now we are 100

So Kelowna turned 100 today. Happy birthday, yawn.

Yes, everyone's excited about Kelowna's centennial, and raving about what a wonderful place this stupid town is. We are so blessed, they say, to live in this paradise. This four-season playground! Cliche, cliche, cliche. Come on, people!

Yes, it's a step up from, say, Saskatchewan, from whence the majority of the population has sprung, but let's analyze a little.

We'll start with summer: It's dry and dusty because we're a semi desert. Drive across the Okanagan after May and all you see are parched tumbleweeds dotting the bland, brown hillsides. Yes, the lake is nice, if you don't mind the motor oil, beer and pee, but shall I start on the immense boredom I'm hit with spending any amount of time on its shores, baking on the flaming sand surrounded by hundreds of bikini clad sex objects (and I use the term loosely, since most of them are several trips to McDonald's beyond being fit enough for even a one piece in public)?

Then there's the wine industry. Great, we have a wine industry, and it's internationally recognized! Except, if you visit anywhere outside the Okanagan, THEY HAVEN'T HEARD OF IT!! Maybe if we stopped calling ourselves "Napa Valley North" we'd get some recognition for who we are instead of trying to ride some other region's shirt tails. Ditto "Silicon Vineyard" and "Hollywood North."

Shall I start on the Cultural District? Who tapes off a few blocks of city and says, "now, this is where our culture will reside." Especially when the "culture" is comprised of a handful of contrived, wannabe arts that I don't believe even the residents of this land buy. And I mean that literally. According to one local potter who has taken the bait, someone from Kelowna purchased her work in Calgary - - but wouldn't buy it in their own "CD."

Segueway to our low self image. I could expand here on a Canadian trait, but let's stick to Kelowna. We don't support our own artisans, artists, craftsmen, musicians, talent. After all, if they're here they must not be very good. So the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra will bankrupt itself bringing in musicians from Switzerland or England or Chicago or wherever to perform, but keeps its own, equally talented performers, in the background. Stigmatized.

Don't get me wrong - we want to be a big, grown-up city. Well, some of us do. But we don't want to give up our small town mentality. When Skyreach Place opened, for instance, everyone wanted to go check out the big arena - but then called into radio stations and wrote letters to the editor complaining how expensive the tickets and drinks were. Hello, this is what it's like in a big city. If you don't like it, stay small.

They're also lazy. No aspirations. Just contentment with being here. Existing. La-dee-dah! Sunshine and lakefront and flowers in hanging baskets down Bernard. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz. You know the part where Dorothy and the Scarecrow and the Tinman and the Lion are approaching Oz, so the Wicked Witch has to throw them a wrench? She spreads a poppy field before them. A beautiful, expansive, colourful field of poppies. But poppies are a narcotic. So when they get in the middle of the field they want to fall asleep. Upon realizing it they run like mad things to escape. That's Kelowna. You have to run, run and don't look back or else you'll fall asleep. You'll loose your edge, your creativity (after all, who do you have to challenge you? Alex Fong? Jock Hildebrand? Geert Maas, perhaps?). Your stories will suck and your opportunities diminish. You'll fall blissfully asleep and become like everyone else here.

Och, I could go on. And on. And on. Most of you, dear readers, have heard this tirade before. And yet here I am, still located in Kelowna. Fighting sleep with every fiber of my being, yet getting weaker and weaker about running away (what can I say, my family's here!). And so I shake the others, wake up, wake up! We're 100 today - let's try and get real!