LATENIGHT - HALIFAX

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Scratch that win

Condos in Dartmouth, ice fog on Lake MicMac foreground.
It's time to start using up some of my winter shots. The weather over the last couple of days has been mild and cloudy. Unless we get a habitual St. Patrick's Day storm, spring may be on our doorstep. The snow is certainly almost gone.

The Luck of the ~~Irish~~ Storeowners
Making news today, the Atlantic Lottery Corp. has noticed a statistical anomaly in its payouts. It turns out that storeowners who sell lotto tickets are ten times more likely to claim grandprize winnings. The story's even been picked up by the BBC. This is very similar to the recent revelations in Ontario where storeowners have been accused of pocketing winning tickets as customers come in to have them checked.

While they have no hard evidence to accuse storeowners, Atlantic Lotto is looking at changes at the store level, to include customer facing readouts and maybe background checks on store owners who seek to sell tickets. It may not be over yet either, as 25 cases of owner winnings continue to be investigated.

A lot of folks might just take this personally. There was a study that shocked a few people some time ago, regarding how many Maritimers actively planned to "win the lottery" as their main stategy for retirement. I can't find any links now but maybe a reader might be so kind to help me search the internet for this one.

Labels: Maritimes, vice

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Crawling along to the next crawl

According to a story in the Chronicle Herald, Friday night's "World's Largest Pub Crawl" went off swimmingly.

The organizer, Johnathan DeYoung, spent the momentous evening "cruising around in a limousine drinking champagne and smoking cigars" but now that he's Halifax's newest nightlife mogul, there's plans in motion for a followup this fall. DeYoung is now planning the "World's Sexiest Pub Crawl" in which participants will wind their way through the city's pubs while scantily dressed.

Good thing that one is getting saved for warmer weather.

Labels: Halifax, nightlife, vice

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Visitor 10k

Latenight had a noteworthy milestone today: the 10,000th visitor since the Halifax chapter of this blog began.

What do I know about them? They arrived here from Tartu, Estonia. They speak Croatian and were searching for "lesbo porno clips". Despite not finding any, they stayed for 12 minutes.

As you know, there are no lesbo porno clips here. It turns out that a piece of spam on a comment buried in the blog had been indexed by search engines. Although I hold nothing against "lesbo porno clips", I've since deleted the comment.

Ever responsive to the wishes of my readers however, if enough of you would like to leave a comment requesting "lesbo porno clips"...

Labels: blogging, vice

Friday, February 09, 2007

The Big Drunk

The Split Crow Pub.
Well tonight's the big night. It seems a bit quiet up where we are but then again, we're several blocks away. All told, 3200 tickets were sold for tonight's attempt at holding the World's Largest Pub Crawl in Halifax, and getting entered in the Guinness Book of World Records.

I had originally planned to head out for a few photos but it's a bit chilly and since I don't have a ticket, I wouldn't be able to join in on the fun. It's probably for the best as I hesitate to think how much trouble might get started with so many people cruising the downtown inebriated.

The only hitch so far seems to have been with the proceeds. Originally, the organizers had planned to donate the money to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but M.A.D.D. won't accept funds generate through means including alcohol. This morning, the news said the money would instead go to establishing bursaries at Saint Mary's but I don't think that will sit well with students from the other universities who will, no doubt, form quite significant contingents on there own.

The pub crawl started at 6 p.m. and runs until 2 a.m. so I suspect we'll hear more out of it in a few hours. One of my coworkers has a ticket so if he reports back anything interesting, I'll try to pass it along.

The whole thing is making me feel rather old. I guess I'll just pour a glass of milk and go to bed early.

Labels: Halifax, nightlife, vice

Thursday, January 25, 2007

New Scotchland

The lads up at Glenora Distillery have secured a favourable ruling in the branding of their delightful beverage. It's good news for Nova Scotia, and a lovely spirited story for Robbie Burns' Day.

Calling their single malt whisky "Glen Breton", the Cape Breton distillery ran afoul of the self-appointed Scotch authorities back in the Auld Sod. Those authorities complained that the use of the term "Glen" would confuse buyers into believing the whisky had come from Scotland and they sought to protect their brands from such potential loss of revenue.

