Enough with the bar streets

Honestly, some kid my age wrote a piece last week and it's STILL getting letters to the editor. (Stay tuned tomorrow when the FreeP no doubt prints letters in support of Gail Asper's lame letter of the day.)

The new development in the "bar street" saga is a letter in today's paper, saying "screw bar streets, let's make an ARTS street!"

I think this speaks more broadly to Winnipegger's psyche: we don't know what we have and we don't know how to APPRECIATE what we have.

Bar street? Gail's tired legs can't walk her from the Kings Head to Whiskey Dix to Alive? Or does she think it's too dangerous? I was at the Lo Pub on Friday, talking with Bryan Webb (frontman of the Constantines) and it was really uplifting hearing him talk about the things he liked in our city. Really, we have tons of bars and pubs.

And now, an ARTS STREET? You've got to be shitting me. You know what Winnipeg has? ALL of our arts venues are DOWNTOWN! How awesome is that? We have the Art Gallery, RWB, Pantages, MTC and the Warehouse all downtown. All our music venues are downtown, The Garrick, The Walker, The Albert, Concert Hall, MTS Centre, and the WECC a couple blocks outside downtown proper.

I think that when people live in this city for as long as they do, it becomes easy to forget the positives. Forget what Winnipeg has going for it. Do people not get out much after the age of 30 around here or what?

I'll offer a hypothesis to why we don't have a "bar street."

We don't have a (NHL) hockey team.

The way an NHL team unifies cities in this country is astounding. The whole city gets behind the team, the games are sold out, if you can't go to a game you go to a bar/pub to watch. After the game you go out. For away games you go out to watch the game, have a few beers, order some wings. It's why Calgary has the "Red Mile" and why Montreal is in riot-mode following a playoff win.

An NHL team in Winnipeg? Bettman be damned. The MTS Centre, in the perfect location, downtown. If an NHL team came here, bars and pubs a plenty would spring up, basing high-income nights on those 82 regular season games and bracing themselves for playoffs.

If you want a bar street, we need to have something to have a bar street FOR. Having it for young punks getting their first taste of alcohol is not just reason, neither is Gail Asper having to walk a couple of blocks.

If a bar street is to materialize, it will be based on free enterprise making it happen. Read: DEMAND.

In the meantime let's focus on the positives in town.