Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Time for another rambling grandpa esquire "long view" post.
The West End, to my eyes, looks like it has taken a real turn for the worse over the last few years. It was already showing some signs of decline before the pandemic, but since then it has probably looked rougher than ever. So many boarded up storefronts, incidents of chaos big and small, neglected-looking housing, you name it. Last week I was waiting for a light to change at the corner of Sargent and Maryland by the boarded up 7-Eleven and it was barely recognizable... there were people sprawled out, passed out on piles of junk in front of the abandoned convenience store, the shop across the street was boarded up... it was a jarring sight.
For a while in the early to mid 2000s it felt like the West End was in a bit of an upswing. There were a lot of housing improvements, there were some projects like the West End Cultural Centre expansion, some new storefronts opened up. But somehow it kind of fell off along the way and lately it looks like once you get more than a block north of Portage and the "Wolseley North" spillover area, it is in straight up decline. To my eyes it looks like it's in worse shape than ever. It's too bad, because it's one of the most truly urban parts of town in Winnipeg and it has so much potential. Yet it feels like it is going from an area with a bit of an urban edge to one that is straight-up frightening, with the social problems to match. It's an alarming trend.
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Winnipeg has a very definite disease right now. It's called meth. Every time I get into my car now, I see them everywhere. It's like the walking dead. Bus shelters in the winter, everywhere else possible in the summer. All along the rivers now and growing.
We have a big problem. And I'm not sure who is capable of changing it.