Andrew Paul

Best Makeout Spot

Best Place To Smoke Dope In Front Of The Cops

420 Protest
Alberta Legislature Grounds
Timing is everything when it comes to getting away with a blatant violation of the Criminal Code. Especially if the offence reeks of premium grade B.C. bud and you’re doing it two feet in front of police officers and their angry tasers. No one really knows where the cannabis occasion known as 420 came from, but every April 20, roughly 300 marijuana enthusiasts congregate on the lawns of the Leg to smoke their weed in peaceful protest for the legalization of the herb they love. And every year, the Edmonton Police Service shows up to mill about the crowd making sure everyone is safe, sound, and not drinking booze. And let’s face it: if you’re drinking at this event, you deserve what
you get.

Best Makeout Spot

Paddle Boats, Hawrelak Park
The pond behind the Hawrelak Park amphitheatre is by far the best place to take that special someone when you’re ready to make a move. For $10 you can rent your own private love boat that is pretty much guaranteed to seal the deal — after all, there’s nowhere for that special someone to escape when you casually lean in for some tongue-jousting. This goes double in August during the Labatt Blues Festival when the sweet sounds from the amphitheatre roll across the water to create a surreal atmosphere that will make anyone weak in the knees.

Just keep in mind that there are usually children around, so nudity is discouraged. But chances are that everyone else on the water is up to the same tricks as your devilish self.

Best Place To Take Your Dog For Dinner

Doggy Style Deli
15131 Stony Plain Rd.
Some people feel that dogs are satisfied spending their entire lives munching on the same old Kibbles ’n’ Bits. However, if that special four-legged friend starts looking at its food dish with a disdainful stare, it might be time for a change.

The best place in the city for pooches to get their culinary fix is definitely this Chinese-inspired deli that offers everything from shepherd’s pie to birthday cake — yes, you can actually throw a canine birthday soirée in this place. So instead of simply taking Fido on a walk, take him on a lunch date for some tasty shih-tzu stew instead. And if you’re feeling peckish, don’t worry: the food is fit for people as well. Co-owner Gino Rodrigues actually feeds the doggy pizza to his kids. Just remember — no cats allowed.

Best Addictive Substance That Should Probably Be Illegal

Beef Satay Soup from Thanh Thanh
10718-101 St.
Once the first drop lands on your tongue, you’ll want to make a giant vat of this sweet nectar of the gods yourself. That is, until you actually look up the ingredients and realize your grocery list is a mile long and even if you bought everything on it, there’s no way you’d be able to duplicate this peanut-riddled bowl of vermicelli hellfire they brew in the Thanh Thanh kitchen.

Seriously, they make enough cash at that place to shut down the entire operation during the summer for three weeks of vacation time. During those three long weeks, the usually respectable patrons are reduced to quivering addicts. You can see them crawling inside the dumpsters behind the restaurant licking old takeout containers and whimpering softly to themselves. Damn you, Thanh Thanh — you’ve made junkies of us all.

Best Neighbourhood Character

Daniel Corey Booth
Whether it’s that crazy cat lady who screams at invisible squirrels or that homeless man who diligently collects your empties from the back alley like clockwork, every neighbourhood has a resident character.

However, the best neighbourhood character in all of Edmonton is “Dancing” Daniel Corey Booth. With more than 5,000 fans on Facebook, Dancing Daniel has become a pseudo-celebrity in the city’s west end for religiously busting crazy dance moves up and down 178th Street. One might think his shtick is frivolous fun and games, but recently local law enforcement has been attempting to put an end to Dancing Dan’s fancy footwork — yes, apparently it’s 1984 and the EPS just can’t get enough of Kenny Loggins, Kevin Bacon, and Footloose. What Rev. Shaw Moore was to Ren McCormack, Mike Boyd is to our man Dan. We say keep on dancing, Daniel.

Best Public Art Installation

The World Walk and River Promenade At Louise McKinney Park
Public art installations have always carried a lot of baggage when it comes to justifying which exhibits deserve public funding, so we’ll refrain from judging the artistic merit of the installations in The Places: Art & Design in Public Places Walking Tour. However, with some of the projects receiving upwards of $100,000, it’s understandable that some taxpayers might be concerned.

This is why we’re going to give the title of Best Public Art Installation to the Louise McKinney Riverfront Park Development Legacy Project. This project consists of poems about Edmonton and its citizens’ connection to the environment that are engraved on metal bands and fastened to existing lampposts along The World Walk and River Promenade at Louise McKinney Park. Just think of the number of poems the city could have in every neighbourhood if they had $100,000 to spend on local poets and their silver pens.

Best Entrance To Purple City

St. Joseph’s Basilica
10044-113 St.
Word of this ethereal plane travels down the grapevine from older siblings and their friends. “Oh man, that’s the trippiest shit ever,” they would say. And indeed it was until we permanently scarred our retinas on those white-hot lights. But regardless of the health implications, a trip to Purple City is a pilgrimage and rite of passage for many Edmonton youth.

For those of you who have never seen Purple City, here’s what you have to do: go to St. Joseph’s when it’s dark and find the halogen lights that shine onto the church walls from the lawn in front. Then tape your eyelids open and plant your skull on top of the searing light and stare religiously into the white brilliance for no less than a full minute. The rest is history — lift your head, remove the tape (if you like), and watch as the city melts into a purple aura of its physical self. Man, that is the trippiest
shit ever.

