Remembering Gord's Chick

I was reminiscing the other day while walking to the office about the changing face of the St. Catharines downtown core. I thought about Gord’s Place on James Str. and the times that I used to waste away there on weekends drinking my face off during my High School and University days.

Ahh, Gord’s. Yes, the den of inequity from which spawned a thousand pubescent substance abuse problems.

Specifically, I was thinking about what might have transpired to the infamous “Gord’s Chick” who also happened to frequent the place. “Gord’s Chick” was your typical Goth girl you see at any “alternative bar” you may wander into; all done up to the nines in retro lingerie, tights, knee high boots, pale make-up and black eyeliner…basically, your average local Siouxsie Sioux rip off. While there – and she was at Gord’s every night – she would dance up a storm to any hard-edged Goth tune the DJ had a mind to play at the time. She was part graceful ballerina; part whirling dervish. She was both scary and exhilarating to watch. It looked as if she was trying to conjure up some wrath of God via a typhoon, hurricane or some other random destructive act of nature…and man, was it sexy!

But where does someone go after being a Goth? What’s the next stage of the fashion evolution once you submit yourself to looking like a zombie corpse? I just can’t picture her in later in life wearing cowboy boots and skinny jeans dancing away at a Taylor Swift concert…but who knows? Maybe she has mellowed out in her old age (or whatever age it is that “old” constitutes itself as when you’re classified as an undead), popped out a few puppies and now lives on social assistance down by the railroad tracks.

You never know, do you?

I prefer to think of her as still raging against the dying of the light - a perpetual benchmark as far as full-time dedicated Goths go. I sincerely hope I see her again at some point. Perhaps at the market trying to buy kitten whiskers for her next witchy concoction, or maybe trying to raise spirits in some deserted graveyard or something. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll catch a glimpse of her dancing away by herself in some abandoned bus stop somewhere without a care in the world as if time had stood still and she was still back on the dance floor at Gord’s.

Jogging Your Mind About Running Safety

I have been getting more into long distance running as of late, and it seems I’ve been stressing about all the wrong things.

When I originally started pushing the 10-15km mark on these runs, my initial fear was typically in the usual areas: chaffing, cramping, proper hydration, nutrition, pulls, tears, sprains, heart spontaneously combusted inside my chest cavity – that kind of thing. Little did I know that there were much worse concerns that I should have been considering before heading out on these early morning death marches.

Specifically: crashing airplanes.

Robert Jones of Woodstock, GA was recently killed while running along the beach when a single-engine plane making an emergency landing managed to crash right on top of him. Sucks, huh?

But, hello? How does that happen exactly?

Where it’s true about why would a runner ever need to keep his eyes on the sky while out jogging, how on earth can you manage to miss a plane coming directly at you after it has fallen out of the sky? Well, it seems that Mr. Jones had a fondness for his iPod on these runs and therefore did not hear the airplane coming at him. I also assume then that Mr. Jones really likes his music loud.

Personally, I too love my tunes when I run but I doubt I would ever miss the sound of a crashing plane. This sounds more of a case of “stupid runner syndrome” to me, where once a runner begins to experience that euphoric rush of adrenaline, they also make the idiotic assumption that they are the center of the universe, where everything conscientiously revolves around and avoids them (ie. cars, cyclists, and as it were…crashing airplanes).

To this I would advise: turn down the Bon Jovi and focus more on the impending dangers going on around you. Trust that the impossible is possible and that stupid people are everywhere ready to hurtle into at high speeds reducing you to an oily smear on someone’s windshield.