot of fanfare or attention.
[23:45] I visited Ford City. I visited drew Lard as part of a as part
[23:53] of a leadership wins Or Essex class about fifteen years ago, maybe a little
[23:57] less, and at that time it was that we were brought there because it
[24:03] was the example of urban blight in our city. I remember a city planner
[24:10] who was along for the trip saying, you know, it's difficult to even
[24:15] get a mortgage here, right, This is this is like the the intrinsic
[24:18] value of this property is so low that it's difficult to even get a mortgage.
[24:23] It was beyond the depths, and in that short period of time,
[24:29] my barber, my new barber, happens to beyond drew Lard and walking through
[24:33] that neighborhood to get my hair cut and taking a look at how how much
[24:38] it has changed and how vibrant it is. I mean, that is just
[24:41] absolutely one of the success stories of this city. And dropped on drew Lard.
[24:45] I didn't attend, but it sounds like it was a fantastic thing.
[24:48] And congratulations to the people of Ford City and to all the folks we've mentioned
[24:55] well, and especially since we talked to shape Podban on the show back and
[24:57] February, I guess round the issue of the bias and that Shane was saying
[25:03] at the time we dropped our jewel ard as our biggest event, and this
[25:07] change, this decision of the city to shut down the bias temporarily was they
[25:11] were really afraid that it was going to ruin dropped on Jewlart and so so
[25:14] congratulations to them. Not only did they did they get it done, they
[25:18] did it with sort of feculean efforts given the city's interference. Perhaps to your
[25:22] point done, but I want to also kind of maybe reflect back this back
[25:26] to the event that we did with Owen Way Good back in July. So
[25:32] Good part of all of what he was talking about was how kids can be
[25:34] independent, but some of the same things about how kids can be independent cities
[25:37] are tied to something like this, which is Jewel art is a neighborhood where
[25:41] the houses are close together, they're close to the sidewalk the road, the
[25:45] roads are narrow or narrower, and so you create an environment in which is
[25:51] I think I mentioned this before, cars are a guest and people are dominant,
[25:55] Like the place is for people. It's not for cars, even though
[25:57] it's called Ford City. And this event like this, this particular one where
[26:02] people say we're going to take over the street and we're going to do the
[26:03] stuff we want to do on that street. It's for us and the cars.
[26:07] You know, you can go someplace house you're the guests. And it
[26:11] part of another astment to what he talked about was how letting people tell the
[26:15] city what they want to do with their streets. And so we gave this
[26:18] to just the example in Montreal that they were moving to try and make some
[26:22] of the alleys more friendly for people to do things in the alleys. And
[26:26] one of the projects that they did was to replace the pavement and back lanes
[26:30] with kind of a lattice cement so that they could have grass. And then
[26:34] the kids all hated it. They asked the kids what they thought of it,
[26:37] and the kids all said, we hate it. We want to have
[26:40] a back alley that's got pavement. You made us have back allies with pavements.
[26:44] So we adapted to that, and we play ball, and we roller
[26:47] skate, and we use our scooters, and we play soccer. And now
[26:49] you put this lattice in, we can't do anything useful in this back alley
[26:52] anymore. So his point, and I think ours and this Port City example,
[26:56] is ask the people what they want to do with their street, and
[27:00] then do that with them, and don't impose on them some kind of like
[27:03] grand vision of streets that has nothing to do with the reality people's lives.
[27:07] Well, jumping off that, it's so interesting as well, because my great
[27:11] grandfather opened up a market on Ford City, like a small little grocer's shop,
[27:15] and my grandfather inherited it and they ran it until I think the late
[27:18] seventies. So watched Ford City become a bustling community and grow in the shadow
[27:22] of the Ford Plant, and literally with you know, Gate one, two
[27:26] and three, when the shift's changed, you'd have a huge exodus at each
[27:30] one of the gates. And that's why Drew Lard Rode as a whole was
[27:34] as long as it was, because the plant was as long as it was,
[27:37] and it necessitated having bars at some at each of the gates, and
[27:42] a market at each of the gates, and then all the other things that
[27:45] come with having a bustling community. But it's so interesting that even in the
[27:48] shadow of that Ford Plant, it wasn't let's redesign this neighborhood that's organically developing
[27:56] in pursuit of the automobile. It was exactly what you said. The automobile
[28:00] plant itself recognized we're a part of this community. We're not going to demand
[28:04] to have more space for our cars. I wasn't even a concept then.
