The Manchester (546 Ouellette Avenue) is one of the nicest looking places in all of downtown.
The DWBIA offered a facade grant program a while back that has spruced up many downtown locations.
The DWBIA matches funds spent on facades by downtown businesses (up to $10,000) to make the storefront look better. The first place I saw that took ultra-advantage of this offer was The Manchester (formerly Reactor). The place is gorgeous. Plain and simple.
I popped into their place this week to interview floor manager, Jamie Greer, to see if the inside is as impressive as the outside…which it is. In the short time I was there, before noon, I ran into a who’s who of downtown movers and shakers.
Watch the video below to see what Jamie has to say about the place.
Jazz in this city is well represented. Phil Whitfield and The Monday Night Milkmen is one such example of how strong the local music scene is in Windsor.
Every Monday night, The Monday Night Milkmen play at Milk Coffee Bar located at 68 University Avenue West. The music runs from 9pm until midnight leaving any listeners plenty of time to get home and get enough sleep for their day job on Tuesday.
For those of you reading that are not lured by jazz, know that this cafe is one of the most culturally relevant spaces in Windsor. It acts as an art gallery with local shows constantly changing. It is a bar, with bottled and tap beer, as well as Absinthe stocked in ample brands and types. Let’s not forget the amazing coffee selections along with juices and sodas of seemingly unlimited variety.
There’s always people standing out front of Milk, drinking their coffees, people watching, and just relaxing. You can see that it’s a regular stopping point for local chess players and authors alike, as is evidenced by simply looking through the gigantic garage door opening in the front of the cafe.
Angelo Marignani is the owner of Milk, and has been for their 11 years of business in downtown Windsor. I interviewed him briefly about his business and about the Monday Night Milkmen.
Photo of Milk at the top of this post was taken during Red Bull Air Races with an outdoor patio and a live band.
That’s what this piece represents. But this story is something I feel is still relevant.
There’s a little art gallery called Artcite, located at 109 University Avenue West, that just had an intriguing/interactive art show called Free Bowl – The Player’s Open by Michael Coolidge of Calgary, Alberta.
It’s more than an art show, and it’s more than a fun urban landscape game. It’s a way to force ourselves to explore our urban environment in a very tactile way.
Coolidge’s art is the act of enticing people to take plastic bocce/lawn bowling items out into the streets and alleys. To get them to play. And in their play, they discover the landscape, dips, and rises in their urban site of play. As you turn corners, avoid sewer grates, you begin to understand how complex (or barren) your area of play can be. One might begin to have an entirely new respect for their neighbourhood by exploring it through play in this way.
I interviewed Bernie Helling from Artcite Gallery, and we talked a bit more about the game, the exhibit, and the gallery.
I encourage you to watch, and to look at the photos below this embedded video.
Plastic bowls on display on the wall, enticing all players willing to explore.
The orange bag of bowls that teams were allowed to remove from the gallery to play outside.
Family day the the riverfront was incredible this Saturday.
After hitting the Downtown Farmers’ Market the entire family decided to head to the river.
Emancipation Celebration was happening in the Riverfront Festival Plaza (where I bought two amazing books), the carnival rides were at the ready, and the playgrounds were speckled with kids.
After a little running around at the base of Ouellette Avenue, my brother-in-law, Trevor, went to get us a pile of shawarmas. While he was gone, the kids frolicked on the playground equipment, and we all tried to stay cool with intermittent breezes.
When it came time to leave, someone suggested checking out the little pond near where the kids were playing. It’s usually full of large goldfish (koi?) that the kids love to watch. When I scanned the perimeter of the tiny pond, I noticed the abundance of blooming flowers around the entire area. And when I was about to look away, I noticed someone nestled in a little nook, carved into the pond’s circumference.
It was a woman reading. No, she was drawing. No, painting. I took my daughter in my arms and walked around the corner to go see what she was painting. They were watercolours. And they were fantastic! She had almost finished a piece with massive purple flowers that I could see were sitting directly in front of her. When we got to talk, she said her name was Margaret. Margaret Dawson-Van Der Veen.
She used to run a gallery in Port Stanley (if my memory serves correctly) and was now located in Windsor…finding time to paint watercolours with a small group of roving painters from the Windsor area.
I took some photos of Margaret showing us her album of previous works from around Ontario. They were incredible. We all marvelled at her talents. I was particularly happy to know that this woman had relocated to Windsor, to continue sharing her artistic gifts with our community. Look for Margaret and her cohorts by the river, painting and drawing the day away on comfortable Saturday afternoons.
Printhouse is back at it.
They want this outdoor BBQ and live art/music event to happen so badly, they’re giving it another go.
