From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the surviving uncle
well, the reasoning behind going to windsor is that the rent is cheap. i was having difficulty finding even a bachelor in ottawa for less than $800, although like any other market there's not always a lot of logic put into the prices. one week, there'd be something decent for $750, the next week the best thing would be a closet for $900. i'm not exaggerating. a few of the places i checked out were just absurd. there was a one room basement apartment on cooper for $850 that had two items in it: a fridge and a bed. but, you couldn't open the fridge because the bed was literally lodged between the front door and the fridge. other places would literally convert walk-in closets into bedrooms, then price the place as having an extra bedroom. the few places i was able to find that i thought i could stay in basically told me my income was too low (which is bullshit, but who wants to go to court over that?). i didn't really want to move, but the absurdity of the market in ottawa led me to giving up on being able to stay there.
i talked to a couple of people about it. i mean, i had to ask - "do you really think you're going to get what you're asking for this?". they explained it by the high student population in ottawa. algonquin's the same size as a university, now, and there's another college out in orleans that keeps growing. the general perception is that they can keep the cost of rent at absurd levels because some kid's parents will pay it to send them away, and that it's as much about getting rid of the kid as it is anything else. it's as good an explanation as i can come up with, although i think it would help if the city would force people that own abandoned property to develop (and there's a lot of it, like the old sears building on rideau, for example).
i don't know if you realize it, but ottawa is actually the most expensive place to live in ontario. most people would think toronto. and if you work out the average price, toronto would be higher. but ottawa doesn't have the low rent areas that toronto does. even vanier is being gentrified. i was actually strongly considering toronto, but i didn't want to make any snap decisions that would land me in a bad neighbourhood. i was really dissuaded from the idea by an experience i had hitching down to windsor. a trucker let me off the 401 at jane street, and i got picked up by somebody that thought i was a prostitute. i mean, ten minutes in the area and that happens - i think i'll avoid that city, thanks.
i was lucky enough to have some nice basements to live in growing up, and where i've moved is as nice as any of them. it's a very large two bedroom for $650. so, i've got a studio in one bedroom with my gear in it. i've got a den separated from the big living room that's big enough for a couch to smoke on. the kitchen could seat ten people. this place would probably be pushing $1500 in ottawa. it's that stark a difference. it comes with some down sides. last month, a house about five doors down got showered with gun fire and invaded and ended with somebody getting shot in the forehead. they're saying it was drug related and nothing to be concerned about. i'm willing to believe that, but it's not really something you want to be near.
overall, the area is sort of like chinatown in ottawa - specifically the strip south of somerset between preston and bronson. i'm a block from the italian district, and a block from the arabic district. which means i've been eating a lot of deli meat and a lot of hummus.
the landlord is also pretty good. it's a dude, rather than a company, which is probably a key factor in not needing any kind of co-sign. he's a middle age guy that spent most of his life as an electrician and inherited a chunk of money from a cement business. he bought this place so that his slightly autistic brother would have a stable place to live. he's renting out the other three units simply to pay down property taxes. it's not about making money for him, it's just about his brother. one of the things we agreed upon is no rent increases because odsp doesn't go up very often. so, i'm getting $1080 from odsp and paying down $650 for rent. given that i don't eat that much, and i don't have any other major expenses, i'm actually quite comfortable right now. so long as that stays steady, i should be good here pretty much forever.
nor is this area gentrifying. the commercial district is mostly boarded up. it's sort of surreal to walk down "main street" and encounter closed shops and boarded up windows. factories are still closing fairly regularly, putting more and more people out of work. people are continuing to leave, and there seems to be no end to that trend in sight.
so, you can imagine that the city is sort of dead. but, i don't really like to go out much or spend time with people, anyways. i'm extremely introverted, so the isolation has played into that in ways that are actually positive for me. pretty much the only thing i'll ever go out to is concerts. windsor? well, i've hit a few punk shows. but, windsor is a suburb of detroit, and everybody plays detroit (or, increasingly, a suburb of detroit). i haven't been across yet because the paperwork to get across the border nowadays is a headache. for example, i need to get a phone before they'll give me a card. i'm hoping to deal with that soon so i can go over and see some shows there.
overall, i'm happy with this. i think it was a good decision that's going to keep me stable for quite some time.
