Raise the Hammer

Who, me?!

My wife has informed me, 'we're never moving again'. After 5 houses in 10 years I think I might have to agree... :)

As for Myrcurial's points - don't get me started either... I once waited 40 minutes for a bus, from Dundas to Hamilton on a SATURDAY night, only to be told that the downtown restaurant I was going to closed early in the Summer...!!

I often asked myself, when I lived in the Hammer, 'what kind of town is this?'. It's easy to be judgmental when you've lived in a 'grown up' town (as Ryan calls Montreal in his latest blog) but in truth the experience of living in Hamilton, for me, was, in the end, more exasperating than engaging. This was due to all those 'little' experiences like the one Myrcurial mentioned and the one I described.

Come to think of it, now you mention it, there is a long list of 'Little Exasperations' that separate Hamilton from proper gown up towns:

• no trees in the North End (and none on the north side of Main Street in the east end) – why can’t Hamilton see the value in growing the city’s canopy?
• having to change buses all the time, just to get from A to B - even in a straight line! Why can’t Hamilton have a transit system that works?
• Two-way streets…how long does this debate have to go on before somebody twigs?
• Garbage and condoms along Hamilton beach – it’s a public place!
• Centennial Parkway and Upper James – what were we thinking?
• The Lister Block – my heart sinks every time I see a neglected old building
• Nowhere to pub crawl – I once tried it from Theatre Aquarius to Slainte in the snow. There was nowhere to go (and Slainte was full)
• Gore Park ‘Festivals’ – I took the family to see the finale of ‘Hamilton Idol’ a few years ago. You could hardly hear the singers for the sounds of the traffic and the generator behind the stage. And the generator spewed black smoke all over the 50 or so folks who had bothered to attend. Not exactly world class entertainment
• Remembrance Day ceremonies – I was horrified to find, on attending my first Gore Park ceremony a few years back, that the King Street traffic was not held back. The sparse crowd was squashed onto the south side of King. When the cannon went off to mark the 1 minute silence it set off a car alarm about 50 feet away…only in Hamilton

OK, so now I feel guilty for dissing Hamilton but the truth is, like Mercruial says, it’s these little things that separate a grown up town from an angst ridden teenager. The good news is that they ain’t so hard to change (although you wouldn’t know it, if you ever attended a Hamilton council meeting…)

Cheers!

Ben