[28:07] Well, people walk to where you can see that when you walk around behind
[28:11] Chrysler or when you walk around behind Board. Now people walked to work.
[28:15] I mean it's always amazing to me how many houses are on St. Luke,
[28:18] right next door to the GM plant. Yeah, And it's just it's
[28:22] interesting that, as you know, society developed more and more, this idea
[28:26] of suburbanization took over, but it went the complete opposite way of what had
[28:30] always worked, and nobody stood up to go, how are we going to
[28:34] live in these areas? And by live like have a community. But I
[28:40] think our friend Dawn, who's not on a show today, and I don't
[28:41] want to sorry, Dawn, if I'm speaking for you, we'd say that
[28:44] is clients still want that kind of suburban life. They want to have the
[28:48] house with a big setback from the road and the big yard and all of
[28:52] those things which you don't have if you live on Saint Luke or if you
[28:55] live on drew Lard or or you know, Pilett or any of those roads.
[29:00] So incentifize those who want to live on these urban areas. And if
[29:03] people want to live in the suburban areas, that's fine. But so I
[29:07] think there's like I think that that claim is a bit overblown, but there
[29:14] certainly is truth to it. There is an element, and not an insignificant
[29:18] element of society and windsor Essex that I think not only values the space,
[29:26] but I think it's it's quite important to some people to be perceived to not
[29:32] live in the city, to not need municipal services. I think that there
[29:37] like there isn't. I think there's an underlying competition of worldviews or narratives in
[29:45] terms of what a city is for and how how how like how legitimate municipal
[29:53] spending on things like amenities are. And I think that there's not an insignificant
[29:59] number of people who are fine with the idea of paying lower property taxes to
[30:04] receive fewer services because they don't need those services. They don't use them,
[30:08] they have something better at home already, so for them personally, it's a
[30:14] pure waste to pay for those services. And I think that that I think
[30:19] that that is drives the conflict and the disconnect a lot more than like some
[30:26] people like big yards, because I think that could be if people liked big
[30:30] yards but valued community and valued the services that make a community, we could
[30:34] have both. Yeah, I suppose, and we do. You know,
[30:38] I live in a neighborhood's almost like that. I'm two blocks from Chrysler,
[30:41] but I have a nice house with nice yard. Lots of people around me
[30:45] have swimming pools. Maybe there's another element of it too, which is,
[30:48] you know, when I moved here from you know, I grew up in
[30:52] Calgary, and in Calgary, Calgary is very wealthy, but the money isn't
[30:55] made in the city, right, so the city's very clean. Maybe we
[30:56] don't have oil and gas you know, is right in the city. And
[31:00] then I moved to Vancouver, where Gangou is very wealthy, but again,
[31:03] the money's not made in the city. The lumber plants and the gas plants
[31:07] are all well out in the you know, the hinterlands. So when I
[31:11] moved to Windsor and thought, wow, like, I'm living right next door
[31:12] to where the money gets made. And I come downtown and I walk along
[31:17] Howard, or i walk on McDougal, and I'm walking past feeder plants,
[31:19] and I'm walking past parts plants, and I'm smelling the smells that you smell
[31:23] around plants like that, And I think there are maybe people who think,
[31:26] well, if I live a little, if I'm is in roseland or if
[31:29] I'm in whatever, this new neighborhood is going to be by the hospital,
[31:32] I'm not living next to where the money gets made, and so I'm not
[31:34] living where it's dirty or the air is poisoned. I mean the airs.
