When I first moved to the province, I rented a room in a house on Hayward Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Georgestown. It was an ideal spot: roughly halfway between my studies at MUN and my diversions downtown. I was half a block away from the city’s (and no doubt province’s) best bakery, and two away from perhaps the most iconic establishment on the St. John’s dive bar roadmap, the Georgetown Pub.

But what I liked best were the characters I would meet. Having grown up in a house in Calgary that was closer to the city limits than to the city center, the bustle and colour of urban living was all very new for me. The cloistered world of my formative years, all stucco and fake Spanish tiles, could not have been any more dissimilar to my new home in the densely-packed row houses of inner St. John’s. What struck me most was that my definition of neighbourhood had been wrong all those prairie years.

While the majority of my new neighbours were the everyday type, there were a few local eccentrics that kept things interesting. The Governor, and all his attendant mythology was one of these. However, there was no more fascinating Georgestown resident than a woman whom I initially knew as Trixie, but later learned was named Marilyn Cooper.

Even if you don’t know her by name, if you’ve ever spent any time in the downtown core, you know who I mean: With her knee-high go-go boots, assortment of plush faux-fur jackets, and flyaway hair, Marilyn is perhaps the most easily recognizable citizen of St. John’s. And everyone seems to have a story to tell about her.

Since I lived around the corner from her, I had far more encounters with Ms. Cooper than most. Of all of these, one such encounter trumps all of my other ones combined, and it’s a story I’ve told countless times now.

It happened on one of those November nights where it’s not quite cold enough for the rain to freeze, and the damp and cold seems to get into everything. I was heading out into the night to have a drink with a friend up the road, when across Hayward Ave I spotted Marilyn standing in the rain, soaking wet and howling.

“Excuse me,” she called out. “Can you help me?”

I shuffled across the street to where she was standing, and asked what I could do for her. I won’t lie, it took some doing to figure out what she needed; she isn’t easy to communicate with.

She had been locked out of her house (which I assume was a group home). What she needed for me to do was walk down a narrow alley (and unless you’ve seen those row house alleys, you don’t know what I mean by narrow), prop a rickety ladder made from what looked like salvaged 2x4s against the back of her house, climb up to the second-story window, push it open, climb inside (did I mention the ladder connected with the side of the house a good two feet below the window sill?), go through her room into the main living space, walk downstairs, and open the front door for her.

Which I did. Conveniently, the eavestrough drained the water off the roof precisely above the window, so a torrent of icy water beat down on me while I was climbing the ladder, but I managed to pull off the whole operation without a wrinkle.

When I opened the front door for her, I was flushed with the thrill of having done a truly good deed (believe me, I felt it purchased me at least three months of outright selfishness). Although the whole exchange lasted barely three minutes, I left a different (and soaked) person.

Before this post turns into Sunday-school propaganda, let me just say it was this moment in my life that taught me what it meant to be a decent member of a community.

Which is why I’m so fond of Marilyn Cooper.

I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who’s had an unforgettable experience with her, either.

Looks like Marilyn’s been leaving indelible impressions for at least a decade. The following CODCO clip from 1990 contains an unmistakeable nod to one of St. John’s’ most recognizable citizens.

[Images via, via, via ]

Stuff Townies Like is a lovingly satirical examination of the unique and sometimes strange behaviour of townies. If you find yourself being described here, you’re in good company.

If there’s one thing that unites every long-time resident of St. John’s, it’s a deep and complete hatred for Mount Pearl. The incorporated municipality, which dangles like a hemorrhoid off the west end of St. John’s, has been inciting the ire of townies for decades.

Complaints for Mount Pearl range from its cookie-cutter aesthetic to the fact that the city can’t boast even a single elevator.

No matter what the reason for the hatred, you will instantly be welcomed into the townie fold if you disparage the Avalon’s second city with viper-like venom. In fact, anyone who tries to assimilate as a new townie is practically bound, as a condition of residency, to revile “that town on the other side of the Wal-Mart” with every fiber of their being.

No matter what area of St. John’s a townie lives in, be it Stabb Court or Carrick Drive, they will consistently declare their neighbourhood to be superior to any found in the Pearl. One of the integral aspects of townie-dom is the inherent knowledge that even the most menial squat in St. John’s is superior to the swankiest “executive cul-de-sac” in Shelbyville.

Saying things like “yeah, Hillview Terrace is a dive, but it beats the hell out of the commute from Cadiz Place,” will instantly win you credibility with the long-established townie. They may respond with something like “you’ll know you’re in Mount Pearl when you run out of class driving along Topsail Road.”

