Alex Reid

The young Toronto franchise chain of poutine cuisine late night diners is coming to Winnipeg in May 2011, replacing the resting place of the Glass Onion.

See the masticators blog where Allan Lorde called it last month.

An application to erect a 650-square-foot “JumboTron” has been made for the property at 712 Portage Ave, next to Gordon Bell High School.

This would be larger than the JumboTron at Portage and Main.

Ouch.

Ikea is coming to Winnipeg in late 2012, CBC reports.

My man Dave Twigg (and associates) released another gem of a video here.

During it’s 60-episode and five year run, HBO’s The Wire naturally was criticized by the Baltimore Police Department as it analyzed the dysfunctions of an entire city. But it was two days ago when Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III that the HBO show was a “smear that will take decades to overcome“.

“I heard all this stuff about, ‘Well there’s crime shows about L.A., about New York, about Miami,’” Bealefeld said. “You know what Miami gets in their crime show? They get detectives that look like models, and they drive around in sports cars. And you know what New York gets, they get these incredibly tough prosecutors, competant cops that solve the most crazy, complicated cases.”

“What Baltimore gets is this reinforced notion that it’s a city full of hopelessness, despair and dysfunction. There was very little effort – beyond self-serving – to highlight the great and wonderful things happening here, and to indict the whole population, the criminal justice system, the school system.”

Actually what Baltimore got was the best show on television. I’m sure most police officers will attest that CSI Miami is so removed from the truth that it is indeed more about models and fast cars than the profession. Perhaps Bealefeld would rather have models and fast cars himself. But I can do not defend the show that I love more than the creator himself.

David Simon, the creator of The Wire, Treme and Generation Kill and a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun for twelve years, penned a scathing public reply to the police commissioner that I think echoes similar problems in Winnipeg.

Others might reasonably argue, however that it is not sixty hours of The Wire that will require decades for our city to overcome, as the commissioner claims. A more lingering problem might be two decades of bad performance by a police agency more obsessed with statistics than substance, with appeasing political leadership rather than seriously addressing the roots of city violence, with shifting blame rather than taking responsibility.