[31:38] You know, we all know the air's not expect actor here party due to
[31:41] aston party to Detroit. But so you have that tensions here, and I
[31:45] want to live where the money gets made because there's a kind of a groovness
[31:48] to that. There's a bit of a grittiness. And yet also like I
[31:52] know why we have money because these plants are here, or I want to
[31:56] live out in the countryside where I could say, well, you know,
[31:59] I don't have to know what it's like to live near a plant. It's
[32:02] a really interesting perspective. Do you actually like walk along Howard or McDougall.
[32:07] Sure, yeah, yeah, like which we're like, what cross screets are?
[32:13] Well, so so I'm going to walk home today and I'll walk down
[32:15] to McDougall and then along and maybe cross over an Erie, put through Wild
[32:19] Park And I like how you suddenly put Melinda on the spot and she just
[32:24] completely batted you away. No, we're not doing this. I was just
[32:29] curious. You know, I believe in active transportations that I actually do active.
[32:32] It's it's great. I think, you know, for a lot of
[32:36] windsor rights, the idea of you know, walking that distance to get from
[32:38] A to B is just a foreign concept. I'll just get in the car,
[32:40] I'll drive there, and if I want to go for a walk,
[32:43] I'll do a little walk when I'm in the neighborhood. Walking with walking with
[32:47] like a shopping bag is a really interesting experience in this city. And I
[32:52] don't live in the most walkable neighborhood, but I do, you know,
[32:55] from time to time walk and buy a bag milk or get chips or some
[33:01] bread or whatever, you know, like not going to get the car out
[33:04] to drive two minutes. And you sometimes you sometimes get the perspective that people
[33:12] think that you must be insane to be like walking down the street and and
[33:16] and I think that the in my neighborhood, the really the thing that makes
[33:22] it insane is is actually having a practical purpose. Like I went and bought
[33:28] so I didn't just walk for exercise. I didn't walk to like smell the
[33:31] air or wave at my knee. I walked to get something. And that's
[33:35] like that that is you're not supposed to do that. You just said,
[33:39] I decided to go get some milk or chips and I'll go for a walk.
[33:43] Why drive for two minutes? Because why walk for fifteen? Yeah?
[33:46] Because it because you can get back in the commercial break duck. Oh god,
[33:52] yeah, because now we're not allowed to our kids to go and do
[33:54] something. And well, yeah, yeah. The last time I tried the
[33:58] chips, I need it in five minutes. The last time I tried to
[34:00] send a toddler out to buy cigarettes, it didn't go well on either end.
[34:07] Well, let's keep this walk going. We're going to return to the
[34:09] downtown core and talk about this downtown volleyball event. Volleyball Beach Bash tournament will
[34:15] be taking place September the eighth, the tenth. But it's just a component
[34:20] of a new development at six seven Let Avenue that is right next to the
[34:27] cook Shop. So to contextualize that place, it's vacant right now, but
[34:31] it's been donated by the owner, Mohammed Khan, and they're going to be,
[34:37] according to the Windsor Star, putting in an amphitheater as well as a
[34:42] volleyball court. I was thrown off by the amphitheater, but I look forward
[34:45] to some designs for it and seeing how permanent amphitheater actually is. Just the
[34:52] word amphitheater itself has so many connotations, right sure, but I mean it's
[34:55] just dirt chairs, right, Yeah, that's I mean, that's well,
[35:00] but maybe I don't know. I also picture like the old Riverfront festival stage,
[35:05] the Onion dome from Casino windsor you could maybe that's like an amphitheater.
[35:09] Like, I don't know, it's like to me, there has to be
[35:12] a dome at least for it to be an amphitheater. Maybe they could,
[35:15] Maybe they could go and get the old bank facade that's laying at the lou
[35:19] Romano plant and just make the amphitheater out of those blocks. That would be
[35:23] so awesome. It would be kind of cool. Which counselor shared those photographs,
[35:29] It was Marianni Angelo. Get on it, buddy, I can't.
[35:31] Okay, we're gonna go there just because he brought it up. And what
[35:36] an for him to just actually take a photo of that. I mean,
[35:38] that has been the conversation in the city for a better part of the last
[35:42] twenty years. Where's the facade? Is anything going to be done with it?
[35:45] It's worth so much money. It's not just rotting, is it?
