Halifax
Q. How do Canadians mug people?
A. Apparently by taking 30 of their best friends and jumping you in a dark alley. What they lack in firepower being made up, apparently, with a whole lot of fists. At least, this is what someone told me on my first night in Halifax: rumors swarmed that whole gangs of restless youth were engaging in a little bit of street capitalism with any bastard unlucky enough to walk down the wrong road at the wrong moment.
Plus Canadians – at least those stuck on the Atlantic seaboard during winter – tend to be on the short side; so needless to say, I was excited about the prospect of matching my soft and relatively untrained fists against some sort of Midget Massive Attack. A little bit of revenge for burning my hometown during the War of 1812.
(Speaking of which, as I walked the ramparts of Halifax’s Citadel, playing British general, a Canadian woman shouted out, a propos of nothing: “Yeah, Americans can get all cowboy, but we kicked their asses during the one time we fought.” Well, not exactly. The British burned the District, yeah, which was a swamp with a couple of outbuildings – now it’s a swamp with a couple of Starbucks shops, at least in summer – but then they got repulsed by the heroic forces of…Baltimore. Which given the context of the times, is kind of like Muhammad Ali getting beaten down by a one-legged asthmatic gimp with syphilis. But I digress.)
Anyway, I decided to take a walk into the neighborhood where these attacks supposedly happened, not because I harbored any sort of death wish but because it stood between me and another neighborhood that, for the good of the travel article, I absolutely had to visit. Frankly, aside from some seriously sketchy-looking auto repair shops and some frightening mullets, the neighborhood in question wasn’t any different than any mildly rundown blue-collar place you’d find in the States – at least during daylight.
Halifax itself reminded me both of Seattle – rainy, piney, hilly, filled with free-trade coffee shops and vegan eateries and bookstores – and Baltimore – grimy, industrial, filled with port cranes and ships. Worth spending a few days in the other week, but not the most exciting geographic point in North America; as the customs agent laughed as I crossed back into the States: “Nova Scotia in winter? What’d you do, lose a bet?”
Not exactly.
The Week in Writing
My article about Darren Aronofsky is published in the Post. I send a snowball-in-hell query letter/chapters of the first book (revisions continuing) to Ann Rittenberg. My next Post article, written on Sunday night, clocks in at 3,500 words, meaning it needs to be cut by, oh, 93 percent. Dad criticizes first draft of Halifax article, sent to him in a moment of early-morning idiocy on my part, as “hopelessly contrived in some sections.” Work on second book begins. DC Style renews my blogging contract for another record-breaking month. I now have a couch in Damascus, thanks to my former intern.
A. Apparently by taking 30 of their best friends and jumping you in a dark alley. What they lack in firepower being made up, apparently, with a whole lot of fists. At least, this is what someone told me on my first night in Halifax: rumors swarmed that whole gangs of restless youth were engaging in a little bit of street capitalism with any bastard unlucky enough to walk down the wrong road at the wrong moment.
Plus Canadians – at least those stuck on the Atlantic seaboard during winter – tend to be on the short side; so needless to say, I was excited about the prospect of matching my soft and relatively untrained fists against some sort of Midget Massive Attack. A little bit of revenge for burning my hometown during the War of 1812.
(Speaking of which, as I walked the ramparts of Halifax’s Citadel, playing British general, a Canadian woman shouted out, a propos of nothing: “Yeah, Americans can get all cowboy, but we kicked their asses during the one time we fought.” Well, not exactly. The British burned the District, yeah, which was a swamp with a couple of outbuildings – now it’s a swamp with a couple of Starbucks shops, at least in summer – but then they got repulsed by the heroic forces of…Baltimore. Which given the context of the times, is kind of like Muhammad Ali getting beaten down by a one-legged asthmatic gimp with syphilis. But I digress.)
Anyway, I decided to take a walk into the neighborhood where these attacks supposedly happened, not because I harbored any sort of death wish but because it stood between me and another neighborhood that, for the good of the travel article, I absolutely had to visit. Frankly, aside from some seriously sketchy-looking auto repair shops and some frightening mullets, the neighborhood in question wasn’t any different than any mildly rundown blue-collar place you’d find in the States – at least during daylight.
Halifax itself reminded me both of Seattle – rainy, piney, hilly, filled with free-trade coffee shops and vegan eateries and bookstores – and Baltimore – grimy, industrial, filled with port cranes and ships. Worth spending a few days in the other week, but not the most exciting geographic point in North America; as the customs agent laughed as I crossed back into the States: “Nova Scotia in winter? What’d you do, lose a bet?”
Not exactly.
The Week in Writing
My article about Darren Aronofsky is published in the Post. I send a snowball-in-hell query letter/chapters of the first book (revisions continuing) to Ann Rittenberg. My next Post article, written on Sunday night, clocks in at 3,500 words, meaning it needs to be cut by, oh, 93 percent. Dad criticizes first draft of Halifax article, sent to him in a moment of early-morning idiocy on my part, as “hopelessly contrived in some sections.” Work on second book begins. DC Style renews my blogging contract for another record-breaking month. I now have a couch in Damascus, thanks to my former intern.
posted by NiK @ 4:35 PM
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