Martoons

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Edmonton, Alberta: Northlands Coliseum

Scene: Arrival in Edmonton after a day’s driving from Saskatoon.

*

The House that Gretzky Built is now a morgue.

I pull into the abandoned parking lot of Northlands Coliseum to seek refuge from the rush hour traffic monster.

I now have a quiet minute to admire the coliseum’s familiar, iconic exterior.

Yet the ancient castle is rotting.

It has the distinct look of a neglected building.

Structures, although inanimate, have a type of living energy; yet they can become sick and die like organic bodies.

This coliseum is visibly festering.

Weeds sprout up at its base; fallen, unraked leaves accumulate, along with the paper cups and other discarded packaging from consumed products of skateboarders and other indigents who pass through.

*

Who owns the coliseum now?

It had been said that once the Oilers moved, the great house of the Oiler dynasty would be used by community groups.

Yet at this moment, there are no signs of any.

*

I sit in my car desperately surfing my archaic cell phone’s web. I’m searching for lodgings.

Web sites fail to load up and the browser closes.

I become aware that this parking lot is no longer a public space.

With the Oilers gone, warring factions have seeped in to fill the void.

A security car passes through to scope out my car. Thankfully, with a friendly nod, he’s gone.

Then a scruffy, dirty beggar shuffles past on his own patrol, glancing over disdainfully and in his own judgmental way instinctively and instantly identifies me and my vehicle as an outsider.

I sense that the clock is now ticking for me in this space.

Driver fatigue and this uncertain situation have ratcheted up my first world paranoia.

I keep an eye on the beggar, who has just slinked across the street behind the faceless Coliseum Inn.

He will, I suppose, relay my presence to his colleagues.

My attention and concern now shifts to a hooker-ish woman, who zips out of a Colisum Inn side exit, scoots across an alley, and disappears.

The Coliseum Inn: Have you ever seen this structure?

It is a building with absolutely zero personality.

Even the font of its name is plain. 

Conspicuously erected smack-dab across the street from the Oilers home (with few other hotels in the area), one imagines that when the Oilers thrived, it thrived.

When the Oilers moved, it died.

*

One’s own negative impressions can affect your behaviour and work against you.

I always had the idea that the Coliseum Inn was owned and operated by an invisible Oilers’ mafia.

“Pssst! You go see Oilers? You from out of town? You stay at Coliseum Inn okay?”

Now, as I sit in my car and rush to copy down a hostel phone number that has miraculously appeared on my browser (before it shuts down), it never occurred to me to simply get out of my car, walk across the street and book a room in that Coliseum Inn!

I get through to my hostel and wedge back into traffic.

Postscript

Later, with a rested and inquiring mind, further research reveals that the Coliseum Inn is still an active business and its rates are comparable to the hostel that I so desperately sought after.

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