[35:49] And like we've been told through like snippets here there, it's fine, don't
[35:52] worry about it. It's it's all itemized and categorized. We can reassemble it.
[35:57] Moment's notice. Councilor Marinanni just sees it on the ground and go,
[36:00] oh hey, take a look, posted straight to Facebook. What do you
[36:04] think? Did he say that it looked like a pilot shit or was that
[36:08] just the implication. I don't even know if that was the implication. I
[36:12] don't think there was any bad faith to what he at all, but I
[36:15] think the vast majority of the audience was like, what the fuck? I
[36:20] very much enjoy Counselor Angelow. He's been quieter than I expected, hasn't made
[36:27] as much noise as I expected. But every once in a while he'll pop
[36:30] up with something like that. That's that's genuinely both both useful and idiosyncratic,
[36:37] which is right where he ought to be. Absolutely love it, pulling this
[36:42] walk back on track, so we're gonna get an amphitheater. Counselor Augustino was
[36:45] quoted in local media whether SETV or windsor Star saying that it's gonna cost about
[36:52] thirty grand for this. I presume the BIA, the d WBIA is putting
[36:57] up that up. However, that wasn't specifically made clear, but thirty grand
[37:00] for the court, the bleachers, the mesh netting and the security fencing.
[37:06] Now, Councilor Augustino did not put a quote for what the amphitheater would cost.
[37:08] He also did not mention the amphitheater in the rundown of those costs.
[37:12] So were it might just be the sand and the chairs, as you said,
[37:16] Doug, or it might get to an amphitheater on a higher level.
[37:21] What we do know is that from this tournament there will be fundraising. You
[37:25] have to pay to compete. I guess it's going to go to the Rotary
[37:29] of Windsor, which has a mission to combat homelessness in Windsor, Essex.
[37:34] This is a really interesting one. So we saw the announcement of the redevelopment
[37:38] from Reese Trendhail of that house next to the cook shop, and they're going
[37:42] to be installing a big glass facades of a huge, probably sixty seventy person
[37:47] patio in the frontage of that house. It's a nice big old I believe
[37:52] architecture house or something from nineteen hundred, so it was a either a live
[37:57] in space or designed as an office type place. But what a big van
[38:01] Victorian type design. It also has that new crosswalk UT's been installed. Pedestrians
[38:07] can just click it and it shuts the road down. I don't want to
[38:15] say the beach. The bull and barrel across the street just introduced that disco
[38:20] bar as well. There's the Francophone Center and the old accelerator as well as
[38:24] the I believe mental health facility that's being redeveloped in the Woody's Outhouse facility,
[38:30] So there's actually a lot of development going on in that area for the first
[38:34] time. There is still some blight as you head north on the west side
[38:37] of the street there where the old bargain shop was doctor the old Doctor disc,
[38:43] the old Peter Shop. A lot of works still needs to be done
[38:45] there. I thought this was a really interesting one. My first instinct was
[38:50] this won't work. What a terrible idea. It's too close to the mission.
[38:52] Who's gonna want to play volleyball in that area that is exposed and has
[38:58] some built in risk. But then when I start going through the list of
[39:00] what's already been done there, and you know, the the built in crosswalk
[39:06] is such a key component being able to just shut down Olett Avenue. If
[39:09] we're not going to have an actual stoplight there, there is a potential to
[39:15] have that area become a little hustling, bustling district. It would be a
[39:19] very very welcome change. So I love this, Like, I don't know
[39:24] where you guys land on this at all, but I absolutely love this.
[39:30] I got an inkling. I heard Counselor Agustino speaking about this actually while he
[39:37] was helping us carry some very heavy equipment away from our event, the Doctor
[39:44] Weigod event earlier this summer. We were chatting about this idea. It's a
[39:50] it's it's just a good thing, you know. And what I really like
[39:53] about this is that it's a thirty thousand dollars investment. It might work,
[39:59] it might not work, but and if it doesn't work, you know,
[40:04] I think back to the unfortunate reaction to the fake ice in Lansbury Park,
[40:09] Like, sometimes you try things and they don't work, and that's going to
[40:13] have to be okay if you want to continue to try things and have the
[40:15] good things that happen come out of it. That has to be okay.
