[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Lines on brickwork: traces of the old Rexy Theatre marquee?"][/caption] A small Vietnamese grocery now occupies the entrance hall to what was once a popular neighbourhood movie house in the heart of Chinatown. It was the last of a series of theatres at Somerset West and Lorne Avenue, in various incarnations known as the Rex Fireproof Theatre, the New Rex, and finally the Rexy. With the possible exception of one or two large and lavish Chinese restaurants, modern-day Ottawans don't usually associate ...

It’s been more than seven years since Spacing Ottawa contributor Alain Miguelez published his much-esteemed book on the history of theatres in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, "A Theatre Near You”. The lavish 370-page volume, thick with archival photos, was a labour of love that joined up two parts of Miguelez; the inner child who never forgot the thrill of a Saturday afternoon matinée, and the urbanist the boy grew up to be -- a writer who laments the damage done to our civic culture by the closures of the grand "picture palaces" and their cousins, the neighbourhood theatres that were once found on every main street. The book has been a treasure-trove for Ottawans curious to know more of the social history of their city, including writer and intern architect Chris Warden in these pages, but I am embarrassed to admit that it is only recently that I finally acquired my own copy.

View Centretowner's SXSW Cycle route in a larger map Recently in an Images of Centretown post, the author happened to mention one of his favourite cycling shortcuts through Centretown - a simple but effective jog over from O'Connor to Lyon via Lewis, Bank, and James - a route that as the post says is "a very convenient bike route for going south-west through Centretown, because it has low traffic and few red lights". Even though much of my week is spend in an office building on Lewis I had never ...

[flickrslideshow acct_name="spacing" id="72157627287468666"] Click here for non-flash views Imagine a cafe with a perfect view of a lively street corner from all its windows; smack downtown, it's also in the middle a lively arts and cultural district. In the morning you can pop by for a morning latté and WiFi session; in the evening you can go there for a pre-show drink.  It's  around the corner from city hall and the main police station, so it's busy during the day serving city staffers, lobbyists, and journalists who need to be close to the City Hall beat. Audio-visually it is fully equipped for use as a performance stage or for presentations and public meetings. It hosts debates and discussions on public issues; debates which are very likely to be covered by the city's biggest newspaper, very likely, because it is the newspaper itself that runs the cafe.

[caption id="attachment_5974" align="alignnone" width="350" caption=""Hmmm...what's this? A note? Trouble about the Old Mill story, you say? Damn!""][/caption] Several weeks ago I posted on the recently-announced plans to turn the Thompson-Perkins Mill -- the site of the late and unlamented Mill Restaurant -- into a brewpub. After going discussing the site's major shortcoming -- basically that the multi-lane roadways that surround it make it far too removed from natural pedestrian traffic patterns, despite its proximity to the downtown core -- I concluded that: ..like so many of the riverbank amenities in our city, despite its proximity to us, (The Mill) might as well be miles away for those of us who are on foot. A multi-lane "cordon sanitaire" protects the facility from contamination by pedestrian traffic from either the south or the east. And when we think of where we like to dine in Ottawa, we think of the Market, Elgin Street, Wellington Street West; places where pedestrians are clearly welcome to explore and mingle.

Capital BIXI launched this morning; I've been waiting for this all spring, so at lunch time I made my escape and went looking for the nearest station. There was nothing doing at their stated location at the corner of Queen and O'Connor yet, so I went scouting for Plan B. I assumed the Elgin Street station would be the flagship location, and probably equipped with bikes first, and so it turned out to be. I can report that the ticketing machine was easy to use -- it's basically a ...