As a kid, I thought Trailer Park Boys was an accurate, contemporary documentary about the world I lived in (or at least that of my friends who lived in the trailer park down the way).

Edit: Oh, and you had to go to a Chris Brothers store to buy Chris Brothers pepperoni - Sobeys didn’t carry it yet. It was glorious every time.

I wanted to be option C sooooo bad until the money ran out on the first leg…

Maybe tomorrow…

I mean, a hike is really just a long walk. It often refers to long walks in the country or wilderness, but that isn’t a necessary component.

That said, I don’t know if anyone has any real strict distance thresholds for a ‘hike’ (see: minimum 10 miles/16 km or something). I could maybe see adding a caveat that it should be for purely recreational purposes, rather than say walking to work or something.

Fuck it - you’re an avid hiker IMO. Walks in nature are nice, don’t get me wrong, but I like all the hidden gems you can find hiking in an urban environment (I count graffiti, weird posters, dilapidated buildings/infrastructure, weird shit on the side of the road, etc.)

Paperback books are totally acceptable, really just meant physical copies over EPUBs or PDFs on your phone or something.

Nothing necessarily wrong with those, but if you’re gonna read in bed I prefer paper - no blue light, notifications, and other stuff that detracts from sleep quality.

Sure, people say hiking is attractive, but I can only assume there’s a bias to forest hiking.

Meanwhile, I go out and do a four to five hour urban hike and people act like I have some sort of disorder.

“wHy DoN’t YoU jUsT dRiVe?” Because a drive to the beer store in the town across the river is an errand, a walk to the same place is a fucking ADVENTURE, Helen!

Might I suggest reading (specifically hard-copy books)? Doesn’t require much energy, and if you do it in bed with a dim light chances are you will get your sleep too (+ higher potential for vivid dreams, but that may just be me, YMMV).

It’s also, like, super attractive, apparently.

I, for one, am a fan of the wickedness that is Yonge St. I am only saddened that I was born too late to experience it when it was really seedy.

Seriously, if I had a time machine Yonge St in the 1970s would be one of the first stops - along with Bloor St W and Huron St.

Most settings, the key is paying attention to indicators of interest/disinterest. If someone isn’t engaging with you beyond grunts, looks visibly uncomfortable, etc. that’s your cue to gracefully exit.

This is the hard part for a lot of people, properly gauging interest after initiation and knowing when to move on. If it’s not intuitive, unfortunately there’s not much else you can do to improve this other than practice.

Sometimes you can find more casual philosophy-focused discussion/reading groups too - I know a few have a presence on Meetup in my area. They meet at a pub or something and discuss a particular topic for the evening.

Chemist at home:

-Neutral name (sorry SJW)

Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

Any bots here willing to help this human out? This seems like it’d be your forte.

(Been there, sucks incredibly badly. I feel for ya.)

So chances are you’ll have some options, but I can say the options for lower THC weed here in Canada (well, Ontario to be specific) are slim. There just isn’t as much market demand for it once the older folks who abstained during prohibition have tried it and moved on (usually to low dose edibles, tbf). The real money is in appealing to chronic smokers who chase THC %.

Sucks for me, who would love more options with moderate to low THC grown/processed really well (e.g. nice flavour profile, pretty nugs, etc.). There’s been a few, but they usually don’t stay on the market for very long or stay in a grow rotation.

For now, one hitters and lots of attention to dose thresholds are the way I get down. Which means I buy less weed, which also means my preferences aren’t well reflected in overall demand.

Naw, screw that - we need more people trying to make this place fun. If by some chance it is Ottawa, I’m sure they’d find receptive folks at The Dom/House of Targ/Arts Court/The Mayfair/Rainbow/AskAPunk/Tuesday Club/PROBE/One of the festival committees (except poutine and rib)/Spectrasonic/Awesome Ottawa/Canada Council for the Arts/White Rabbit/SPAO/One of the Zine collectives/Gladstone Theatre/Ottawa Little Theatre/Brass Monkey, for some reason/T’s Pub/Swizzles/Enriched Bread/Absolute Comedy/Cafe Dekcuf/that one house in Barrhaven (iykyk)/CKCU/CHUM/probably quite a few others I’m not aware of. Heck, you could bug the Night Mayor, what exactly is he up to these days?

It all really comes down to what you consider fun. Are you going to have the same degree of options as you would in Montreal and Toronto? No. But if you want fun, there’s things to do, places to check out, people to meet and a not-insignificant number of folks who want more of these.

Off the top of my head:

1. Start researching your local ordinances and bylaws. Like someone mentioned here, there might be a reason your town dies after 2200.
2. Think about the kind of things you want to see in terms of nightlife. Does that mean live music? Block parties? Techno night at the clurb? Kink stuff (seriously)? Theatrical performances? Hash and coffee socials (sort of a joke, but thinking through the logistics of such a thing has been my daydream du jour recently)? Etc.
3. Find others who would be interested in the kind of stuff you’d like for nightlife activities. Start talking $ and logistics - are there any grants you could try and apply for? Fundraising activities? Where are you going to do this stuff? What do you need in terms of insurance? Do you need to address any pesky bylaws, and can start working with your local government to try and tackle that? And so on.
4. Make a plan and act.

The big starting point is really just defining one or two things you want to see, and working to get to the point where you see them. In the course of this you might be surprised by what you find (someone mentioned good ol’ Ottawa, ON as an image of the place you’re describing - but there’s actually a decent amount of stuff, both above- and underground, you can find when you start poking around).

What up, fellow Ottawan?

Trying to dive into the local music scene was my approach - mostly because I suck at trivia.

Goodbye

A

“@!#?@!, motherfucker!”

If you are are doing any kind of learning (as a citizen or registered student) your local librarian, particularly your local academic librarian, is your best friend and you just don’t know it yet. Introduce yourself, and come with questions.

But don’t neglect your public librarians either - that light I saw in their eyes when asking about an obscure service they offered stuck with me.