[40:19] So I'm not particularly like putting any pressure on this to be the acme of
[40:23] perfection. But this is the sort of thing that we need downtown, cheap
[40:29] and cheerful. It's a new venue, as you say, it's going to
[40:31] activate a space that has like an area part of the downtown that has I
[40:37] think a ton of potential because there's already been some significant investment made there.
[40:42] There's just nothing not to like about this, And I you know, in
[40:45] in many ways, like I think there's been a lot of talk about the
[40:51] disconnect, the disconnect between the previous counselor in Ward three and the current count
[41:00] learn Ward three. I don't think it's a secret that counselor Bordeline did not
[41:04] campaign for Agustino, in fact, campaign for for another candidate and supported another
[41:09] candidate. So I think there's been a perception that there is there is disconnect,
[41:15] but there's also significant continuity. You know, a lot of the things
[41:20] that that Reno did right, Agustino is carrying on and and this it really
[41:25] reminds me of the sort of things that that that counselor Bordeline was really solicitous
[41:34] to do and to take care of, not you know, not just the
[41:37] big picture stuff or the stuff that would grab headlines, but you know,
[41:43] supporting and promoting and helping things like like movie night in the park or or
[41:51] or actually just you know, activating and trying to improve important parks in the
[41:55] community, you know, and making things like that happen. Uh. And
[41:59] I I have nothing but good things to say about this idea. I hope
[42:02] it's a roaring success. I just want to pick up off of the idea
[42:06] that you said, you know, trying new things, and you compared and
[42:09] contrasted it with the fake ice. I think the big difference between this and
[42:15] that is that this is a out of the box concept to help an area
[42:20] that's being hurt, whereas that was as a result of reduce your budget by
[42:24] ten percent. Sure, I forget it. I get it. That's the
[42:28] only idea. It's trying something new, And I like, yeah, And
[42:31] I don't like I'm not saying that trying new fake ice was a good idea
[42:36] and just saying that it was good to experiment. But I think and I
[42:38] think you've made a really interesting point, and I want to sort of riff
[42:43] on it a little bit that the link between the two counselors and but the
[42:46] time frame and it kind of takes us back to Drew Lard two in a
[42:49] little bit, which is that moving from that kind of firesale moment is a
[42:53] function of a number of pieces having to work together. So when Counsel Bordlin
[42:58] was was in office for the eight years so he was there, it brought
[43:01] us the CIP which has really changed to the landscape down here around housing and
[43:07] housing investments. Worked on things like getting the alleys cleaned up and getting alley
[43:12] lights and kind of certain fundamentals at the same time as it's activating the parks,
[43:16] making sure that these schools didn't leave ye and making those at that fire
[43:21] cell moment. And so we are eight years later, and now we have
[43:23] Counselor Agastino who is increasingly impressing me with his capacity to come up with ways
[43:29] to do things that are maybe this is what you are when you're a promoters,
[43:32] You're like, you know, you know how to cobble things together.
[43:36] And so Counselor Agassino then is doing sort of what we've talked about with dropped
[43:39] on drew Art. Let's do a kind of a grassroots of process, a
[43:43] thirty thousand dollars thing. Let's take a piece of property and animated, see
[43:46] what happens. Let's take let's get some buskers downtown, animate things. See
[43:51] what happens. And he's able to build on some of those fundamentals that were
[43:54] put into place and bring those promoter skills, which is maybe this is the
[43:58] generation that needs them, that promoters goes. Linking it back to what you
[44:01] were saying John earlier about the esplanade, It's like I keep saying this about
[44:07] food trucks. Right, we have a piece of property on here, Let's
[44:09] put something on there. We don't have to have the perfect beach volleyball venue
[44:15] in order to hold beach volleyball. We've seen in a place we can throw
[44:19] some sand down and put some stands up. We don't need to have an
[44:22] esplanade to have food trucks. Put the damned food trucks in Charles Clark Square
[44:27] every Sunday. We don't have to close off the entire city for once a
[44:30] year to have open streets. Just close Riverside Drive for two hours every Sunday.