Needless to say, dating someone from Mount Pearl will blight your public townie image, and garner instant pariah status for your suburb-dwelling loved one. The trans-town relationship is therefore highly frowned-upon by the townie demographic, and is to be avoided at all costs.

Perhaps the thing that ruffles the feathers of a status-conscious townie most is the fact that most Mount Pearlians are perfectly happy living in their inoffensive, family-friendly conurbation. That they don’t recognize their own insignificance is, in the townie’s mind, unforgivable. A townie might be heard to protest “how are their children going to learn about the real world if there isn’t a chance their family’s car’s going to be broken into?”

It is useful to have on hand at least one hair-raising anecdote about driving into Mount Pearl and getting lost in its labyrinthine residential streets. A townie will instantly commiserate, relating their own tales of accidentally blundering into “the town without a soul.”

There are only a couple of reasons a townie will venture willingly into Mount Pearl. Foremost, a townie will make an annual vehicle registration pilgrimage into that most reviled of municipalities, owing to the fact that St. John’s doesn’t have a registry of its own. A townie might be heard to exclaim, after a harrowing trip to Smallwood Drive, “wow, the DMV is a total CHUD factory. Glad I don’t have to go there again for another year.”

Perhaps the only other justifiable reason for a townie’s ventures into Mount Pearl is seeing a movie at the cheap theatres at the Mount Pearl Shopping Center. If required to account for their actions, a townie will often be heard to exclaim, “well, you can’t expect me to pay $12 to see Duplicity at the Av. Seeing a movie at the dirt mall is one of the best bangs for $5 I can think of.”

No matter how little sense it makes, hating on Mount Pearl unconditionally is perhaps the most basic requirement for townie status. Even if you have fond relatives or friends there, it is best to downplay that fact. Say “yeah, they were always the black sheep of the family,” or “oh, so-and-so is my pity friend. One of those high-school obligations, you know?” You will command an instant bond with your fellow townie.

[Mt. Pearl map screencapped from Google Maps; small-town romance image via ]

While the launch party has come and gone, this only marks the beginning for Signal.

The spectacular space we put together last night has been dismantled, but our now brighter and shinier looking blog is here to stay.

Last night really was amazing. A very special and grateful thanks goes out to all the wonderful people who came, showing huge support and giving lots of great feedback, all the while partying their collective asterisks’ off.

Thanks to A1C for an amazing space, Janine Godwin for dolling it up Signal style, Leo van Ulden and Physical Patrick for surrounding us in sound, Quidi Vidi Brewing Company for hooking up the first people through the door with a frosty one, Ballistic (especially Jonathan Loder) for doing whatever it took to clad us in our stylin’ t-shirts just in time, Sois and Sloan for chukin’ up their art, Aaron Goulding for building our beautiful new site with his bare hands, Mark Bennett for freezing us in time, and Kerri Breen and Nathan Downey for their poetic justice.

And thank you for doing what you’re doing right now. Without you, last night never would have happened.

:::Darcy and Elsa:::

The first installment of SignalTV was launched at 9:00 tonight. Darcy’s and Elsa’s one-day efforts resulted in a hilarious take on St. John’s misconceptions.

Question to those readers who aren’t here with us and won’t see the video until latenight: Does George Street have the densest concentration of bars (per capita) in North America? Check out SignalTV; they attempt to probe this taken-for-granted issue.

Here at A1C, things are starting to get real. The DJs are breaking out their hottest tracks (sorry, no Chris Sheppard, but yes, this shit is off the chain for the Y2K).

Come down and check us out. We’ll be rocking out late-night style.

It’s about two and a half kilometers, give or take, between my place and my partner’s. Basically, to get from his to mine it’s a straight shot into the West End via Water Street. A simple physics equation tells me, uninterrupted and at the speed limit, the journey should take two minutes and eight seconds. Tack on two minutes for stoplights and parking, and you still have a nearly-effortless journey. Right?

Wrong. In fact, it’s been wrong since last summer at least. Construction along Water Street and/or Harbour Drive has wreaked havoc on the flow of traffic in and out of the downtown core since last summer, on and off. I can only recall one brief (and blissful) spell in which both Water Street AND Harbour Drive were free of construction, allowing my theoretical four-and-a-half-minute commute to be possible.

The City of St. John’s closed Harbour Drive down to thru-traffic April 16th in what will (optimistically) be the final stages of construction for the harbour cleanup.

