River City Writer

It’s election day in Edmonton, today. If you haven’t already decided who you’re going to vote for, you should probably stay home from the polling station. However, if it’s still early in the day when you’re reading this, you might be able to do the necessary research to decide who are the candidates for you.

To help you out with that last minute information, here are a few links:

• Official Edmonton Municipal Election Website
• Daveberta - Edmonton-based political blogger
• CBC: Edmonton Votes

The polling stations are open until 8pm, so if you’re reading this earlier than 5pm, you should have time to research all of the candidates in your area, and make a relatively informed decision.

Today, I went to view some condos. I didn’t really see any that I liked, but there are plenty more units in this city. In fact, if you’re looking to buy your first place, a condo is probably the best way to go right now. The market seems to be saturated, so the prices are low (compared to houses, at least).

One place where the prices are especially low is along the Avenue of Nations (107 Avenue). I know this because the realtor I’m working with told me so. He admitted that it’s a rough neighbourhood, and that he wouldn’t want to live there himself. He also acknowledged that I probably wouldn’t want to live there right now, either.

What he did tell me is that the city is going to be putting a lot of money into that area in the next few years. It’s being predicted that prices in that area are going to see a huge increase in a few years. It’s not somewhere that I’d want to live right now (though, I might look at some condos down there that he mentioned, just out of curiosity), but if I had enough money to purchase an investment property, in addition to a place for myself, I would totally be willing to invest in a place down there.

It’s right near Grant MacEwan College, so it would probably be easy to find a student to rent the place out to. And, once the property values in the area increase, you could either sell the place for a profit, or move in yourself (since the neighbourhood will have been cleaned up by that time, presumably).

That said, I certainly wouldn’t want to live in that area right now. I live on 107 Avenue (106, technically, but my parking lot backs onto 107)  right now, and I feel perfectly safe on my block. However, I wouldn’t want to walk more than a block to the east of my building at night. Perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but I’d be worried about getting mugged. There are very few areas in Edmonton that I feel unsafe walking at night, and the Avenue of Nations is one of them.

I also don’t like having my tires slashed. During a recent drive through the area surrounding 107 Avenue (between about 110 Street and 97 Street), I noticed that there were several apartment blocks where nearly every vehicle in the parking lot had its tires slashed. It looked they had been slashed quite a long time ago, and that the owners hadn’t bothered replacing them, because they knew that the new tires would be slashed the very next day.

Despite all of that, I am curious about the property in the area. As I said, it’s highly unlikely that I would actually live in the area. Since I don’t have the money to buy a home for myself, in addition to an investment property, I will not be investing in the area.

If, however, you are a forward thinking property investor, 107 Avenue just might be worth a look.

As I become more and more serious about buying a home in the upcoming months, I’m realizing that my financial situation will probably be a little bit tighter than I’m used to. It won’t be anything that I can’t manage, but I won’t have quite as much spending money as I do at the present time.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to solicit more ideas for free fun in Edmonton. If you can think of more ideas, that aren’t already listed in the original topic, leave a comment here, or in the comments section for the previous free fun in Edmonton topic.

Bonus points if you do me a favour and list free (or inexpensive) date ideas. It seems that my romantic life might be taking a positive turn, so if I can create a fun date that doesn’t cost me a lot of money, that would be great.

On Sunday night, Brother Ali played the Velvet Underground. It was the best show I’ve been to in a long time. In fact, it was one of the best shows I have ever been to. It’s definitely up in my top 3, hip hop or otherwise.

The crowd was rocking the entire time. Even the opening act—Toki Wright (music page)—got people moving. That’s a rare feat, but Toki has the kind of talent that it takes. In addition to being a damn good emcee, he’s one of the best hype-men I’ve ever seen.

Blueprint, as always, was amazing. He’s definitely a party-rapper. He knows how to make people move, and he’s got songs that are perfect for partying. He seems to have written a lot of political stuff, since I last saw him perform, though.