[44:36] It doesn't have to be the biggest thing in the world. It can
[44:37] be simple. You can see what people want. There's another kind of a
[44:42] because I always talk about the old days. The old days when Don Sadler
[44:45] was the head of parks, he used to talk about how they'd build a
[44:47] new community center, but they wouldn't put the sidewalks in right away because they'd
[44:52] watch to see how people access the building, how they crossed the lawns to
[44:55] get to the building, and then where the paths were. That's where they
[44:59] put the a sidewalk down. And I think there's a bit of that around
[45:01] this city building. It's like people, you know, watch what people do
[45:06] and then help support that. Don't create some megaproject and say and then get
[45:09] mad when people don't go to your megaproject because that they it wasn't what they
[45:13] wanted. Such a smart way to build access to a community center or for
[45:19] any amenity. Let the people design the walk for you. Because you can
[45:22] try and put a sidewalk in, They're still going to cut across the grass
[45:25] on a forty five degree angle if it's three feet in front of them,
[45:28] because they want to get quicker across. That concept can be expanded, Yeah,
[45:31] so much further. Windsor has a reputation for being a city that is
[45:38] less formal, that where the social niceties matter less, where you can go
[45:44] to the fanciest restaurant in town wearing cowboy boots and a sleeveless T shirt,
[45:49] etcetera, etcetera. And to some extent, I think there's truth to that.
[45:52] Speaking of your dressed, are we going to the keg for after?
[45:57] You're good for it? Right now, I just describe myself. Yea,
[46:01] what you got to see it? I can put the guns out like that.
[46:06] People people wouldn't be able to handle it. I'm going to take a
[46:10] second to recover from that. Uh, because what we're even talking about informal?
[46:16] Oh yeah, Windsor's real informal. But but I think that I think
[46:22] that as like going back to some stuff we've talked about in recent weeks,
[46:25] As income inequality increases, and as I think I perceive that the social distance
[46:32] between the most successful and the least successful people in Windsor, as that grows,
[46:38] I think that it's becomes more and more true that the folks who make
[46:44] decisions often cannot conceive of what the people who are going to face the consequences
[46:50] of those decisions, what they're what the issues might be, or what they
[46:53] might even need. I think that that is part of the reason why increasingly
[46:59] you will, you know, you'll you'll kind of scratch your head at what
[47:02] the what the decision makers seem to think we all want. Well, you
[47:07] know, it's kind of like we've got a Goldilocks situation or a close one
[47:13] size wrong situation. I'm mixing metaphors. But we have a city that it's
[47:15] been designed for a socioeconomic status that's like one or two above where the vast
[47:22] majority is right now, and so we have an aquatic center that a lot
[47:24] of people can't afford to access whatsoever. Whereas if you go to one of
[47:29] the old outdoor pools that still exist in the community, but far fewer and
[47:31] in between being able to jump in a pool, there's a lot more accessible.
[47:37] The idea why we don't have found true trucks is because the BIA's lobbied
[47:39] against them, saying we don't want food trucks because we paid for brick and
[47:44] mortar. And that's an idea that really dates back to like the mid nineties,
[47:47] specifically when the casino was coming about, and you saw a lot of
[47:51] the actual big investment that came in. But look at where we're at now,
[47:54] you know, decades later, and as that income in equality worsens,
[48:00] are we going to continue to price people out of being able to get a
[48:02] bite in the downtown core rather than McDonald's. And no offense to McDonald's,
[48:07] because they're employers and they're they're a business that actually is existing in the core.
