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?
Always a fun place, but it seems to getting more upscale.
ReplyDeleteOttawa is on my bucket list of places to get to sooner than later. It sounds heavenly. Especially the chocolate parts.
ReplyDeleteBe surse to let me know if you're coming to town....
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