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Yesterday, I was asked by a downtown merchant to get answers to a few questions re: the new licensing bylaw. He made some salient points I hadn't really considered during our debate on the bylaw, in particular about the merchant displays on the main street:

• Does a merchant HAVE to use a tent? The bylaw says "shall" which suggest tents are mandatory. But not everyone wants to use one (especially for a one-day sale) or to incur the additional expense of having to buy or rent one. What if they don't want one? Can they just put merchandise curbside without a tent, say on a rack or table?
• ...

Paul Thurston, of Thurst's Cycle, pulled off his third annual Riders With a Cause/Wounded Warriors event today, with a bigger crowd than ever before. More than 200 bikes joined his Sunday morning ride with the Armed Forces vehicles leading. When they got back to the Pine Street parking lot, the place was full of bikes, soldiers, and visitors. I was impressed by both the number of people participating and the age range - from pre-teens to seniors.

The show 'n shine event had about 40 bikes registered, perhaps more; the silent auction had dozens of items, and there was live music, vendors, a fashion show and, of course, the Admiral's Post patio for beer and food. The Post, of course, is on private property so is not bound by the...

Susan and I spent a couple of days in Toronto this week, reversing the trend of coming north during the summer. We stayed downtown for a couple of nights and walked for several miles throughout the city - Kensington, Spadina, Queen Street West, Chinatown and more - enjoying the sights and sounds of a busy, multicultural city. There were two highlights of the trip: the Corktown Ukulele Jam, Wednesday night, and the Terracotta Warriors at the ROM, Thursday.
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Last week we had the chance to enjoy two really different types of music. Wednesday we went to the Station (aka the museum) for the weekly Jazz at the Station event. We watched Bobby Dean Blackburn, a great R&B and jazz pianist/vocalist with a drummer and two sax players. Free event, and well-attended, although Frank McNulty told me the crowd of 200-250 was lower than their usual 300-350 group.



A generally older crowd, and a bit sedate (although a group of mouthy 10-12 year-olds ran through the audience shouting obscenities during the performance). Nothing, of course, compared to the much larger crowd of several thousand that attended the annual street event downtown for the Elvis Festival:


Elvis is, or course, a great...

You'd think, from reading the media reports on Canadians' opposition to the government over the Long Form Census that Stephen Harper's Conservatives were taking governance lessons from Collingwood Council. As in: Governance 101: How to Ignore Public Opinion.

This week, an Angus Reid poll...

Oops. This week council was asked to respond to an email that identified a few significant snags in our new licensing bylaw that affect numerous downtown restaurants and merchants just as they start to set up for the annual Elvis Festival. Seems we had a few more hiccups with out new licensing bylaw.

First, was the requirement for permits. Seems that not everyone who wanted to erect a tent or patio downtown managed to get an application in on time. We were told staff weren't sufficient to handle all of the expected applications (recall that putting out even a simple table or rack of clothes requires a permit now!). So council was asked to forgive them for the weekend.

I agreed, although I'm not sure where the staffing...

I was more than a little surprised on Monday to hear Councillor Jeffrey comment that, if restaurant owners put their application in right away, they were very likely to get liquor licences from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission (AGCO) in time for the Elvis Festival, next weekend. Assuming, that is, they wanted to move, or could afford the curbside patio (so far, none have done so).

Surprised because that festival was less than two weeks away from her announcement. AGCO licences usually take at least 30 days to process, usually much longer. Yet she made that announcement July 12, and she had received an email from the BIA, on July 7 that said in part:

"...

Remember back in 2007 when the consultant who prepared our commercial review told us this area (our town, our neighbours and our visitors) could easily support another 500-600,000 sq. feet of commercial sprawl development on the west edge of town? And the majority of council nodded their heads in agreement like dashboard bobbin heads?

I contested that. Back then I posted about the over-crowding of retail in the community, and what I saw as numbers skewed to justify the additional development (posts September, November and December, 2007 and June, 2008). When I analyzed the consultant's numbers, I arrived at rather different conclusions.

Well this week, a different consultant told us that the region actually has more...

Sean, of Duncan's Cafe in Cllingwood, sent me this ad he plans to run in the local newspapers. He gave me permission to post it here.

I don't think I need to comment - the ad says it all.

Most of you know I play the ukulele. For 40-plus years before I discovered the uke, I played the guitar. I was never very good on the guitar: my passion for making music far exceeded my technical skills. But I had a passion for playing music that has sometimes translated itself into a variety of instruments, from flutes to sitar. I've managed to develop my musical skills somewhere between mediocre and adequate. But I love playing almost beyond my love for writing.

Since I discovered the ukulele, more than two years ago, I've been working hard to learn a lot of the music from the 1920s through to the 50s. It's music my parents would have known. Odd how that happened. I still play a lot of the music from the 1960s-70s, but I am...