Spring is in the air

The temperature hit 14-degrees Centigrade today in London, Ontario. Nice. The snow is melting, the roads are bare and folk can be seen walking everywhere throughout my neighbourhood.

You might notice in the above picture that people walk both on the sidewalk and on the street. A modern suburb, the streets are laid out in crescents and courts, with a few long, meandering roads servicing all. The heavy traffic is on the long, meandering roads. The remainder, the feeder streets are relatively quiet. For that reason, people often ignore the sidewalks.

I have touched on this in the past, but I'm going to flog this one more time. Suburban neighbourhoods like mine are walkable places. It is often a myth that downtown cores are more walkable places to live than the suburbs.

In fact, if you think about it, many downtown cores are horrible places to walk. Few stores to walk to but a gauntlet of street beggers that must be run.

Costco moves massive amounts of product

I hated Costco. I could not understand why thousands of Londoners (London, ON) packed the large warehouse-like store every weekend. Then my wife went there with a friend with a membership. My wife saw the prices and I saw the quality of the stuff she brought home. I understood.

Still, I resisted going to Costco. I wouldn't even go with her friend. And then I came across an article in The New York Times: How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart. I try to never buy anything at Wal-Mart.

Google Costco yourself. What you find may surprise you. It surprised me.

I've now been to the giant, warehouse store. I bought pickles. Montreal made pickles. Canadian made pickles. Costco didn't seem to carry those awful made-in-India pickles. The Montreal pickles are  wonderful except for one drawback. The jar is warehouse sized. The big question is "Can I eat all these pickles before they go soft?" If you have to toss 'em, they aren't a bargain.

So, I also picked up some Montreal smoked meat. It too was very good and there was enough to make lots of Reubens.

I went to the locally owned Angelo's and got some proper freshly baked bread, some deli mustard, some good sauerkraut and some real Swiss cheese. I returned home to make Reubens.

Interesting, I thought. Thanks to my Costco purchases I spent a small bundle at Angelo's.

Apartment building taking shape

I don't understand city planning. This apartment building is going up right next to a plaza with two banks, one credit union, a drugstore, a couple of restaurants, a fitness centre and a number of other commercial businesses. Why not put some of that commercial on the first floor of this large building, place some offices possibly on the second floor and then stack apartments on top?

As it is, this apartment is situated outside of the residential area and next to the commercial. It sits immediately beside a major east/west traffic artery. When I was a boy apartment buildings were nestled tightly into residential neighbourhoods. The apartments blocks were not quite so tall but they were still big compared to the nearby housing.

I like the idea of apartment living but I rarely like the way it is delivered. There are reasons many of us opt for a single family dwelling.

From the back new houses can look identical

Keeping construction costs down is important. Drive along a new suburban street and the homes often look similar in size but they seem to differ in design, but looks can be deceiving. Get a view of the back and sometimes the similarities are striking. In some cases, it appears one design has been repeated again and again with only the front facade changing from home to home.

Is this bad? Actually, no. Building a row of similar homes in the past was not uncommon. It kept construction costs in check back then and it keeps them in check today. My guess is that this approach to controlling costs results in fine quality homes at a competitive price.

On walking to the restaurant or bank or drug store

I believe the new Dolcetto is a locally owned business. The Italian diner is very handy to my suburban home. As can be seen from this picture, beside the Docetto there is a TD Canada Trust branch and next to that there is a Shoppers Drug Mart.

The common criticism of suburbia is that there are no businesses one can walk to. But there often are, as you can see from my pictures. But, do many folk walk to this shopping center. I'd bet the answer is no. Whether the folk live right across the street or some blocks away, I'd bet most residents of the neighbourhood take a car to the little, outdoor mall.

Is this all that much different from downtown? I doubt it. When I took my wife out for dinner recently, we went to one of our favourite downtown places. Of course, we drove, and I'll bet everyone in the diner that night drove.

When I was a kid we walked. I walked, my mother walked, the neighbours walked. Was this because the stores were even closer to our older, traditional neighbourhood? No. It was because back then lots of folk didn't have a car readily available for a quick, short trip to the store. Walking wasn't done by choice, life demanded one walk and walk and walk some more.

Sort of a snowman

Making a snowman is a winter must if you're a kid in London, Ontario. This winter has not been great for rolling the giant balls of snow suitable for making a large snowman. There have not been a lot of days offering good packing snow.

Today we could get the snow to stick and pack but it wouldn't roll along picking up layers of snow. The snowman had to been build one mitten of snow at a time. A carrot for the nose, some olives for the eyes  and some olives and bird seed for the mouth and we were almost done. A couple of windshield ice scrapers for arms and Pinky Pie was done.

I didn't name her. And yes, our snowman is a girl according to Fiona.

Downtown almost dead; Suburbia dull

At first I wanted to title this post "Downtown dead; Suburbia deadly dull." It had a good sound but it wouldn't have been true.

The downtown in London, Ontario, is sad but there are glimmers are good stuff to be found in the aging core: some fine restaurants, the central library design is brilliant and the arena/entertainment centre is one of the best in North America in a city the size of London.

And suburbia is often neat, clean, safe and handy. Saying suburbia is dull parrots an all-too-common description but it isn't really true. This little commercial strip sits beside my bank. I can get a ring re-sized, have my eyes checked, go for physio treatments, attend a Weight Watchers meeting or do a lot of other important stuff all in this one little shopping centre. To call this little commercial centre dull is somewhat true but it is hardly a full and accurate description.

As I have said before, what puzzles me is that we build stores without using the space above. We sprawl out and fail to expand up. A hundred years ago, stores like these would have had apartments above them. When I was a boy I worked at the neighbourhood drugstore and the one counter lady lived in an apartment above some stores. It was a nice little place full of lovely wood trim and real wood doors. It was small but it had style and class and it was affordable.

That lady took the bus to and from work. Her apartment, located on a main commercial street, encouraged taking the bus or even just walking.