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Tuesday 9 September 2014

Observations at the Market

not my photo, but typical of today
  • people in Ottawa are ambivalent about their sartorial response to the days after Labour Day.  Half of the people downtown and on the bus were dressed for November and the other half for mid-July.  It made for a pleasant diversion.
  • there is a frightening increase in stories of people being abused, being big-time abused, by police.   I don't want to generalize but if I were living in the US right now, I would be uneasy.   But I never fail to see people being cared for in some way by the police or paramedics when I'm downtown, particularly in the market area and that, together with the strong presence of the emergency services in all the Pride activities, buoys me up. 
  •  Our downtown market is in the midst of change.  There is a new, very fancy, very expensive shoe store and a new café that specializes in things like salted caramel chocolate milkshakes, where you buy the chocolate you want to use and tell the server what you want done with it...spread on crepes, mixed into your ice cream or melted into hot chocolate.  Don't tell me that a new shoe store and a chocolate café isn't a siren song directed at me.
  • Our street entertainers, always a delight and a drain on the money at my disposal, continue to be more and more diverse---I saw a young woman singing opera in a dress that barely covered her generous bosom, another woman in Japanese kimono playing an instrument I have only ever read about, a young man who tears around a closed  intersection on the inside of a huge bamboo-looking hoop, a couple of men of my age with acoustic guitars and pony tails to endear them to me while they sang songs from the 70s and a chalk artist whose work seemed to open up the sidewalk to a whole Hobbit village.  I could have stayed all day.
And the wonderful thing is that I could walk to the market.  I did bus back, but why else have a transit pass?



3 comments:

  1. Always a fun place, but it seems to getting more upscale.

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  2. Ottawa is on my bucket list of places to get to sooner than later. It sounds heavenly. Especially the chocolate parts.

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    1. Be surse to let me know if you're coming to town....

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