Manitoba Links Weekly: Uneasy, Definitely Safe, and Like Budweiser But Worse (ManLinkWeek 22)

ManLinkWeek! ManLinkWeek! Party time! Excellent! wait this reference is twenty years old, what am I doing

[The LAngside Times: An uneasy neighbourhood]
This is important, and you should read it.

I've mentioned previously, across various media, that I'm fascinated by how entrenched and yet how arbitrary our distinctions between neighbourhoods are; cross over Portage, or Main, or Sherbrook, or Arlington, or Osborne, or Plessis, or probably a dozen other streets employed as informal boundaries, and you are expected to believe that by doing so you have changed absolutely everything about your surroundings. Income levels, property values, social codes, and community values are now completely different because you were south of Inkster and now you are north of Inkster -- and don't you just feel so much safer, up here? Oh, not nearly as dangerous as it is down there. No, you're better off here.

It's a very curious social phenomenon, and a multifaceted one. Impressions and expectations will differ depending on one's own internal workings and feelings and background, as the post above touches on, but are very likely also influenced by the physical space and the lay of the land and the decisions made when the area was originally planned. I know I get pissed off by neighbourhoods that are endless loops of curved streets and cul-de-sacs, and while there are probably psychological and socioeconomic reasons behind this disdain, a lot of it just stems from the very obvious annoyance of trying to find the right address when it feels like you're driving around in a frigging Escher linograph.

[Winnipeg... one great city (or so they tell me): Disraeli Freeway. The story is full of holes.]
Speaking of neighbourhoods, and speaking of feeling uneasy, here is a very close and very telling look at the definitely-safe, conclusively-not-unsafe Disraeli Bridge. The fun home game with this post is to look at each included picture of the bridge and, as convincingly as you can, cheerfully announce "Oh, good, this looks safe."

[One Man Committee: New theatre for the Exchange District]
If you had to repaint the Towne Cinema 8 on Princess Street, what colour of paint would you use? If you answered "all of them, paint all the colours", I think you're going to dig the proposed upcoming redesign. I'm not sure I'm convinced that a fresh coat of paint (or, in this case, a fresh coat of paint and then what appear to be lines of plasticine) is going to hide the building's resemblance to a concrete harmonica, but what do I know, I'm not a designer.

Hey, are there still any arcade games left in the Towne? I haven't been inside that place since... uh... wow, I just made myself feel old, never mind.

[The Brew Master (Uptown Magazine): This Bud's by you]
So the much-ballyhooed marketing exercise of Budweiser Winnipeg Jets Fan Brew was a wild success, and I am disappointed in all of you. But how does the special-edition cash grab actually taste? According to a professional wine and beer taster who conducted a series of blind tests, it tastes like Budweiser but worse.

Like Budweiser. But worse.

Good job, everyone.

[probrewer.com: Cellar Person Required at Half Pints Brewing Company, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada]
In other beer news, Half Pints is looking for anyone who might happen to have a brewer's education and a degree in microbiology. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as an "American Brewer's Guild" until I read this employment posting, and now I'm in that awkward interim phase where I haven't looked it up yet but I know that I'm inevitably going to and I know it isn't going to be nearly as much fun as what my imagination came up with.

[The Black Rod: The prosecution of Mark Stobbe. What's behind this travesty?]
Look, man, I'm not going to lie to you: as soon as this case and its related coverage began to focus, seemingly entirely, around Mark Stobbe's... distinctive body shape, I started reading everything about it with a Scott Steiner voice in my head and now I can never take this story seriously ever again. Just, nope, I'm sorry, I'm out. (This also means that, if the closing arguments involve any math, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to lose it.)

[Winnipeg O' My Heart: Music & Lyrics]
And, finally -- if you drew up a personal top ten list of songs by Manitoba artists, what would it look like? Mine would be all eleven tracks on the New Meanies' Three Seeds album and then two pages of me agonizing over which song to drop, which is precisely why I'm glad somebody other than me did this list.

Thank you for reading ManLinkWeek!