Back a couple of months ago (May 7th), they tried this in the front of the Printhouse space…amongst the construction, dust, and noise.
This time, they move to the back of the building, into the alley, for a live art, live music, free BBQ hybrid.
This time around, Kero and Flow will be proving music, and there will be vendors selling their wares to anyone wanting a piece of Windsor-nouveau art.
The event happens on July 24th, from noon until 6pm.
With shade, and a bizarre locale for a party, there’s sure to be lots of friendly faces. WIll you be there?
Any artists that would like to include themselves in the vendor area can contact Dan at danielbombardier@hotmail.com.
They launched five different steps aimed at highlighting the best of our city, and to recognize the parts needing the most work.
This last physical display by BCL is in the form of billboards. Two of them. One on University Avenue and Church Street (“…and then the city started to feel better.”) and one on Parent Avenue and Wyandotte Street (“…and then the city knew it wasn’t alone.”). They’ll be on display for a month. If you want to know more about this project from BCL’s standpoint, click this link.
You might be asking yourself, “Why?”
Why would they choose this?
From the Broken City Lab website:
“I think we wanted to suggest the end of one part of a conversation and the beginning of another. In terms of our own research, I think we’re ready to start looking at problems in different ways, as a kind of continuum of ideas, rather than points from which to react.”
I get it.
This is allowing us to imagine this sentence-ending as being true already. We can think about what imaginary actions brought us to this hypothetical place. It allows the mind to make room for much larger steps to be taken to make the city what we want it to be…a positive and exciting place. It’s a mindset.
Some may say that a lot more is required than a mindset. And I would invite those people to start with the mindset of change and improvement (that these billboards suggest) rather than second-guess those who are inspiring new possibility. THEN, take your own action…billboard or not.
I’d like to ask you, the reader, if you had a billboard for a month…what would it read?
True rumour (“trumour”) has it that the old Inklings Bookstore at 500 Ouellette Avenue has a local artist moving into it shortly.
This won’t be a long-term thing, but it’ll give the artist within that space an interesting (and I think inspiring) perspective otherwise unavailable outside of downtown. Movement, activity, and people of all walks of life scurrying by day after day at all hours of the night.
The talk about transitioning spaces downtown into useful, HEAVILY REDUCED, or RENT-FREE spaces for artists is looking more realistic every day. The spaces, if given to artists on the condition that they look better when they leave than when they begin, offers nothing but an incentive to the land-owner of a stagnant space.
Someone desperate for space comes in, fixes up the place, and creates traffic. Businesses in the area are sure to notice the activity, and the variety of visual stimuli gives a truer sense of how much is actually happening downtown rather than displaying the economic impossibility of artists renting long-empty commercial space (with outrageous property tax rates).
Do you think giving space to creators of new events and art should be considered for downtown?
Will you pop your head into this new art-space to say hello to a local burgeoning artist?
I’m not even going to tell you who is moving in temporarily…I’ll leave it up to you to investigate. In fact, I’ll offer a prize of a Spotvin Creative masterpiece…a Windsor, Ontario t-shirt to the first person who can tell me who the artist is that’s moving into that space…
Just leave your answer in the comment section, with your e-mail, and if correct, I will arrange to get this amazing new Windsor-branded t-shirt to you.
Another business opens up in the downtown, and almost under the noses of everyone.
Two weeks old, One World Cafe and Roastery is laying the groundwork for a strong cafe spot directly next to the Radisson Hotel. When you walk in the front doors of the hotel, you glimpse to your right and you can’t miss the art-clad walls of One World. It’s in the perfect spot to service students in the St. Clair Centre for the Arts, the Radisson and Hilton patrons, and the conference-goers at the complex of linked buildings.
Heather Dimu, co-owner, was nice enough to meet with me and tell me all about her new venture.
Below are two videos we shot Tuesday, June 8th, 2010. We had to pause for business to take its course…and then we talked a bit more about the local art selling on the walls, the proposed hours of operation, and the opportunity facing them because of their location downtown.
As much as this post is about prompting YOU to give me your thoughts about Red Bull weekend, I want to share my take.
Aside from the fact that I was busy tending to my own business all weekend, I did manage to wander for short bursts into other areas of the downtown. The freedom to roam the streets without cars is always fascinatingly uplifting.
Starting on the Friday night, downtown workers meandered through the bustling patio construction, closed streets, and foot traffic to get themselves home. Stage construction was fast and furious. Cables snaking in the corners of curbs led to stage platforms full of sound equipment. Large bright orange and yellow barriers closed the streets from automobile traffic. Countless umbrellas, promotional flags, and downtown regulars began filling the empty space that cars normally take up.
