Sunday 24 February 2013

A Guide to Centretown Pubs

a.m.k. likes drinking and eating and likes Centretown and  doesn't like many other things.

Why you shouldn't drink in the Market

When you want to go to a club, most barely legal (and fake ID) people go to the Market. The Market is kind of like the strip in Hull or Ouellette Ave in Windsor.

I think most people, after age 21 or so, when they want to go out, they want to be able to talk to their friends. We lead busy lives and it's hard to connect with everyone we'd like to in our lives. That's why pubs get my vote instead of clubs, not to mention clubs seem to really just be a place to try to pick up strangers to have casual sex. That is why older men encircle pretty drunk girls on the dance floor at virtually any club, and why I would advise anyone going to a club to keep that in mind. It's honestly a given that a large percentage of the men you see at your favourite dance club are there to meet and sleep with women. It's strange, a little scary and very creepy.

Thursday 14 February 2013

King Kong Goes to Parliament Hill

by rob mclennan


for William Hawkins,

When you were young and in your prime,

a battle of wills between you and Trudeau, Laurier LaPierre,
the American National Guard. Deflecting gains

from Empire State.

No flies on you, who once kicked dust from ancient tavern floors,
played Lowertown games of telephone and poems, walked

French Catholic blocks, tracked Sol’s sundial jaunt

across Sisters of Mercy. Now, you labour atop Peace Tower’s peak,
seemingly invisible.

Remain there long enough to count the strands of traffic
bridge the river Grand, now seven deep,

criss-crossing Chaudiere’s diminished boil.


Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan has lived in Ottawa’s Centretown since 1990 (give or take a year). The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, including Ottawa: The Unknown City (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and The Ottawa City Project (Chaudiere Books, 2007), he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.