While I think the harbour cleanup is a noble and long-overdue initiative, it’s hard to ignore the mayhem Harbour Drive’s closure has been causing for traffic on Water Street. On April 24th — which, as you’ll recall, was the first truly nice day of the year — it took me twenty minutes to traverse the short distance between Prescott and Waldegrave Streets along Water. This was at 3 p.m, not even peak hours. The CBC reported that the City of St. John’s had made a goal of August for completion of the Harbour Drive construction effort.

It looks like my Friday afternoon gridlock freakout might be a regular appointment up until August.

While my complaints could easily be dismissed as histrionics, for some, the daily gridlock caused by Harbour Drive’s closure could result real trouble. As the CBC reported, merchants (and, I editorialize, restaurant proprietors) on Water Street are concerned that this closure — and attendant traffic flow and parking issues — could result in a serious financial loss for the summer months.

With an already slumping economy (which we’re all sick of hearing about), could this interruption of commerce be the death knell for Water Street businesses?

I don’t think anyone will argue that the cleanup of the harbour — our friendly neighbourhood environmental disaster — is urgently required. And I suppose it’s comforting for frustrated commuters like myself that the end of our irritations is in the not-too-distant future. But I highly doubt business owners dependent on customer traffic will feel any such comfort between now and August.

[Image via ]

In the last couple of weeks, it looks like St. John’s has lost what I’m sure would have become a mainstay of the culinary and nightlife scenes. I’m speaking, of course, of The Vault: the handily located, beautifully appointed, yet now defunct restaurant and champagne bar on Water Street.

Rumours of just why this restaurant shut its doors have reached my ears in typical St. John’s fashion — from multiple sources. Because I haven’t seen any of the people associated with The Vault go on record, I’m not comfortable discussing what I’ve heard; but it certainly seems like its closing has generated gossip unrivaled since the drama surround the Gypsy Tea Room surfaced last summer.

Whatever the reason, be it sordid or mundane, I think it’s a damn shame it’s gone. All of my experiences at The Vault were extremely positive, and I’m not alone in thinking so: It received near universal praise from various media outlets in town, including a rave review from Darcy, our very own food-savvy blogger.

While I haven’t verified the real reason The Vault shut its doors, I do know one thing: St. John’s has lost a great spot to go for a classy nightcap, a high-end business lunch, or just a great meal.

As a small aside: I’d love for an independent bookstore or possibly a public library to open in the space The Vault once occupied; it’s something the downtown area sorely needs.

[Vault image via ]

It’s no secret that the survival rate for new restaurants is low. I’m not one to kick statistics around, but I’ve seen the figure ranging from conservative estimates of 60%, all the way to a pessimistic 90% failure rate, depending on the source.

And this is at the best of times. Most of this statistical data is obtained during fair economic weather, when conditions for opening a new business are optimal — otherwise, the sampling wouldn’t be very accurate.

Why, then, have several new restaurants opened up around town? Surely the owners aren’t so oblivious they haven’t heard we’re tits-deep in a recession. Right?

Of my varied and sundry interests, food ranks in the top five, right next to sex, friends, and music. Which is why I like to keep a firm eye on the culinary goings-on in St. John’s.

New on my radar is The Bird’s Nest, a buffet-style Chinese restaurant located at 16 Stavanger Drive. It’s the newest province in the empire of the owners of The Shanghai (regrettably undergoing renovations at present).

I personally had a fantastic meal at this restaurant. The food is as close to the Chinese cuisine of mainland Canada — that is to say, the least like the traditional Newfoundland one-plater — as is possible to find in this town.

Armchair microeconomist that I am, I fully predict this restaurant will be a success in spite of this pesky recession. I might even say because of it.

Consider the elements in the equation: The restaurant is inexpensive; $16 gets you a fountain drink and all the (delicious) Chinese food you can eat. It’s located in the heart of Big-box Land, otherwise known as suburbia.

It’s not hard to imagine the appeal of tasty, readily made Chinese food at inexpensive prices for a young family after a long day of furniture shopping.

Did I mention the decor is way better than it needs to be? It has the cafeteria feel typical of all all-you-can-stuff-in-your-face joints, but it embraces that theme and puts an eye-catching post-modern minimalist spin on it.

Add up all these elements and you have a very appealing sum, one I believe is more than capable of surviving, nay, thriving during the recession.

I checked some of the reviews on the Scope’s scoff guide; they are, in a word, mixed. I’d add a five-star review myself. For what it is, Bird’s Nest is fantastic.

[Bird nest image via]