It's a bit of a philosophical battle really. The Scottish distillers assert that a scotch whisky, or anything posing as such, be manufactured in Scotland. They can go to Hell as far as I am concerned. This is a sore point with me, since I am a Canadian, from a colonial-era family, but of virtually pure Scots descent. At the furthest point, my first namesake blood ancestor arrived here eleven generations ago. At the nearest, my grandmother was born just outside Edinburgh. The distant "cousins" that continue to occupy the old country often try to dismiss any relation with those of us who found our way to the colonies, but I maintain that I have as much blood-right to the heritage as them. So what if I don't like soccer, my ancestors fought next to the Bruce at Bannockburn.

So here you have a single malt whisky that is made by people, themselves of Scots descent, in the Cape Breton Highlands, and in a province literally named "New Scotland". The fight is over the use of the word "Glen" yet there are those in Cape Breton who still speak middle Scots Gaelic and you sure as Hell can't patent a natural language that's still spoken. I think that on account of the history and character of the area that they ought be allowed to come right out and call it "Scottish Whisky", just with small print saying it's made in Canada.

If they don't like it in Glasgow, maybe we can threaten to all immigrate back, and flood their soccer stadiums until they become hockey rinks.

Labels: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Scotland, vice

Thursday, January 11, 2007

An epic Pub Crawl

Henry House Restaurant & Pub on Barrington Street.
Halifax is set to enter the record books on February 9th. A local company, High Impact Promotions, owned by Johnathan DeYoung, is seeking to get our famously convivial city into the Guinness Book of World Records by staging the World's Largest Pub Crawl. (The only free link I found to the story so far isn't working so I'll basically repeat what I remember from tonight's newscast.)

The current record is held by a city in Australia, but if all of DeYoung's tickets sell out, we'll beat them by about a thousand people. Even better news is that through word of mouth and a bit of internet buzz, there's only about a thousand tickets left, which means we're already in a horse race, with nearly a month to go.

Halifax is famous for having more bars per capita than any other city North America so the record should belong to us. The crawl will involve 19 teams who will wind their way through bar after bar after bar. Drinking is optional. Even teetotallers can join in with soft drinks and still be counted as long as they buy the ticket and keep up.

C'mon, Halifax. Bottoms up!

Labels: Halifax, nightlife, vice

Monday, January 08, 2007

Fage's Follies

A story broke over the weekend that I didn't blog about yet but it's really growing here in Nova Scotia and that's the discovery that MLA Ernie Fage had a bit of a fender bender a couple of months ago and it was kept quiet. (This is the same Ernie Fage whose conflict of interest problems led to a temporary resignation and almost cost the Tories the election.)

Now, this accident is not a big deal on its own but it was in a government vehicle and witnesses are saying that he smelled very strongly of alcohol. Not much happened afterwards. The premier is claiming that Fage was upfront and told him about after the accident. Police never really filed any charges against him. In fact, they seemed uncertain that they could identify the driver at all.

But he was identified.

One of the witnesses recorded it on their cell phone camera. They took shots of his license plate and apparently followed him home. It's quite conclusive.

Camera phones are no longer just the tools of subway perverts and locker room voyeurs. This kind of citizen journalism/citizens on patrol is starting to become a real force for good -- especially when the Halifax police seem to be having such a hard time these days catching criminals.

So what's Fage's punishment? He's volunteered to take a leave of absence and Premier Rodney MacDonald says he won't be welcome in any cabinet positions in the future. (Caucus is still fine, I guess.) MacDonald has given this guy so much slack you'd think Fage had donated a kidney for him, or something. With the lacklustre government that MacDonald's has turned out to be, this should surely do him in if we go to an election anytime soon.

Labels: Cape Breton, crime, Halifax, Nova Scotia, police, politicians, vice

Friday, November 24, 2006

Who's fuming now?

Interior of Gatsby's bar on Spring Garden

Smoke 'em if you got 'em. This is the start of the last weekend that you'll be able to light up in bars. By next Friday, you'll have to leave the premises of any bar you happen to still visit if you intend to light up. After all, we can't have all those health nuts being exposed to second-hand smoke while they poison their livers. That'd just be dumb.

Also up in smoke today was the crown's case against New Brunswick blogger Charles LeBlanc, who was acquitted of charges of obstruction, etc. after the events at the Atlantica conference over the summer. In his decision, the judge cleared the way for bloggers to do their thing, which includes taking photos of events as they happen. He was more gracious to the police in the end however. He pointed out that the protestors who sought to storm the conference could have created quite a dangerous and uncontrolled situation and he praised the cops for keeping it reigned it.

