Raise the Hammer

I have to relate my experience last weekend with John Street being partially closed due to a road race, and trying to get a bite with my mom and brother to eat at one of our favourite places - Slainte on Saturday afternoon.

Upon ariving there, and wasting $5 for parking, we find that the restarurant is being used as a base for the road race, and after walking around the block to find the London Tap House and Tailgate Charlie's conveniently closed, we figured that our best nearby options for some decent food was the Undermount at Young just east of James. While this would have been about a ten minute walk, I had the car, and walking in the rain and wind didn't sound like fun, especially for my mom who finds it difficult to walk far in the best of conditions.

We head up Catharine to Young, and then at John we run into a friendly police officer who was there to protect the race course (the right lane down John) from traffic. We sat there for about 10 minutes, cop tells us it's unlikely we'll be able to get across with one runner after another coming down the mountain, so we decide to turn around.

Since all cross streets before Main were closed, to head west, we had to head down Walnut to King. Of course from King, there is no left turn onto James, and MacNab is closed for construction, so the first opportunity to turn back south was Caroline. After heading back east along Main, then up James, we finally made it to our destination.

The point of this story is, closing a single street - even a single lane down in a city so disorganized as Hamilton presents huge problems for those in cars who are trying to do even simple things like getting a plate of wings and a draught.

Maybe if the city gets rid of all those one way streets, these types of events will be less inconvenient. As a cyclist I'm 100% for Cyclovia and making things more pedestrian and bike friendly, but last weekend's experience helped me to realize where the city might be coming from here.