[48:10] But being able to go grab aturo or a taco off a food truck
[48:15] for two fifty or something is a very different experience. And it helps to
[48:19] also make clear, you know, the idea of the cowboy boots and the
[48:22] sleeveless shirt can walk up to a food truck no matter where you are and
[48:25] access food far easier than expecting the keg to serve us, which I don't
[48:30] think, Melinda, they're going to let us with dug. No, no,
[48:31] they're not going to let me in. You know, one of my
[48:34] favorite new places to eat downtown as Royal Pond, just a couple of steps
[48:38] from here, and the way that the folks who run that restaurant describe it
[48:45] as Indian street food, and so I like to stop in and try the
[48:50] different delightful things that I've never tried before. But but it just got me
[48:54] thinking, imagine if we had food truck culture here. Imagine if we had
[49:00] a culture of street vendors and you actually could get street food with the amazing
[49:07] like diversity of culinary experiences that you see in windsor these ethnic restaurants that last
[49:15] for four months, and the food is amazingly delicious and you go in and
[49:19] you're sitting on like an upside down bucket to eat it. And then of
[49:22] course they're so undercapitalized that it doesn't matter how good or popular they are,
[49:27] they're gone in a few months or a year or whatever. What if what
[49:30] if you could what if you could bring that food to the people without the
[49:36] giant capital risk of a brick and mortar restaurant. How much better off would
[49:40] we be? And it's interesting that you say that, you know, we've
[49:44] got Festival or Carousel of Nations, which does such a great job highlighting the
[49:47] the cultures themselves, the nations themselves, But yeah, we don't have these
[49:52] opportunities to allow for a low cost venture. We put up barriers, and
[49:58] what a way to chop off our own foot in the city. I wonder
[50:01] if the bias would be against it now if they were asked the question.
[50:06] I think it's such a different group of people. Decades have gone by,
[50:09] people have passed on, businesses don't exist anymore. I think the culture would
[50:14] almost continue to Well, we see it so often when we talk about it
[50:16] on the show, we get comments about it. I've talked about it for
[50:19] the past ten years. People can't understand why we just don't have them.
[50:24] Yeah, the point is every major city is food trucks to tortous food trucks.
[50:28] Like, what's the problem. And if you know I'm getting something on
[50:30] a food from a food truck, I'm probably not choosing to sit down inside
[50:35] a restaurant right now for thirty minutes to forty five minutes. I want something
[50:38] quick to go. That's what the food truck serves, right Which prohibiting that
[50:45] is like saying no, you can't open up a record store in the downtown,
[50:47] we don't want it. Well, and then you kind of if you
[50:51] atomize the services and you enable the services that are offered to be like offered
[50:58] with a far smaller base of investment, you can get really good synergies.
[51:02] So I'm just pumping downtown businesses this week, but craft Heads is another great
[51:08] downtown spot. I was there for an event this week and one thing that
[51:10] struck me at that event was that craft Heads allows outside food. You can
[51:15] go next door and buy a pizza and bring it to craft Heads and enjoy
[51:20] it with your picture of beer, and think about like that synergy, right,
[51:24] and what what that collaboration and instead of looking at your you know,
[51:30] your your neighbors and fellow business owners, instead of looking at them as a
[51:35] threat. And you know, I want every nickel that comes downtown, I
[51:38] want it to go through my cash register, and if someone else makes a
[51:42] nickel, they're stealing from me. Like that is that is a weird attitude.
[51:47] And I'm you know, I think that there are signs that that perhaps
[51:52] that the businesses downtown today, having experience what they've experienced for the past twenty
[51:59] five years, have different view of collaboration. When we had higher limits,
[52:04] of course, we were a very different place as a we'd lounge, We
[52:07] let people bring in food from other places. Dealing with the garbage sucked because
[52:13] there's a lot of refuse that comes with it. But we couldn't understand the
[52:16] idea of not letting it happen because we served a role as a community center.
