[null, null, null, null, null, {"document_url": "https://plonq.livejournal.com/662866.html", "unformatted_src": "https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8378/8388266780_e00a793a4e.jpg", "src": "https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8378/8388266780_e00a793a4e.jpg", "formatted_filename": "e a a e", "alt_text": "20130116 - Shopping over", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 375}, null]
2013-01-16 22:45:00 

I took this picture through the window of the car while I waited for atara to pick up some dinner ingredients in the store. Since she was only after 1-2 items, I opted to stay in the car and keep it warm.

This picture encapsulates Winnipeg in a single shot. Here you see a shopping car overturned and abandoned in the snow less than one metre from the shopping car return. You cannot see from this angle, but somebody probably gamed the mechanism on it to get their $.25 deposit back without having to return it. The chances are that they just gave it a shove in the general direction of where it belonged as they were leaving, and ignored it when it fell over.

This is the same kind of person who will thump their chests, and claim that this is the best city in the world because we have the Winnipeg Jets back, but don't have the civic pride to walk the extra three steps to throw their Slurpee cup into a rubbish bin, or push a shopping car the last metre into the corral. I have a love-hate relationship with this city. Mostly hate. It has the feel of a backward, small town that desperately wants to be a big city. We have spent millions subsidizing a potentially iconic Human Rights museum, which sits empty because they cannot agree what to put in it, other than about 90% holocaust rehash. We have a mayor who bent over backward trying to get a Super 8-style water park built practically outside its front door because he owned the adjacent land and had no qualms about blatant conflicts of interest. The people here don't care. They will vote in him again when he runs again because he brought back The Jets, eh?

We built a stunning pedestrian crossing over one of the most scenic parts of our downtown waterways, linking two of our most historically significant parts of town. Then we leased the middle of it out to a local, greasy burger chain. We kick over planters, smash the glass in heated bus shelters, and piss in public stairwells. We meander across busy streets ten metres from a light-protected crossing. We kill fellow citizens for the deposit on empty 12-packs they are carrying. We plough the snow in private parking lots before we clear the streets because we contracted everything out, and the malls outbid us. We cream our collective britches when Ikea opens one of their generic outlets of cheap, build-it-yourself furniture in our city.

We abandon shopping carts on their sides in dirty snow less than a metre from the car return. Tags: 2013yip