Monday, October 16, 2017

Today looks like a good day for walking, tomorrow not so good. Although if I enjoy today, I can brave a few showers tomorrow.

The plan for today is to drive downtown, park, and walk the streets. I will drop my useless-to-me Metrobus pass off at the Salvation Army which is close to the foot of highway#2, an expressway from the hotel in Conception Bay South. We will see how fast an artery this is. As well I will extend the car rental two days and then ...

After making a brief summary of costs and finding that I am way under budget, I have few qualms about driving into town and parking all day. If I find a barber shop I’ll get a trim. I have abandoned the idea of riding Public Transit in St John’s.

The Peacekeepers Way, aka Pitts Memorial Highway, aka highway #2 terminates near the lower left corner of this map image. A railway museum is just to the south, the Salvation Army just to the north. I have already visited the Visitor Information Centre, but may drop in and ask a question about Metrobus, if a different, more helpful lady is on duty today. After that I shall explore Harbour Drive, Water and Duckworth Streets and then come home along #2, maybe beating the afternoon rush.

For a fun afternoon, try finding out who he was with a Google Search for “who was James Stewart Pitts?”

I Have been remiss in recording my impressions of accommodation, so here are two shots of my hotel room. The room is comfortable, albeit the furniture tends to be shabby. There are two reading lamps, each equipped with what Bill Bryson would call “The standard French seven-watt light bulb”. The halogens are brighter than that, but I have to remove the lampshades to have enough light to read by.

The other end of the room. Despite the apparent brightness, it is impossible to type here at night, because there is no entrance light. I have to lug the bedside light over here, and that means pulling out the bedside cabinet and then unplugging the fridge, there being a shortage of power points.

Of course, I am supposed remember to plug the fridge in after I’ m done with the laptop ...

Here is the view from the room’s window. The trees are in the adjoining property, the fence is about three feet away from the window. No car park at the back! I learned later that the hotel owner lives in the house. Note that I have pretty good privacy with my curtains drawn open, and I know I mentioned this elsewhere, but the windows can be opened to allow fresh air to circulate. Hooray!

I drove into town on highway 2, left here at 10:05 and by 10:45 had cruised looking for the Salvation Army, parked, found the entrance, handed over the card, driven to a parking tower and parked on the top floor. That is SO different from Toronto.

By 12:12 I was out of the parking tower and on Highway 2 headed back to the motel.

You can stroll Water street in 20 minutes, 20 minutes back along Duckworth Street. I spent some time in Solomon Grundy’s trying to eat my way through a breakfast of sausage, bacon, eggs, hash-browns and toasted on-site baked bread.

Two hours was all it took really to drive into town, explore the two main streets, eat breakfast, and drive back.

It being Monday many, but not all, places were closed.

The first of several shots taken from the fifth (top) floor of the parking garage. To the left the final off-ramp from highway 2; to the right, the Salvation Army.

Oddly, most parking spaces are marked “Reserved”. I thought that strange for a public parking facility.

St John’s has a tower crane! What a change from Toronto where no matter where you stand in the downtown core you see a minimum of four tower cranes, sometimes as many as eight or even more.

I walked around the top floor of the parking garage. This photo is your chance to thank me for not posting the other fifty-three shots I took of my groin, bum, other leg. Stupid camera!

I began by re-visiting the Visitor’s Information Centre across the street. Same lady. She remembered me. Odd, because I hadn’t at that time met Metrobus and hadn’t learned that driving by car partway back to where I’d started my day would not net me a map.

Well, she remembered me, and I found myself thinking “Gee. I don’t ever have to return to this office, this lady”, so I made the comment that I found it irrational that a public transit agency would deliver large printed maps to themselves, but not make copies available to the wandering public.

To my surprise, she agreed with me, and while I was re-assembling my thoughts, she counter-punched with “A great many visitors say that, and I agree with them” or similar words.

Staggering on the ropes I found myself switching to her side, all the wind being taken out of my sails (but replenished handily an hour later on Duckworth Street).

There are still supply vessels in the harbour. The hilly ridge in the background is a protecting wall of the harbour, and makes a beautiful backdrop.

A view towards The Narrows. And yes, Signal Hill.

A view across town.

Note the multi-coloured buildings, so much more attractive than the modern glass buildings.

A view eastwards along Water Street. I will walk to just past the circled building labeled “Canada”, extreme right-hand side of this image.

In the lobby of the parking garage, a facsimile and story text of the Black Island Punt .

Four panels tell the story here.

And I set off. To my delight the traffic lights include a realistic countdown timer that starts up around sixty seconds.

This one started at about 64 seconds. Times vary from one intersection to the next. Has St John’s analyzed data and fine-tuned each set of lights?

Well. I am a resident of Toronto where we have learned that countdowns or not, you are way safer crossing mid-block than at the intersections, for at the intersections every driver and his dog is staring to the left, looking for a gap in the high-speed traffic, while simultaneously twisting the steering wheel to the right and flooring the accelerator.

So I cross mid-street.

