Halifax take-away

Seaside shiplap

Words are hot. Given the oppressive heat this week here in the globally warming Northeast (isn’t going outdoors like walking into an open oven?), I thought it might be cooling to view some pretty seaside pictures from always cool and breezy Nova Scotia.    

I was a bit saddened to see that some of the lovely old buildings on Halifax’s waterfront, which they refer to as the ‘Historic properties” were either empty (the iconic “Morse’s teas” building for instance, which is one of the first sights you have driving into the city from the airport sits forlorn and for rent) , or in the midst of being torn down.  

Old v new in the Historic properties

We drove out to the beautiful Bay of Fundy on Canada Day to an incredible little hamlet called Hall’s Harbour, which has a lovely old lobster pound where you can pick and choose your lobster and them have it served to you all pink and perfectly steamed while you sit outside overlooking the fishing boats. I was struck by how much the rock cliffs on the Bay looked just like the crumbling old Halifax warehouses.    

Rockin' the Bay of Fundy

 Sadly, Barrington Street in Halifax’s downtown is looking well past its best-before date. My sense is that the city, which is doing some things right with the new boardwalk area on the reclaimed waterfront, had better start taking a look at what they have done in downtown Pittsburgh, which was also hard hit by urban decline and had some incredible buildings. Instead of letting them be torn down however, they bought them up and now lease them for pennies to artists and galleries. And now the city, which is a cheap place for artists to live, and has a great art school, just like Halifax, is a bona fide art destination.    

Here’s some cool graffiti which was one of the few bright spots on Barrington:    

Barrington graffiti door

 One night we went to see the Idlers, who are a punk/reggae outfit fromNewfoundland at the Seahorse, which is Halifax’s oldest bar and is always great fun. The best night to go is Thursday, when the Mellotones, a local funk band, with like a million people in the brass section, play at 11 sharp–and every cool kid in Halifax goes to dance. Dennis Rodman was there once, grabbing the mike from the Mellotones and everybody got mad. Two things occur to me: whatever anybody does in Newfoundland ends up being a sort of punk version. And for some unknown reason, the East Coast, being the least funky place you can imagine, has a burgeoning funk scene.    

Maritime mascot of the Seahorse tavern

Here are the two cute things I just had to buy myself in a vintage shop on Agricola as a souvenir:   

An old church banner with a fine reminder:   

Word to live by

And a cookie tin featuring the horrid/wonderful sugar-coated Playbox cookies I adored (and used to lick the hard candy coating off of) when I was a little girl.   

Memories of Diabetes