behindtheax

wednesday

Last Saturday night we went to this new wine bar, not quite in our neighbourhood, just at the edge of it. A friend of ours was celebrating a birthday and we were invited. Actually a bit of a crowd showed up for it, a few I knew, many I didn’t. It was a fun evening. Greg and I decided we would walk home afterwards. Well, he wanted to grab a cab but I wanted the fresh air. It was raining, a very fine drizzle, a little after midnight and the stretch we walked was a mixture of tiny pubs and dollar stores. Music and shouting spilled from one pub’s door, slight laughter and the quiet knock of pool balls from another. A woman walked by us talking to herself, she wore a flowery knee length skirt over grey sweat pants. There were very few alleyways and fewer trees. Most of the buildings, all in different states of health, were attached to each other like a series of row houses. You could tell the neighbourhood was going through a slow process of rejuvenation and that it might get there, might not. Since we moved here, we had watched many neighbourhoods being miraculously transformed. I don’t know, I sort of like the look of some of these untouched neighbourhoods, where some of the buildings hadn’t seen a coat of paint in many years but where small window boxes of white impatiences are displayed lovingly on the lips of upper windows, where dusty ceramic busts of Elvis still sit in some of the shop windows. I’m telling you, who ever pedaled these around in the seventies was one hell of a salesman. I like new too but sometimes I wonder what happens to the people who live in these old neighbourhoods, the ones who may not want a stretch of tapis bars and home décor shops?

posted by mary j. @ 9:40 AM