A noticeable absence from the trial's coverage was with the Irving papers of the province as commented on over at Charles' blog. The Irving stranglehold over media in the province is often a subject of discussion there, and they are frequently accused of burying stories or exhibiting a common editorial bias amongst their papers to support the causes of the corporation. After only a brief article earlier in the week (rehashed from the CBC story no less) it seems that the point has been proven. No reporters from Irving-owned papers were present to follow the case, one which has wide-ranging ramifications for journalists and private citizens everywhere. I don't have a link, but comments there indicate that even the New York Times picked up on the case, and Charles has mentioned that he's had several communications from people researching press freedom.

The best part of the trial must be the police claiming that they didn't recognize him as a journalist, yet knowing Charles and his site well enough to go to it when they sought information and intelligence on the planned demonstration. By only running positive pieces on Atlantica, I guess the Saint John cops must have found the Irving newspapers as useless as most other folks do.

Being unemployed and on social assistance, he runs his blog on a free hosting site, from public access terminals, and takes photos with a camera that was donated to him by a reader. Nonetheless he provides some of the best online coverage in the province, any clear bias on his part notwithstanding. Not even the habitually 9-5/Monday-Friday CBC website updates with the frequency he does. Online Irving papers are subscription-based so they provide nothing to the ordinary common man. It would certainly be something if Charles managed to file a wrongful arrest suit, win a bunch of cash and use it to actually fund his self-appointed role of political watchdog. It really would be "justice" on a lot of different levels.

UPDATE: According to Charles' blog, with still no coverage in Irving papers of a case important to individual rights in the province, Charles has just had an interview with the New York Times (who do feel it's important and not just to New Brunswick.) The story should be in Monday's Business section.

Labels: blogging, media, New Brunswick, vice

Monday, November 20, 2006

Where there's smoke there's fines

Gossiping gulls at Peggy's Cove
I can't verify this at all but it was all the talk at work today, and some of my coworkers claimed it was a topic on the local talk radio station also. Rumour has it that, inspired by recent anti-smoking legislation up for consideration in California, our local council received a proposal today for a drastic smoking ban for Halifax. There's already a new smoking ban that goes into effect on December 1 that will ban smoking in any indoor public place as well as on terraces and patios of restaurants. Currently, such patios are alright and bars are permitted to include a smoking room provided it only takes up a certain percentage. This new proposal however, will extend a ban on smoking to include the entirety of the outdoors, including your own automobile, and also prohibits smoking in any multi-person dwelling. That means that if you rent an apartment, own a condo, or even live in a duplex, you'll be expected to butt out or risk a fine of as much as $500 bucks. To smoke, you will have to be the owner of a single-family dwelling. Welcome back, Feudalism. We missed you.

As if the government doesn't take in enough money in this country. Cigarettes are just under $10 a pack now, and 80% of that is taxes. Add it to all the crazy hopped-up fines that go through also. The booster seat law is a good example. For a piece of safety equipment that is still not entirely proven effective, you'll be looking at hundreds of dollars in fines if you are caught transporting a child without one, should the child be under nine years of age, or 4'9" in height. That's a pretty big kid to be riding in a booster seat. I'm surprised that they don't mandate helmets too.

The government, and law enforcement, seem intent on manufacturing new ways to create violators without doing anything substantive to go after violent offenders in our community. It's hard to stomach all these laws/veiled tax-grabs when you can't find a cop on a Saturday night in the city. There sure were plenty of cops around when Sunday shopping prohibition was in place, to make sure stores didn't exceed the loopholes in the law.

I've had one experience with a cop since moving back. It was actually the bridge police, if you want to consider them cops. I was driving 70 in a 70 kmph zone across the MacKay bridge, and reduced speed to 50kmph before hitting the 50 zone along the funnel. I wasn't speeding but the old goat tapped his siren anyway and warned me to slow down. The next day, I noticed that they moved the 50-zone further up the bridge. You now have to reduce your speed about a 100 feet before the funnel. I guess he jumped the gun after getting the memo. Either that, or he expected me to be clairvoyant and attentive to the street laws of the future. Boy, that'd be quite a talent.

For completeness, and largely for the benefit of the international readers, we sad and downtrodden Canadians also pay about 36% income tax and a Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) in the Maritimes of 14%. That works out to over 50% of every dollar I earn ending up in government coffers, not including Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance deductions. The HST was reduced by 1% this years as part of the Conservative party's election platform promises. Bad news to all you tourists, however; they just got rid of the HST/GST reimbursement. Once upon a time, tourists could save their receipts when visiting Canada and then file a claim to have the value of the HST/GST returned to them when they returned home. That tax break is now dead. Welcome to Canada. Enjoy your fiscal sodamizing.