By seven o’clock, sound-checks were being performed on stages in several locations. Thirty minutes later, local musicians were belting out tunes. By ten, the rain was falling. In the true entrepreneurial spirit, downtown venue owners were making their spaces available to the several musicians that were unable to make their outdoor debuts. Over the course of two days and three nights of closed streets and hosed-down hopes, downtown made the best possible adjustments to the weather obstacles. Crash Karma played inside of Pepper’s Bar & Grill while stunning storms pounded the downtown pavement. Dozens of performers found makeshift homes in other venues, while patios sat mostly vacant. As soon as skies cleared each night, the patios were inhabited by anyone that braved the onslaught of rain.
A celebratory George Manury, moments after performing on the outdoor stage on University Avenue.
The days found the skies full of thunder-heads and racing planes. The nights found acrobatics replaced with high winds and wetness. But everyone did everything possible to rise above the circumstances. Nowhere was it more evident that Windsor would have its day in the sun than on Sunday.
Driving down Riverside Drive on Sunday afternoon, I casually looked into the sky above the Detroit River. I thought I was watching a safety helicopter, surveying the races…until it turned ninety degrees skyward and climbed hundreds of feet (nose up) and eventually looped backward into a huge arching flip. My heart actually raced for a moment, as I thought I was watching a catastrophe in the making. But this was one fraction of the amazing spectacle of the Red Bull Air Races. I sat in traffic on Riverside Drive for about five minutes with my eyes glued to the stunt-helicopter (which I never knew existed) as it twisted, flipped, climbed, and dove. It made me wish I’d had time this weekend away from my business to see more of this aerial madness.
Getting closer to the core, hundreds of people carried lawn chairs and pushed strollers toward the river. With my windows down in the car, I heard friends shouting toward one another, laughing and waving. I saw a little boy crossing the street, oblivious to anything outside of his excitement for the airplanes, playing within his imagination. He had a toy airplane in his hand, arm outstretched, dreaming his way into the cockpit of one of the racing planes. It was the indelible image I hold with me now that the races have passed. An hour later, back at my downtown business, I watched planes in formation between the gaps in the buildings. Jaws dropped all around me as eyes stayed skyward in the car-less streets. I thought of that boy, craning my neck to find more planes. We were returned to our fascinated state of mind. For fits and starts this weekend, we were kids.
I hope we get to experience this Red Bull Air Race event again for years to come.
As much as the businesses had at stake this week in the downtown, this city is at its grandest when citizens of Windsor are drawn to our greatest physical asset (the Detroit River) to dream big. Arts, fireworks, races, and festivals funnel all of us to a common interest that allows for a display of what downtown really has to offer. In my view, it’s the job of the business community to go whole-hog and welcome our regular and wildly infrequent visitors when we do get them in the core. Going out of the boundaries we usually know, and stay within, is the key to imparting our expertise and hospitality to strangers of downtown.
My hope is that we take pride in our perseverance for this event and move on. Let’s catapult out of our comfort zones as business owners, workers, and residents (and into supreme ambassadors) for the next big-draw event in the downtown to make everyone in Windsor feel at home within the hub of the city.
What was your favourite thing about Red Bull weekend? Comment below!
Photo at the top of this post is of Milk Coffee Bar patio as Red Rows performed live on Sunday evening.
It was in the morning, at the waterfront, on Memorial Day Monday.
It was a statement. A commitment to a city that recognizes its creative people.
Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, chefs, and more were on-hand for the display of support for Windsor to be a creative city.
It’s that time again.
For those of you in front of your computers at 10:25am Monday, you can catch the livestream of the beginning of the walk. Catch a look at everyone who decided to come out to show support for their creative community. Again, the link to the live stream is http://ustre.am/bPRq
Here’s a more formal description from the Facebook event of who’s behind this walk, where and when it’s happening, and why you should go.
“Join us on Monday, May 24th, 2010 in Ambassador Park as we walk for a Creative City!
Windsor Endowment for the Arts (WEA) in partnership with WindsorEats.com invite everyone to our Creative City Walk. We will be meeting at the King and Queen Sculpture at 10:00 a.m. and the walk will begin at 10:30a.m.
Our walk will lead us to Dieppe Gardens for a celebration for Windsor’s 118th birthday. There’ll be live entertainment, children’s activities and, of course, birthday cake! So show your support for our beautiful, creative city and join us! Walk with us and show your support for arts and culture in our community!
If you are interested in helping fundraise for WEA, you can print out a pledge form and bring it with you to the Walk.”
Photos of crowd from last year’s Creative City Walk are care of www.lulujane.ca and the Windsor Endowment For The Arts Facebook Page.
Downtown, interviewing, and investigating 6-months free rent at 500 Ouellette Ave. Entrepreneurs will love this.03:07:45 PM August 23, 2010from TweetDeck
