GCTC’s gone from Preston and Gladstone to its new digs in Hintonburg. Now there’s a huge dumpster out front.

It’s an interesting corner if you slow down and you have a camera with you. I never noticed this mural out back of Caffé Italia across the street.

Next door to GCTC is Green Papaya. I don’t know why they have a picture of grapes in their parking lot. I don’t think grapes figure prominently in classic Thai cuisine.

On the other side is Dragon Auto Services.

Down the street you have Krishna Auto Repairs. If I lived on Preston St. I might have a hard time deciding if I wanted Krishna or Dragon to fix my car. If I had a car.

That place in behind Krishna used to be Hummingbird. When did it become Open Text?
Updated later: Well obviously, all I had to do is Google it. “Open Text swallows Hummingbird.” August, 2006.

Lots of changes on Preston. One of the biggest is this Irish pub going in just a block from the Prescott. It isn’t open yet.

This Starbucks, which is open,

is right across from Johnny Guido’s.

These changes will dilute the Italian character of Preston, but that was already happening with such newcomers as Green Papaya and Stone Face Dolly’s. I think it’s good that Preston is booming, with its great location leading up to Dow’s Lake, even if it won’t be quite as homogeneous as it used to be.

Down at the farm, this guy James Fletcher had a drinking fountain dedicated to him by the Field Naturalists Club around 1908…

with his face on it and everything. Must have been quite a guy.

Naturally I googled him. There’s lots about him here. It says, “His letters, which are bound in annual volumes, occupy about 2.5 m of shelf space in the Public Archives at Ottawa.”

2.5 m of shelf space! His letters! I wonder how much shelf space my letters are going to get. Maybe they’ll give me 1 mm for the one I wrote from camp when I was 11 ;)

Actually I used to write a lot of letters, up until email came along. I wonder if nowadays, somebody like James Fletcher would get to have his emails in the archives. Probably not. You don’t see many commemorative drinking fountains nowadays either.

Gladstone and Bronson

The palatial new Petrocan station is open now. That was really quick, just a few weeks between shutting down the old one and opening this one.

I dropped in to the Super Stop convenience store looking for some bacon, but they didn’t have any. It’s the kind of convenience store that is very convenient if you’re looking for potato chips or pop. Otherwise you might as well conveniently walk down to Hartman’s.

(I found some bacon at the 7-11, just a block away, but it was disgustingly sweet. “Maple cured,” yuch! You don’t want to eat that stuff. So I had to go to Hartman’s in the end.)

Across the street the old Stone Face Dolly’s has closed its doors, only to reopen as Jak’s Kitchen. I didn’t go in.

Caribbean Flavours

The West Indian place on Somerset near Preston burned down this week. Today I went out to get a picture, but there was nothing left. Just an empty lot with a bulldozer sitting on it, and next door the Joyful Land Buddhist Centre.

Joyful Land isn’t looking so joyful at the moment, but they are definitely lucky the fire was confined to one building.

Year of the Pig

I almost forgot to blog the Chinese New Year lion dance on Feb.18. It was a very modest dance, just one little lion and a few guys with drums and gongs and stuff.

Many people mistake this for a dragon dance. Nah, it’s a lion. What happens is that the lion goes around to all the Chinese businesses, which have to feed it a head of lettuce and an envelope containing money. The drums and gongs make a big ruckus as the lion devours the lettuce and stashes the envelope. This guarantees a year of good luck for the businesses and a year of prosperity for the martial arts clubs that provide the lions.

It was one of those very cold days. Maybe that’s why it was such a small parade. It was so cold that the lion kept getting invited inside the restaurants. I didn’t feel like going into the restaurants, so I didn’t get much for pictures. Here’s the lion emerging from Yangtze stuffed with lettuce and dim sum.

It seems to me they do this whole thing again at another time of year, when the weather is better. I don’t know when it is. My landlord, who is Chinese, was muttering about it once. “Supposed to be at New Year’s,” he grumbled. The Chinese are very pragmatic people (except for my landlord), so it doesn’t seem that odd that they would move the lion dance to another season when they can expect to get a better turnout. Maybe we should move Christmas over to July.

Anyway, here is another picture of Ottawa’s ragged little lion dance. CBC radio producer Kate Porter was there with her microphone, recording the ruckus for a sound bite. That’s her on the left as the lion heads into Ben Ben looking for the lettuce and the loot.

What else?

I saw this sign at a house on McLeod. Maybe it’s a sign of spring.

I like it when people paint their bikes in strange colours. It shows a refreshing lack of vanity and it makes the bike less stealable. Here’s a handsome pink polka-dotted one I came across.

This isn’t really graffiti because it’s done with a stencil, but I like it anyway. I don’t know what Broken Wing is. A band?

You’ll have to excuse me while I go nuke some bacon. Bye for now!