I Forgot Why Regina Made Me Crazy All Summer

This will be a short post. I've been back for three days and the frustration of trying to have a social life in Regina has had a negative impact on each of them. Why is everything in Regina so damn far apart, with no good way to get in between them? The city is so disparate as to make it nearly impossible to, say, pick up a friend, go to Bushwakker (may-it-live-forever), and then get home again, without either massive taxi fares or driving drunk. How have none of the city's major attractions -- the university, Dewdney Ave., downtown, the East End's semi-entertaining conglomeration of eateries, 13th Ave -- managed to spawn a large enough nightlife corridor that an entire evening is possible within walking distance? Worse, how are none of these linked or close to residential areas?

I guess we don't realize, being spoiled by our adopted city's diverse and dense neighbourhoods, that we are lucky to be able to count on travelling to and from nightlife areas with relative ease, both on foot and by bus. Or are we? I think it's just ignorance that, for example, there are no busses that go down Dewdney Ave., or that Scarth Street only closes to vehicular traffic for the Farmer's Market? Not to belabour the point (because I really do, do, do love Regina, I do!) but we just need some good leadership on City Council to figure out how to make it possible to enjoy more than one of Regina's attractions in one night. Dinner at the Crushed Grape then drinks at Bushwakker and a 11 PM concert at McNally's should be a plausible evening, since they're all a stone's throw apart. It shouldn't have to involve 45-minute waits for taxis, a dark and scary stumble toward Albert Street hoping for bus luck, or (worst, and obviously not recommended) getting in a car with someone you know should really be passenging themselves.

No easy answers here, and a lot of it would require just closing off further expansion of the city till we fill the donut back up again. But some vision and leadership could make Regina an actually interesting city with huge possibilities for that very lucrative 20-to-40 demographic -- you know, the ones who actually like nightlife.

Just some thoughts.