The “It’s Your Downtown” Ads Never Mentioned This….

After a nice meal at a Main Street restaurant yesterday night, our group left the establishment and proceeded to discuss that evening’s movie options outside. Some drunken idiot walks out of the Winnipeg Hotel, stands right at the edge of the curb and proceeds to URINATE onto Main Street in front of all of us. We all proceeded to joke how this fellow must have mistaken “It’s Your Downtown” with “Urine Downtown.”

The Downtown Biz Website (http://www.downtownwinnipegbiz.com/index/its_your_downtown) emphatically states:

“Winnipeggers need to come to the point where it’s okay to love downtown again!” If something is done about people urinating in the streets, vandalizing our cars or aggressively panhandling we will.

Other nuggets from the Downtown Biz website include:

“If you don’t like downtown, you have the power to change it. Quit complaining, get off your butt and do something about it.
When we all pitch in and get behind downtown, it can only get better.
It’s our downtown for better or for worse. When we realize it’s OUR downtown to use or abuse, we have the power to change it.”

Their site has to be seen to believed - especially the Top 10 Reasons It’s Your Downtown section. Apparently the problem is not WITH downtown, but with the PEOPLE who are too scared to frequent downtown. According to the list, we are duty bound to suck it up and head for Portage and Main, our safety be damned. In what parallel universe does browbeating your target market make sense?

I keep trying to “do something about it” by spending my hard earned money in the vicinity of the windy intersection. My reward is either a golden shower show, a smashed window or a broken lock on my vehicle. If this is the best campaign the Downtown Biz can muster, all public money funding them should be rescinded and applied to law enforcement. Mindless platitudes and browbeatings won’t bring us downtown – making us feel safe will. I for one love going downtown – I just don’t like the surprises that inevitably follow…