Pages from the past

Main Street is not a dangerous place, the story reporting this is not available online, and its reporter hit the pavement instead of the Rolodex. Just what decade did I wake up in on Sunday morning?

Anyway, Mr. Oleson's wholly enjoyable piece on the fabled Main Street Strip (at its most liberally defined span, 17 blocks from Portage up to Selkirk Avenue) touches on something that has been clear to keen downtown pedestrians for some time now: that Portage Avenue is in the same place Main Street was 25 or 30 years ago.

"It seems that Winnipeg's skid row has moved south, to Portage Avenue, where on any given day you will see more boarded-up buildings, panhandlers, public drinking and puking drunks than you will on the dreaded Main Street strip."

Indeed, who would have guessed that Portage and Edmonton would be more unsavory and dangerous than Main and Logan? Day or night, I know where I feel safer walking.