[52:21] That's what we really looked at ourselves as well. And unless you wanted
[52:23] to have a damn kitchen which and then make food that could compete with the
[52:27] good restaurants downtown, no, it was easier not too and we just charged
[52:30] everyone five bucks to get in, and that was a perfect business model for
[52:35] what we were doing at that point. But the idea of collaboration was necessary,
[52:38] or at least accepting of other business was necessary, because one, we
[52:43] weren't able to offer that service, but two, it would be a lot
[52:46] harder to draw in a crowd to our business, even though we were a
[52:50] destination more than other businesses. If they weren't able to get the fries from
[52:54] Simons across the street, or the pizza from just across the street, or
[52:58] the coffee from just across the street, all of those things that were right
[53:00] there, the likelihood of them have been coming yep, decreases. So don't
[53:06] look at that business next door to you. If you're a bar owner,
[53:07] don't look at the restaurant as your competition. Look at them is where they're
[53:12] going for appetizers to start, and you've got to figure out how to get
[53:15] them afterwards for a cocktail and have the downtown pull seventy five dollars out of
[53:19] the pockets rather than just forty five. So I just want to suggest I
[53:23] think Melinda's got an FYC. But this is just such a great place to
[53:28] wrap up this conversation. Guys, realize what a positive show we've had.
[53:31] Oh my gosh, this is like this is it's like the alternate universe,
[53:38] like you know, like the where Spock has a beard. This is the
[53:40] clean shaven Doug universe. Our CP. Well, I'm wearing I am wearing
[53:45] the even spot got right now. So we're doing the opposites and it's working
[53:50] out pretty well. I will just do then quickly as my for your consideration.
[53:53] In the same theme, Open Streets is of course coming up just in
[53:58] a couple of weeks September seventeenth, from ten till two. It's also celebrating
[54:02] the Big Eights Rosalie Tromblas community celebrations, So I've got to get the AM
[54:07] eight hundred plug in there. But yeah, you all know about Open Streets.
[54:13] That is that, Melinda. How about we hand it over to you
[54:16] where Doug, we have had a nice low blood pressure conversation, I think
[54:22] the first in my three issue years of being on the show. We're going
[54:27] to raise the blood pressure a little bit in the four year consideration. But
[54:30] the traditional show is over right now, we're turning the page into the extended.
[54:34] Well, I hate to disappoint you because but I'm going to disappoint you.
[54:36] I was gonna do, like, let's get mad because of the whole
[54:40] vidiots out in BC, but I said, because we're in the spirit of
[54:44] being positive. A different and cool story. So the Polaris the CBC Polaris
[54:49] Music Competition just finished and the winner this year was a young man named Matt
[54:54] Matthew Monayas or Matt Mack, who's an og creet artist. Blind from birth,
[54:59] learned play the piano and has released two albums. In his album,
[55:04] Blurred Visions, won the Player's Music Prize, and so I encourage you to
[55:08] go to your CBC Music app or to your wherever you get your music and
[55:15] listen to Matt Max's new record at Blurred Visions, A great story of a
[55:19] kid who faced all kinds of adversity but has now succeeded and hopefully will succeed
[55:24] more. Sounds very cool. I'll check that out. And you did that
[55:29] on the fly right there. We thought you were coming in with something different.
[55:31] But that's fine, that's good stuff. Sorry, it was such a
[55:35] positive show. I couldn't end by shouting about the covidiots in British Columbia are
[55:38] trying to, you know, run the blockades. We only like dumped on
[55:42] one person today and that's fine, totally fine. It can happen. And
[55:45] it's the summer, right, yeah, yeah, it's the summer. We're
[55:49] good. Are you do you have anything? We were you just writing stuff?
[55:51] You were just writing, okay, folks, that's it. That's rosity
[55:52] politics. We are at the ends. We talked streets, what they're for,
[55:57] what different uses they could have, and I think the cool thing that
[56:00] we've really touched on, I guess, just to put one last bow on
[56:04] it, is that through community sort of taking back the streets and demanding use
[56:07] of the streets and realizing that the streets aren't just owned by the cars that
[56:13] drive temporarily and very shortly on them. The streets are used by the people
[56:17] who actually live on them, who walk on them who see them on a
[56:21] regular basis, Take your streets back. They're great folks. Rose City Politics
[56:25] August twenty sixth is the date. Doug Startry, Molinda Monroe and myself,
[56:30] John Lydkey. We're your regular panel. We're at Patreon, dot com,
[56:34] forward slash, Rose City Politics in print and Bizex magazine, online everywhere and
[56:38] banned only some places. Rose City Politics broadcast live on tape thanks to the
[56:43] kind support of Luna six two five building better Communities. See you next week.

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