windsor

moustache zen

1. Outside a school building, two tiny men with matching, impeccably curled moustaches repair a railing.

2. Two women in velour track suits—one lime green, the other hot pink—walk along a downtown sidewalk. Behind them a large moustachioed man in grey overalls and work boots watches as he loiters by a storefront.

devils' night

The sign on the 7-Eleven said:

WE REQUEST YOU DO NOT WEAR MASKS INSIDE THE STORE

Detroit doesn’t seem to have burned down last night, so I guess Devils’ Night was suppressed again. A city-run “Angels’ Night” campaign signs up tens of thousands of volunteers to do things like hose down abandoned buildings. (There are a lot of abandoned buildings in Detroit.) Kids under eighteen are not allowed on the streets from six p.m to six a.m.

detroit river

A quickie panorama of the Detroit River:

The bridge on the far left is the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit. The University of Windsor is right next to it. The buildings on the far right are the start of Windsor’s downtown. That’s where I live right now.

Also, I borrowed Janine’s new camera and made a crappy little video.

carnies! fireworks!

Do me a favour and pretend I wrote this a week ago, okay?

There’s a carnival set up by the river right now. It’s on my way to school, so I saw it being assembled and took some photos.

Last year it was part of the Freedom Festival and much bigger. There were free concerts, including The Guess Who. The whole thing was badly mismanaged, though, and went bankrupt, leaving a lot of workers unpaid.

This year it’s the Windsor Summerfest Midway, and there’s not much to it.

The big fireworks show was still on; I think it’s run by Detroit. On my way home from school there were masses of people along the river path. My route is about three kilometres, so that’s a lot of people. I had to walk for the second half to avoid running over little kids barrel rolling down the grass hills.

More buses than I’ve ever seen in Windsor were dumping people at the festival plaza. The buses in the photo are parked two and three abreast. The road they’re on was closed.

On the Detroit side, nine people were shot. Apparently some people didn’t notice at first because of the noise from the fireworks. It seems more like a James Bond villain’s cunning assassination plan than real life.

truck for sale, part two

Tires not included.

truck for sale

This excellent dump truck is for sale. I sure hope it includes all those tires.

that's an unfortunate name