While he was still partying, and putting on a great show, his newer songs seemed to have a lot more darkness and political cynicism to them. Given the times we’re living in, I suppose that’s to be expected, especially coming from an American artist, who deals with it much more directly than we do here in Canada.

Brother Ali gave one of the most intense performances I’ve ever witnessed. In a weird sort of way, it almost resembled a testimony, or some sort of religious evangelism. The fact that Ali’s music has a definite spiritual aspect to it probably didn’t hurt.

I honestly don’t even know what to say about the experience. It was truly one of those things that you have to experience to understand. Luckily, the Champion will probably be back soon. He said that he plans to come back at least once or twice a year from now on. He also seemed to hint that he’s going to try and put out new material more often (the time between The Undisputed Truth—the album that this tour is promoting—and the previous album was nearly 5 years).

If you didn’t experience Brother Ali this time, I highly recommend that you check him out the next time he’s in Edmonton.

Today’s post is a question for all of you: what do you think about Edmonton’s police service?

That’s it. It’s really that simple. I will update this post with my own opinions later, but I want to give you an opportunity to post your opinions before I bias you with my own views.

I doubt many of your will change your opinions just because you’ve read mine, but I’d rather avoid creating any sort of unintentional bias.

Once again, then, how do you feel about the Edmonton Police Service?

My opinion after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

An online friend of mine, who has recently moved to Edmonton, requested that I write more about the music/concert scene here in River City. I told him that I would try to do so.

Hopefully, most of my music-related posts will be about Edmonton-based musicians, but this particular post isn’t. This post is about Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Brother Ali.

Brother Ali is coming to Edmonton on Sunday, October 07 at the Velvet Underground (downstairs at the Starlite Room). Because the show is in the Velvet Underground (formerly the Victory Lounge), Starlite Room membership is not required to get in.

If you’re a fan of hip hop, Ali is one of the best emcees out there right now. His style and lyrics are heavily influenced by the Golden Age of hip hop. KRS-One, Rakim, and Public Enemy are some of his most obvious influences.

If you’re into lyrics that are both smart and witty, with beats that are completely rocking, I highly recommend checking out Brother Ali.

He is one of the most passionate performers I’ve ever heard on a record. The amount of passion that comes through the records can’t be faked. Despite that, something tends to get lost in the studio, so I suspect that he’ll be even more intense live than he is on disc.

Brother Ali plays the Velvet Underground (10030-102 Street) on October 07, 2007 @ 8:00pm. Tickets are $16 ($18 at the door), and are available at Megatunes, Blackbyrd, Foosh, and Soular.

The past few days, I’ve been wondering aloud about where to find information on the candidates running in this year’s municipal election. Edmonton is set to vote in just 13 days, and I’ve seen surprisingly little in the way of campaign information.

The local media is one obvious source, but they tend to focus mostly on the mayoral candidates, and not on those seeking council seats.

The Internet would be the next obvious place to look. I’ve heard that all (or at least most) of the candidates have MySpace and Facebook profiles. The only problem with this is that I don’t even know the names of all the people running for council in my ward. If I don’t have names, I can’t look them up online.

One of the main reasons I don’t know the names of the candidates is that I haven’t seen very many campaign signs in my neighbourhood.

I’m all for saving the trees, but this is one instance where I really think that advertising is a necessary evil. Get your name in front of my eyes! Shove it in my face as many times as you can, that way, I’ll remember your name when election day comes.

I won’t vote based on name recognition alone (nor should anyone else), but it will help me to do more research, and find out if you’re the person I want to vote for.

Luckily, while trolling the Internet for “edmonton civil election 2007,” I came across Daveberta.ca, a blog dedicated to Alberta politics. Dave has been writing a lot about the Edmonton municipal election. He’s also gathered links to all of the candidates’ websites in one place.

If you’re looking for information about the candidates in the 2007 Edmonton municipal election, or anything related to politics in Alberta, I highly recommend checking out Dave’s blog.

If you have any other good sources of information regarding the 2007 municipal election, please share them in the comments section.