When I was in high school, the city was divided North-South. The Northenders had mullets, drove Camaros, wore tight black jeans, and listened to heavy metal. They parked their Camaros in the Toys-R-Us parking lot and compared engines of a Friday night. The Southenders were rich, snobby preps who studied for their IB exams and/or got drunk at basketball games of a Friday night - or so my Eastender husband tells me. I would have painted the Southenders differently, being one.
At the time, the East End was dead to me. It only had one high school and a lame mall. It was a non-entity.
Twelve years later, I fear the East End. It is a bloating, teeming, florid conglomeration of our neediest, most thoughtless desires. Feeling lonely, and in need of a new coffee table for a pick-me up? Drive your SUV down a warren of poorly-planned, treeless roads to an Ikea knock-off box store. Want a glass column filled with coloured pebbles for your coffee table? Visit one of many dollar stores or craft bazaars. Crave a faux Italian eating experience? Select from several chain restaurants with patios overlooking neighbouring concrete parking lots. Still not happy? Why not? Don't you live in an enormous beige stucco pasteboard house overlooking mud flats on the eastern edge of the city? Is your daily solo commute downtown not quite long enough to prove that you live in the most desirable eastern location?? Is your lawn sprouting a weed???
I have a feeling this will be the first of a few posts about the east end.
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Ah, the east end. The Critic has described it well. Though I don't live in the queen city, I fondly remember the east end when it was only a collection of modest bungaloes , low income condo style slums and the Peavy Mart, God bless it. Now even Peavy has moved further east. Sigh. At least the big box stores are where the rich folk don't have to drive so far to get to them to buy their endless supply of plastic crap. Saves the environment, you know...
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