j
Thursday, January 30, 2014
getting some fresh air at a basement punk show
i've found there are very few legitimate constants in life that transcend time and circumstance, but, for me, one absolute certainty is that, wherever i go, and whatever type of people happen to be there, and however it happens to be managed, i tend to get compliments about my hair.
it's nothing, really. i blacked it months ago. i blonded it months before that. i reded it still months before that. and blonded it still further months previously. now, i haven't touched it in a little over a year. so it's just grown in to have blond highlights at the end, and a few different shades scattered in. nothing managed - if anything it's sort of dilapidated.
we will all consider the idea of dilapidated hair now and if it really makes any sense.
regardless, tonight somebody liked my hair. thanks. i guess. i was out to see a couple of concerts....
there's two themes for the evening. the first is the fact that windsor also has a dom. not just a dom, but a punk/metal dom. two examples are not enough to build a general theory, but i do wonder how many other cities have punk/metal doms. of course, i had to compare...
it's a little more up kept, but not by much. pool tables. the difference is really that the stage of this dom is downstairs, which gives it a basement show feel more than a bar show feel.
there's even a staircase you don't want to walk down at all, let alone after a few drinks - except it's worse, because it's outside and iced over.
it was freezing in there, and that's theme number two. it seems to have literally been not heated. i wasn't dressed for it.
see, this is where my subconscious dom expectation was no doubt a serious impediment. -10 is manageable in a sweater, if it means walking to the bus stop and back in between hours of warmth. in my mind, i thought "well, the heat is always on in the dom - when i get there i'll put the sweater around my waist". not this dom.
it's not a fashion thing. i'm there to hear the music, i don't care about that nonsense. it's just that carrying around a jacket at a concert is annoying. it makes holding a beer difficult, and it makes taking part in any audience participation impossible. i'd rather go in a sweater if i can.
-10 is admittedly the extreme point. -15 is not sweaterable.
unfortunately, the issue compounded itself. i could have easily handled a ten minute wait for the bus if i'd been inside for two hours, but i was actually getting seriously worried for a minute because i'd been shivering for several hours.
obviously, i'm ok, i'm not naked in a snow bank complaining about the heat (more like wrapped up in a blanket and still shivering a bit) but it was kind of scary.
anyways...
narcolepsy. two drinks over three hours will not render one drunk, but it'd been a while since i'd slept and the eyelids tend to overpower. i've stopped fighting them, under the agreement that they don't enforce an arbitrary 24 hour schedule on me.
one more thing before i finish this: the historic strength of punk rock (as a type of music, rather than an attitude) is that it gets your adrenaline moving. that's how you know you're doing it right. it's the characteristic that defines punk as a type of sound. it's the reason people throw themselves around everywhere. it's the reason green day and mcr and ... aren't punk. adrenaline. on the other hand, metal seems to focus more on testosterone. that's the chemical reaction they're really going for (and, yes, women can feel testosterone). there's overlaps and levels of mixtures and points where people get confused and other things. but a punk experience need not include any testosterone at all, so long as the adrenaline is high - and there has always and always will be (for as long as punk exists) a subset of the audience that is interested 100% solely in adrenaline, which happens to be the subset of the audience i'm in. i'm not interested in punk with testosterone, or exploring testosterone in music in general.
ok, that's enough rambling.
keep getting distracted, lol. ok.
so, the first full set i caught was this band called minors and it was better than i expected. it's local. the core of the sound was pretty generic, but they mixed it up with some ambient, droney type stuff - as is the fashion as of right now, i suppose - and also with some spastic punkish stuff. it's nothing particularly novel, but it's a little bit more eccentric than the average basement punk band.
white ribs is the band i went to see. the record is a pretty creative mix of lightning bolt with hipster hardcore and no wave. that sounds off the wall, but i'm playing it up a bit. they're clearly trying to look like lightning bolt, down to the masks, but they can't play like lightning bolt - and seem more interested in being weird.
the show was a little flat. it lacked the valleys of the record, and the audience didn't get it. small town. *shrug*.
the record they have up on bandcamp is interesting though, and i'd check it out if you like weird experimental loud shit.
bird death was spastic and incoherent, but it's the point. it's fun in small bursts, but i wouldn't go out of my way for it.
unfortunately, the bassist broke a string and the singer made an ass of himself while he was fixing it, but i was kind of more paying attention to the lumberjack that had been bugging me all night and was now going on about where to get meth. self-preservation was more important than paying attention to the singer being a douche.
