Comment 30756

By geoff's two cents (anonymous) | Posted May 05, 2009 at 02:02:34

Trey and Hopeful, thanks for posting. My defining Burlington experience, however, would have to be the following:

1) 2007. Sunday evening, dinner at a downtown Burlington pub - good food, nice patio in a nice, walkable downtown.

2) 7 or 8-ish, asked the waitress where the nearest grocery store was, as we were new in town and needed to pick up some essentials. Decent food or no, one can't afford to eat out all day every day, and our budget was stretched to the limit.

3) Waitress asks fellow waitress, but the closest grocery store open at 7 or 8pm on a Sunday night that they can recall is several kilometres up Brandt street at a huge power centre (Sobe's).

4) Walked for at least two hours (I remember it being three, but find that hard to believe in hindsight), and no bus passed us. Sidewalks at times were narrow or non-existent. It got very humid - not ideal weather to be walking to a power centre along a busy road.

5) Got to power centre by freeway. Everything is open. Lesson learned? Do not bother coming to Burlington if you don't have a car.

6) Told my experience to a few other people. Some responded with incredulity, that it couldn't possibly have been the case that the closest grocery store open on a Sunday night would be miles from downtown and next to a freeway. Most thought for a moment, and could not think of a grocery store closer to downtown.

As I'm not a Burlington native, I still don't know whether there was a closer grocery store open on Sunday nights or not. I do know, however, that the same thing could not have happened to us in Hamilton, one-way streets or no. In spite of the city's tireless efforts over the last half century to dissuade pedestrians, it's actually still pretty user-friendly for those who get around on their own two legs.

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