St John’s drivers are either believably kind or incredibly docile; I lean towards the former. Whenever I stood between two parked cars eyeing the street (Mother: Look right, look left, look right again”; Instructor: The only think a flashing turn-signal indicator tells you is that the lamp bulb is working”), all drivers came to a halt. The driver approaching from the right, the driver approaching from the left and, if within ten yards of an intersection, drivers approaching from above and below.

I, of course, an imbecile from The Mainland stood there wondering if Newfies really were stupid enough to believe that a Four-Way Stop sign means that since there was no “One Way Can Go Now” sign meant that they could never move again ....

Newfoundlanders are not stupid. (Please see “poles were wrapped in large sheets of something like butchers paper” below), and after a while I knew that waiting on the sidewalk for a gap meant I wouldn’t be able to see a gap, and so getting with the citizens and crossing at crosswalks was the only real option if everyone was to be able to continue about their business.

Crossing at a crosswalk in St John’s means that drivers will respect you, give you distance, let their own schedules be deranged.

I am of the conclusion that Newfoundlanders are the most polite and intelligent community in North America. You can safely disregard all jokes about Newfies not thinking clearly.

I am reminded that North Americans often say that “The French are rude”, but this is only because Americans do not understand that French Courtesy is rooted in fifteenth-century rles of behaviour, which does not allow for bull-in-a-china-shop mentality.

But I digress.

Again.

Along Water Street it seemed as if one out of every twenty shops was vacant. These two are clustered together for company.

The name of this shop? café? Caught my eye. Clever!

The sometimes bright, sometimes muted colours are appealing to my eye.

Here is a modern downtown hotel. I decided to check the rates and compare them to my coastal-strip motel out in The Boonies.

Not one of the construction crew would quote me a price.

I took this shot to remind me to look up how St John’s came to be nick-named Fogtown. Was it a play on Toronto’s “Hogtown” moniker? No. This is a barbershop and it was open today. I had forgotten about my trim-and-a-chat. Rats!

More coloured houses. The green and yellow house on the right reminded me of a model locomotive I assembled at age fourteen in LNER livery .

A view of the entrance to the harbour, called The Narrows.

More coloured houses.

I started walking west along Duckworth and was puzzled by City Councils attempt to close off the footpath.

Stepping back you can see an alternate route with both steps and ramp.

A view looking back. Steps up, ramp up, then sidewalk blocked with garbage bins.

But locals are undeterred and calmly walk up steps and into the roadway.

A colour scheme that reminded me of Brighton UK, although I’ve not been there, so ...

The beige building in the background is where I will eat brunch, but I did not know that at the time I took the photo.

Here I am in the Bernard Stanley Gastropub taking a break from brunch and watching workmen dis-assemble scaffolding from that candy-icing building.

,

The wind picked up something awful, and most of the utility poles issued the tinkling sound of dry paper, the poles were wrapped in large sheets of something like butchers paper.

The cylinder is held in place with red adhesive tape.

Three out of four poles wrapped here.

And on the other side of the street.

I asked “Why?”

The council decided it was easier to strip posters periodically if they merely had to strip away a cylinder of paper and replace it with fresh paper.

How clever.

Why can’t Torontonians be this smart?

A view back eastwards along Duckworth Street.

I think that this is the first plaque I have seen vandalized, and even so, the vandal wasn’t too proficient. It looks like an overgrown cigarette burn.

I am on the north side of Duckworth, looking back to my turning-point, what I now think is the Canada Revenue Agency building.

As in all cities, each face of the clock tower tells a different time.

Duckworth and Water and Gower streets are linked by narrow laneways, riddled with steps. Note the iron hand-railing.

Another laneway leading from Duckworth up to Gower.

The building on the left has been re-faced in the street’s style. The building on the right is an abomination and ruins a part of a beautiful street.

My point of origin. I took photos from the top floor of the parking tower.

From Duckworth, looking across Water Street, I see one of the many ships and the hills as a backdrop. Satisfyingly Interesting, to me.

Another example of a building re-faced in style and a modern building that could be bulldozed and I wouldn’t miss it.

Which makes me wonder what would happen to a downtown core if council bulldozed every store that has been idle for six months and replaced it with a grassy parkette. Presumably that would move towards a balanced use of the streets.

Here the chains have taken over the ground floor, but the building has been allowed to retain its original style.

And so back to the parking garage. My ticket said “Pay before you return to your car”, but I had seen no pay-stations on my drive up the ramps to the 5th floor. I found a pay station right by the exit booms, parked the car, and negotiated the skill-testing machine.

I inserted my parking ticket, inserted my credit card, struggled to use the recessed numeric key pad, and the machine spat out a printed receipt onto the muddy ground. I stooped to pick up the soiled receipt, and removed my credit card, and thought “What now?”. The machine was beeping at me but with no visible message (such as “Do Not Pass GO”).

I walked across the lanes and found a young man in the office who told me that:-

(1) The machine had re-issued my ticket (but later on I saw it extruded just the leading 3/16th of an inch of it. I hadn’t spotted that) and

(2) He was the source of the beeping, trying to catch my attention (but I had heard only intermittent beeping, no human voice) and

(3) The ticket was now good for raising the boom.

I wasn’t born yesterday. I got in the car and drove to the boom BEFORE inserting the ticket!

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