Comment 76852

By CouldaWouldaShoulda (anonymous) | Posted May 13, 2012 at 08:04:06

Fascinating exchanges.
'Disturbing' at times...but in the end, revelatory.

One of the things I notice about any exercise at 're-imagining' Hamilton...specifically 'the core'...is the tendency to not be able to manage images that haven't been seen before. (At least by that particular person.)

And that how some people see things isn't at all the way others do...biking and walking 'longer' distances, for example...and therefore, reasoning is dismissed.

Most of my life, I've walked to get my groceries. Up to a half-hour's walk each way. (And I'm a tall strider.) The rest of the time, buses. Only then would I include using a car. (I'm merely trying to framed my comment appropriately.)

To me, regardless of the Hamilton Farmers' Market, regardless of what I would refer to as 'ancillary' choices, to my mind, and I regard myself as a pretty conventional grocery shoppper at heart, if you have no 'primary' food shopping choices between Dundurn & Main, Barton & Mary, then as Ryan says, we *do* have a 'food desert'.

I've been a downtowner long enough to remember The Barn at Hess and York. And the Dominion's in the basement of then-Terminal Towers. Living on Market Street or Duke, I used to shop at The Barn, shop at the Farmers' Market, and when I lived on Stanley Avenue, at the Fortino's. When I lived in the UK, I'd either walk to the local Tesco, or bus it to Sainsbury. In London, I also either walked or bused it to one of the options. The same applies for the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and The Beaches in Toronto.

Honestly, I'm still scratching my head over the seeming 'resistance' to stating an obvious fact: that there's nothing within that area that correlates to other types of purchasing, or activities. It's almost like me stating 'There are no single-screen cinemas downtown', and someone saying 'There are plenty of video-rental shops', or 'There's an Empire multiplex at Jackson Square'.

Having a community co-op in the core is something I mused about earlier this year online. And if this wasn't possible, the other notion I embraced was a chain store; Lord knows there's a ton of perfectily appropriate retail space at either City Centre or Jackson Square...but I suspect some would see this as an 'evil', somehow being the nail in the coffins of struggling neighbourhood grocery stores. (Which I'm not inclined to shop at, but that's me; it's nothing personal, they're just generally not my cup of tea.)

I'm sorry to get a little pissy here, but for those who like things the way thay are, and don't want certain aspects of 'the core' to change, I can't help but wonder how they're going to feel when the thousands of new residents that move into new developments in that part of the city...I'm thinking of the prime area from James to Wellington, north of King...will essentially be demanding more 'upscale' options, such as Whole Foods. Because at some point, when things change, the market will shift.

For the time being, my vote is for a solid grocery store choice in our current 'food desert'.

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