Don't get me started on the raise in registration rates. ATV owners in Nova Scotia got a shock when their provincial licensing and registration fee quintupled this year with no reason given, and they've come under increased attention by law enforcement as well. And then there's the gun registry which the Torys have yet to kill...

Again, I just don't know what to expect in the future. This is tax rate now, but what will happen when baby boomers all retire and instead of contributing their much higher salaries to the tax base, they turn the tables and start sucking it out in geriatric health care costs? Government spending will have to go up, but there are fewer and fewer people entering the workforce, at lower relative salaries than ever before. How much longer before Ottawa starts accepting kidneys and newborn children come tax season in April?

If I could afford a crate of tea, I'd throw it in the harbour.

Labels: crime, Metro Transit, Nova Scotia, police, vice

Monday, November 06, 2006

Time for Last Call

Lineup outside Halifax's LiquorDome
City violence is in focus right now and the bars are in the city's crosshairs. Nonetheless, there was another swarming on Basinview Drive yesterday as well as a double stabbing in North Dartmouth. It just goes on and on. Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly is also talking about cameras to watch trouble spots and seems to be itching to reduce the hours that bars can stay open.

Generally, it's always been 2am when bars close however certain licenses, such as cabaret licenses, allow bars to stay open until close to 4am. Because of the variation, a lot of bars are able to twist the rules and get the longer hours in their license.

Many people suggest that such a change will be useless, only affecting the time that trouble takes place, and not the degree to which it breaks out in the city. Based on his comments in a television interview tonight (and boy, did he look nervous) but also considering what Police Chief Beazley said last week after the pre-Hallowe'en swarmings, it doesn't take a lot of math to figure out that we are under-protected. Beazley stated that the cops had increased their foot patrols downtown. Kelly, on the other hand, came out with the real number tonight, that there are only two cops that patrol all of the downtown, including not just Pizza Corner but the entire stretch from the waterfront to Spring Garden. By calling this an "increase", are we to assume there was only one cop making the rounds before this?

That's an awful lot of terrain to cover for a pair of flatfoots. It's about a half hour hike to cover that stretch in a straight line. I'm assuming that a patrolman would be criss-crossing side streets. I would be surprised if a cop would pass the same place more than two or three times in an eight-hour shift.

This is a total failure on behalf of our civic leaders and it comes at a time when the general population is getting more violent and insolent, drug abuse is rampant, population density is packing them in, criminals are getting younger and younger, and the legal system is getting more and more irrelevant. There is a slim chance that people will face repercussions for their transgressions and if they do, prison terms are short-lived and not guaranteed.

Labels: crime, Halifax, nightlife, vice

Monday, October 16, 2006

You just gotta wonder

Some kids not causing trouble.

Here I go, blogging from my rocking chair again...

The problem with having a little bit of free time is that I often spend it getting caught up on the news. That's probably a mistake. I tend to internalize a lot of what I read and it's really gotten me to the point that I have very little hope in the future of our society, much less all those nations that are plunged into, or on the brink of, collapse and war.

One thing that is really getting to me is the horrible combination of increased level of psychotic sociopathy in our youth together with the fact that they get no more than a slap on the wrist, at most, before they get a hug and kiss by authorities who bawl over what a poor life these little brats must have suffered.

In the last week, I've read of one girl, serving barely more than a year of her three-year sentence for her part in a beating that left a guy comatose. After all, she has a baby to look after and has shown the capacity to form consistency in her life, as evidenced by her ability to maintain a boyfriend while in jail. (How did they even meet?)

Then there's the guy that beat a cop into a coma who was completely let off this past summer. It's no wonder that police are getting a reputation around here of not wanting to risk their necks in stopping attacks.

In the newspaper today, there's a sickening story of animal abuse coming out of Calgary by a 17- and a 19-year-old. That's the one that sort of set me off today, but there's really so much more to look at, here at home.

In Nova Scotia, there's the story of the 22-year-old who abused a newborn baby giving her 40 fractures. His defence: he's mildly retarded and was jealous of the attention the baby's mother was giving the infant.

The new trick to help kids play hookey from school is to threaten to pull a Columbine incident. There were a couple of those in New Brunswick lately but today they reported one in Bridgewater too.

It's insane, really. Murders, beatings, vandalism...