Best Place To Survive

The Nuclear Apocalypse
McKenzie Ravine Bomb Shelter
Fortunately we don’t have to worry about the Reds dropping an H-bomb on our back step anymore. However, on the off-chance that George W. Bush was right about a bunch of cave-dwellers wanting to sneak an atom bomb into our midst, the fallout shelter located in the McKenzie Ravine near 142nd Street is the best place to survive a nuclear holocaust.

This Cold War relic was commissioned in 1953 by former mayor Bill Hawrelak in anticipation of Jasper Avenue becoming ground zero. Back then plebes like us would have been turned away at the door to make sure that only the elite political class would survive to breed and reemerge to restart civilization. However, Edmonton’s Department of Civil Defence has long since abandoned the site to the history books. Just keep in mind that the front entrance is welded shut, so you’ll have to use the emergency exit to get inside.

As for its location, I think I’ll keep that to myself. Good luck, suckers.

Best Place To Pretend You Can Still Smoke Indoors

Co Co Di
10160-100A St.
It’s been just over a year since the city’s smokers were banished to the ice floes of dying social norms (located five metres from any public entrance), but there’s still one place where nicotine freaks can go to relive the days when they were allowed to cultivate their tumors unmolested.

Co Co Di Restaurant is a shisha bar in the heart of downtown (it’ll have its grand reopening on July 1, 2009) where you can devour tasty Lebanese cuisine while puffing on a hookah. The smouldering fruit leaf/molasses mixture is a hell of a lot healthier than tobacco, and if you put your mind to it you can actually convince yourself that you’re getting your fix even though the nicotine levels are actually much lower than traditional tobacco. Did we mention they have six different flavours?

Best Place To Lament The Loss Of Precious Green Space

Churchill Square
What better way to celebrate a city’s centennial birthday than to rip out the foliage and grass that make up the central public space of our community and cover it with cold, grey concrete?

That’s what happened to Churchill Square in October 2004 when the grass and trees were removed to build a giant concrete pad for no good reason at all. Well, I suppose those terrible trees must have wreaked havoc on the jugglers at the annual Street Performers Festival, and God knows how many overpriced food samples from A Taste of Edmonton were ruined by errant leaves dropping onto patrons’ plates. As if that’s an excuse.

Best Gathering Place For Bikers

Tim Hortons
10519 Whyte Ave
These hogs are sick, and we’re not talking about swine flu. Nope, these beasts are all machine and as gnarly as the road warriors who ride them. Whether you’re a bike buff or just someone who likes their eardrums ruptured from time to time, the Tim Hortons on Whyte is your best bet to check out the city’s hottest two wheel monster machines.

Just remember: even though you think the domino effect you see in the movies when a row of motorcycles gets knocked over is funny, you’re apt to leave in tears if you try to pull that stunt here. Come to think of it, you might not even have time to cry before your face is introduced to the molecular makeup of the asphalt parking lot.

Best Piece Of Missing Architecture

Central Pentecostal Tabernacle Church
Formerly at 1605 107 Ave.

Edmonton has a reputation as a boomtown and even though booms are good for the economy, they aren’t necessarily as good for our architecture. We all know the terrible consequences of cheap construction and slack building codes — unless you’ve forgotten about the MacEwan fires in 2007.

This half-assed construction makes our city look like shit, so when a piece of solid craftsmanship bites the dust in the name of boomtown progress, it’s shameful.

That’s what happened to the Central Pentecostal Tabernacle Church. The church, once the largest church in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, was finished in 1972 with the completion of its giant pyramid building. Its design, conceived by Peter Hemingway, was enough to inspire the lovely style of the Muttart Conservatory. But alas, as with any boomtown, there isn’t much time to dwell on the past when there’s more money to be made in the immediate future.

City Service Most In Need Of Improvements

Public Transit
We were going to say that Edmonton’s pockmarked roads need the most attention because if one more of those freaking potholes swallow the front end of our car, we’re going to freak.

However, we decided at the last minute that public transit needs a little more love. Sure, two new LRT stations open up in April, but let’s be real — Edmonton’s dirty little stretch of tracks is embarrassing for a city approaching a population of one million. Calgary, for instance, has four times the ridership and LRT infrastructure as we do. It wasn’t always that way, but somewhere along the line, city council forgot that as a city expands, so must its public transit system.

Better yet, how about a little foresight? Why not try planning ahead for a change and have the urban sprawl catch up to the LRT so we don’t have to rip up mature neighbourhoods or spend exorbitant amounts of cash building the LRT underground? The bonus here is that if public transit received a little TLC, our crater-ridden roads would be spared some of the savage beating they’re receiving now. Two birds with one stone — now we’re talking.

Best Place To Hang With Your Grandparents

Edmonton Film Society, Royal Alberta Museum
12845-102 Ave.
Most of us love our grandparents to death, but when it comes to taking them out for a night on the town, there are only so many activities that both parties will enjoy over and above a tasty meal at the Olive Garden followed by an intense game of canasta over tea and scones. Let’s face it: Grandma
doesn’t get the same kicks you do out of shotgunning brewskis atop the High Level Bridge, and when was the last time Grandpa asked you to hit the clubs to help him bring sexy back?

Fortunately the Edmonton Film Society has the answer with their weekly remounts of classic films at the Royal Alberta Museum Auditorium. You can see the greats, from Audrey Hepburn to Gary Cooper, on the big screen again and maybe even begin to understand what Granny and Gramps mean when they say, “They don’t make movies like they used to.”