anyways, there's nothing special here, but it does what it does competently.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/01/29.html
it's nothing, really. i blacked it months ago. i blonded it months before that. i reded it still months before that. and blonded it still further months previously. now, i haven't touched it in a little over a year. so it's just grown in to have blond highlights at the end, and a few different shades scattered in. nothing managed - if anything it's sort of dilapidated.
we will all consider the idea of dilapidated hair now and if it really makes any sense.
regardless, tonight somebody liked my hair. thanks. i guess. i was out to see a couple of concerts....
there's two themes for the evening. the first is the fact that windsor also has a dom. not just a dom, but a punk/metal dom. two examples are not enough to build a general theory, but i do wonder how many other cities have punk/metal doms. of course, i had to compare...
it's a little more up kept, but not by much. pool tables. the difference is really that the stage of this dom is downstairs, which gives it a basement show feel more than a bar show feel.
there's even a staircase you don't want to walk down at all, let alone after a few drinks - except it's worse, because it's outside and iced over.
it was freezing in there, and that's theme number two. it seems to have literally been not heated. i wasn't dressed for it.
see, this is where my subconscious dom expectation was no doubt a serious impediment. -10 is manageable in a sweater, if it means walking to the bus stop and back in between hours of warmth. in my mind, i thought "well, the heat is always on in the dom - when i get there i'll put the sweater around my waist". not this dom.
it's not a fashion thing. i'm there to hear the music, i don't care about that nonsense. it's just that carrying around a jacket at a concert is annoying. it makes holding a beer difficult, and it makes taking part in any audience participation impossible. i'd rather go in a sweater if i can.
-10 is admittedly the extreme point. -15 is not sweaterable.
unfortunately, the issue compounded itself. i could have easily handled a ten minute wait for the bus if i'd been inside for two hours, but i was actually getting seriously worried for a minute because i'd been shivering for several hours.
obviously, i'm ok, i'm not naked in a snow bank complaining about the heat (more like wrapped up in a blanket and still shivering a bit) but it was kind of scary.
anyways...
narcolepsy. two drinks over three hours will not render one drunk, but it'd been a while since i'd slept and the eyelids tend to overpower. i've stopped fighting them, under the agreement that they don't enforce an arbitrary 24 hour schedule on me.
one more thing before i finish this: the historic strength of punk rock (as a type of music, rather than an attitude) is that it gets your adrenaline moving. that's how you know you're doing it right. it's the characteristic that defines punk as a type of sound. it's the reason people throw themselves around everywhere. it's the reason green day and mcr and ... aren't punk. adrenaline. on the other hand, metal seems to focus more on testosterone. that's the chemical reaction they're really going for (and, yes, women can feel testosterone). there's overlaps and levels of mixtures and points where people get confused and other things. but a punk experience need not include any testosterone at all, so long as the adrenaline is high - and there has always and always will be (for as long as punk exists) a subset of the audience that is interested 100% solely in adrenaline, which happens to be the subset of the audience i'm in. i'm not interested in punk with testosterone, or exploring testosterone in music in general.
ok, that's enough rambling.
keep getting distracted, lol. ok.
so, the first full set i caught was this band called minors and it was better than i expected. it's local. the core of the sound was pretty generic, but they mixed it up with some ambient, droney type stuff - as is the fashion as of right now, i suppose - and also with some spastic punkish stuff. it's nothing particularly novel, but it's a little bit more eccentric than the average basement punk band.
white ribs is the band i went to see. the record is a pretty creative mix of lightning bolt with hipster hardcore and no wave. that sounds off the wall, but i'm playing it up a bit. they're clearly trying to look like lightning bolt, down to the masks, but they can't play like lightning bolt - and seem more interested in being weird.
the show was a little flat. it lacked the valleys of the record, and the audience didn't get it. small town. *shrug*.
the record they have up on bandcamp is interesting though, and i'd check it out if you like weird experimental loud shit.
bird death was spastic and incoherent, but it's the point. it's fun in small bursts, but i wouldn't go out of my way for it.
unfortunately, the bassist broke a string and the singer made an ass of himself while he was fixing it, but i was kind of more paying attention to the lumberjack that had been bugging me all night and was now going on about where to get meth. self-preservation was more important than paying attention to the singer being a douche.
anyways, there's nothing special here, but it does what it does competently.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2014/01/29.html
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