Look at the kids last week, 12 to 16 years in age, who threw rocks at a senior couple out for a walk when they refused them cigarettes. (Those kids are also suspected of starting fires on the walking trail.) How about the two 15-year olds charged in the stabbing death of a Halifax cabbie? In the last month, we've gotten stories of how youth have turned communities like Eastern Passage into a 'Little Hell' and that teenagers are running "amok" in Bedford.

It just makes your head spin and these are just in the last month. Try keeping up with the stats on the Halifax Police reports website.

Of course, there are politicians promising to toughen up legislation against young offenders, but recently a proposal to make parents responsible for property damaged by youth failed to be accepted. I guess it's more tolerable for our society to shuffle that cost off onto the victims.

We've gotten to the point where if you get jumped by these little hellions, you're more likely to get ticketed for jaywalking in your escape than they are to be approached by cops, much less charged. (Mind you there was a story on evening news this week that said cops will ony charge jaywalkers if they force cars to brake.)

Everyday there seem to be at least two or three stories like this showing up in the Maritimes. Sometimes I watch television coverage of the War in Terror to cheer up.

I don't attribute this all to soft parenting and poor discipline. I think I blogged once upon a time that back in my days of coffee house crawling, there was a clear shift in youth at a distinct point. It used to be that every fall you'd see the new crop of youngsters start hanging out "downtown" and for the most part they were all good kids. But one year, in 1994, it seemed that the whole new group to arrive on the scene were aggressive, prone to random acts of violence which they gained pleasure and power from, and they mixed it all with very rampant drug abuse out in the open, where once it was respectfully kept under the table.

I really do think that there was something that affected these kids when they were young, the eldest of whom would now be in their early to mid 20s. I suspect people like Charles LeBlanc, who speaks out against ritalin and other behaviour-altering drugs, may have a strong argument there. The over-prescription of these little pills fits into the timeframe very neatly.

However, I might be treading on dangerous terrain in putting forth this post. It seems like everybody you know these days is on some kind of prescription to alter their behaviour. I might be all alone in admitting my fears.

Oh well. North Korea is suspected to be getting ready for another nuclear test. I'm sure that will occupy me for the next few days. I'll save my sanity and leave my crime cataloguing to other bloggers who cut their teeth on such things. If another war breaks out, maybe we can solve the youth problem the way they did back in the Great Depression: wait for hostilities to open up then give all the young'uns a uniform, a gun, and a ticket overseas.

Labels: Alberta, crime, demographics, Halifax, Korea, Nova Scotia, pharmaceuticals, vice, youth

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Bull and Billiards

Pool at Dooly's Barrington.
I'm a bit tired tonight, having been tired most of the day. We were out a bit later than normal after meeting some people for pool down at the Dooly's on Barrington. Wednesdays are cheap night and you can sign out a table for just 10 bucks for the full evening. We haven't been going out much, and not with many other people. We've been a bit socially reclusive that way. Last night was fun though, and we'll be doing it again.

Bars have changed since I did any substantial drinking in this city. I noticed a change in the Clancy's labels among others. They don't sell Oland Red any more, but now Alexander Keith's Red is on the market. The best illustration was the drink that we all tried last night that's popular with the younger crowd, I guess, called a JagerBomb. It's kind of like a Depth Charge, but with a shot of Jagermeister placed into a glass of Red Bull Energy Drink. (Nevermind that it says on the can that Red Bull shouldn't be mixed with alcohol.)

The strange thing for me was that it was a combination of two things that nobody ever drank when last I lived in Halifax. Call it reverse culture shock. Jagermeister was something that I remembered from my childhood. I think I had a sip of it when I was a kid. There was a old bottle around the house from the days when they my folks were stationed in Germany, which is all I remember besides the fact that it tasted like cough syrup. Red Bull, on the other hand, is something that only hit shelves while I was abroad.

Energy drinks can be alright but don't have much of an effect on me. I drink at least two or three pots of coffee a day so my tolerance to caffeine is rather substantial. I remember sitting at the Great Taste Coffee Shop on Spring Garden, years ago, and downing myriad cans of Jolt Cola with my buddy, Stephen, to get a buzz for an evening and see if we could fill a table with empties stacked in a pyramid before going crazy. Red Bull is supposed to be stronger, I think, but tastes like Pez rather than cola. (It also reminds me of Brio which they sold at the New Mokka.)

It was a different evening anyway, and the people we met were really great. Overall it was nice to get out and socialize a bit. I think I am due for some billiards practice though. I didn't win a single game.

Labels: Halifax, nightlife, personal, vice