Manitoba Links Weekly: Summer Fun, Cottage Booze, Plastic Bags, and... Adorable Propaganda? (ManLinkWeek 36)

I'm embedding the above largely for confirmation that it is indeed a real thing, because I'm still not entirely convinced that I haven't just hallucinated it. [via]

ManLinkWeek is go! These are busy times, my friends; it's summer in Winnipeg, and summer in Winnipeg means all rain all the time events:

[Winnipeg Sun: Cops warned of gang trouble at Ex]
[CTV Winnipeg: Security checks to be improved after pepper spraying at the Ex]
Yes, Red River Ex season is in full swing as I write this, and while its headline news has been less than flattering, the coverage has still been an improvement -- at least thus far -- over last year.

I was, in fact, at the Ex all yesterday evening (hence why you get this post today); I did not see any gang violence outbursts or pepper sprayings during my time their, nor did I run into Burton Cummings lurking around the main concert stage just in case he got the chance to leap aboard. But I did see the live neuterings, and there was a hilariously disproportionate buzz in the concert crowd about Spenny from Kenny vs. Spenny being somewhere in the audience, so it was not an uneventful evening.

So if you find yourself overly concerned about crime and violence at the Red River Ex, rest easy; I can assure you that you'll be fine, at least as long as you go on a weekday evening shortly before a massive downpour. You've never felt safer in your life! Crowds are sparser, lines are shorter, petting zoo visits are longer (the baby calf licked my hand eeeeeeeeee--wait, oh man, their tongues are weird, what is this), and stragglers from your group are easier to track down.

(I will give you fair warning on one front, though; if a ride indicates a certain maximum height, and you are exactly that maximum height, you should really still just not go on that ride. I'm down a couple of vertebrae and at least one fully functional knee from yesterday.)

The mainstage act of the evening was The Sheepdogs, who were pretty good (albeit not really my bag), and the stage was enveloped by a massive weed cloud within minutes of the set starting, because Winnipeg. Hooray for the Ex!

[My Life in Winnipeg: Jazz Winnipeg Festival]
The annual Jazz Winnipeg Festival is also currently ongoing, spanning ten venues and countless genres over a week and a half. Here are some show recommendations from DJ Hunnicutt! He seems to know a thing or two about music, that guy.

I dropped by Old Market Square on Sunday, primarily for the annual Moses Mayes set that concludes the opening weekend; a grand time was had by all, they have a new album coming out in September ("hopefully", one member clarified onstage), and the stage was enveloped a massive weed cloud within minutes of the set starting. Becaaaause Winnipeg.

[Winnipeg Free Press: Bombers to play entire season at Canad Inns Stadium]
[Urban Compass (Metro Winnipeg): Bombers have a lot more building to do]
fffffffpaaaaahhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha

Oh, man, we can't go a full week without something happening to this poor team, can we? This poor, stupid football club. It's going to be such a relief for them when the season proper starts up and the actual football play draws some attention away from the constant calamitous mishandling of organizational matters. It cracked me up pretty hard when the club's annual contact with its beloved season-ticket holders turned out to be an otherwise empty envelope with the year's allotment of tickets dumped into it, just one guy at the Bomber head office going "FINE >:(" and cramming loose handfuls of seat stubs into some empty-ass stationary holders they had lying around.

Still, we've all got rather used to supporting them, and we've all got rather used to them being a trainwreck, so it's time once again to grease up the rails and load up the cars for another year. It just so happens that I'll be taking in the preseason game tonight, at the stadium they swore they'd never use again; I haven't been to a Bombers game in I don't even know how long, so I'm quite looking forward to it. This ought to be a treat! And I got to go to a Jets game earlier in the year (another thing I hadn't done in a very long time, albeit for a different reason), so all I need now for the hat trick on the year is to go to the... to a, uh... oh, shoot. You know, baseball. The baseball team, with the parking lot. Those guys! Agh, this is going to bug me.

[Interlake Spectator: Gimli Liquor Mart building new store]
Good news for cottagers who enjoy drinking, which is to say "cottagers": the Gimli Liquor Mart is absorbing the former Big Putz Mini Golf location on Centre Street, moving a couple blocks up the road from its current location to establish a brand new building with about one and a half times the space of the previous one. (And I can confirm, from having been in it, that the previous store was pretty tiny indeed.) The new store is expected to be completed and open by spring of next year, so this will be the last summer of buying liquor out of what feels like a phone booth; enjoy it while you can! I'm sure the ol' store will be remembered fondl... well, I'm sure it will be remembered.

[National Post: Manitoba Hutterites: Photos offer rare glimpses of a community struggling with change (and related story)]
So you want to write a YA novel, but you haven't been able to decide on the setting, theme, characters, or plot? Bam! Here is everything you need. You're welcome!

(Do be nice to them when you write it, though; I had some Hutterites rescue me along the Highway when my previous car up and died for the very last time. Good people.)

[Love me, love my Winnipeg: Boundaries]
Winnipeg's North End, as understood by area residents, lies north of the CPR lines up to Carruthers or Matheson and west of the Red River up to McPhillips. Winnipeg's North End, as understood by our local media, is any area where crime happened last night. The residents seem less than thrilled by this.



Goldeyes! That's the baseball team. The Goldeyes! Right? With the mutant fish logo, and their mascot is a yellow something, and then a second yellow something in a dress because that one's a girl mascot. Unless I'm hallucinating, again. (Too many outdoor concerts.)

[Slurpees & Murder (Uptown Magazine): The Plastic-Oh-No bans]
[Metro Winnipeg: Plastic bag bans favoured by Canadians, including Winnipeggers: poll]
[Global Winnipeg: Plastic bags, composting, habitat protection all part of Manitoba green plan]
And, finally: much as I'd suspected when I originally wrote the article, plastic bag initiatives (if doing something because other places beat you to it is 'initiative') have indeed become a discussion leitmotif across the country after Toronto's wacky shenanigans on the file as late. So here's everything you need to know about plastic bags in Winnipeg: our Mayor supports a full ban but wants the Province to do it so he doesn't have to, because LEADERSHIP, and our Premier doesn't want to do it unless he's convinced that it won't make anybody upset, because LEADERSHIP.

That's as good a place as any to stop -- rather than get me started, anyway -- so that'll do it for this installment of ManLinkWeek! Be sure to tune in to 101.5 for WIPs tonight at 5:30 PM, and I'll see you folks around here again soon enough.