Pyat travels to the RIM to meet his Waterloo!

[pyat]

As mentioned, I had a job interview at Research in Motion today, for the position of Content Writer for one of their internal training departments. Even if they were to offer me the job, it is extremely unlikely I would accept it, given that it would require nearly 200 kms of commuting every day. Granted, it's all easy highway driving, but I'd be unlikely to entertain the idea of doing that sort of commute again without some serious increase in pay.

Still, it is Research in Motion, Canada's equivalent of working for Google or somesuch, and just month ago I'd have snapped at a job there. So I took the day off my new job at CCI and motored up to Kitchener-Waterloo. Specifically, Waterloo, the smaller of the two conjoined cities.

I like visiting Waterloo. Half the city was built in 1890, and the other half was built yesterday. It's home to Laurier University (where Canadian math nerds come from) and several dozen high-tech and engineering firms, as well as enormous breweries. It's like Silicon Valley with socialized healthcare and an Oktoberfest parade.

EDIT: Actually, the nerds come from U of Waterloo, which is nearby.

I left during rush hour and arrived two hours early. The drive up was surprisingly smooth - no serious traffic to contend with. If I had to commute there, I could, and it would actually require less time than my current commute on the train. I spent about 90 minutes ambling around downtown Waterloo, taking pictures of things that interested me. Even the people in Waterloo tend to be interesting to look at. There were lots of fashionable professional women in exciting hats and boots and tiny Asian university girls with bright-red pigtails. There were also lots of doughy (or perhaps yeasty) brewery execs, but they weren't as interesting.

These are some of the things I saw.



The Ominously Named "Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics". Motto: "The Place Where Supervillains Just Happen!"


The Ominously Named "Mars Land Centre".


The Ominously Named "Centre for International Governance Innovation". I think the AntiChrist works here!


The Omin... okay, okay, so it's not Ominous at all. This is something called "Space Time Square." It sells books with pictures of Einstein on them, and tickets to the Perimeter Institute.


This was in the display window of a toy store. It IS Ominous. "Can't sleep, mom, or Charley McCarthy will eat me!"


Just a random sidestreet / alley. Gives you an idea of the mix of building styles.


This structure has a steampunk beer clock in it. No, really.


Not in Waterloo. On the way back, I passed through Cambridge, which has an enormous, empty and ruined hotel in it, built into the side of a hill. It was once a famous spa, a destination for important people from throughout the Empire. It's been partially restored... but not this part.


It was very foggy out today!

Comments

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

"It's home to Laurier University (where Canadian math nerds come from)"

And some math idiots. I was an English major.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Actually, the math (and computer science, and engineering, and phys/chem/bio) nerds come from Waterloo; it's the business nerds that come from Laurier. And those of us with arts degrees are most assuredly not nerds. Nope.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's okay. *hangs head in shame* I took journalism..

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

What? No bright red pigtails on display here, man! Colour me disappointed. ;)

Lee,
who really doesn't need to see red pigtails

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my cell phone camera is not actually useful for taking pictures of people, unless they're sitting very, very still.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Lee.

[mwbard.livejournal.com]

The "Centre for International Governance Innovation" was a brewery many moons ago. I believe it still is.

It makes me suspect ALL your labels! :) You must have an ULTERIOR MOTIVE of... MOUSE DOMINANCE! (though I hope getting your oil changed fixed your squeaking problem).

As to the universities, you probably mean University of Waterloo for the Math, the WLU, the "oversized highschool up the road".

Oh, and for the record, when I was there in the mid 80s, Waterloo had an official population of ~60,000, and ~30,000 university students... :)

P.S. Now and Then Books in Kitchener is DEAD! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

I think Now and Then was the store that was a mere block away from Imperiums to Order (mentioned in a comment below). I used to frequent that store way back when it was still open.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Imperiums to Order closed years ago (after being open for fifteen years). The owner (who's an acquaintance of mine) decided he'd just had enough of living hand to mouth, dealing with annoying customers, and in a hobby that showed every sign of shooting itself in the head over and over again.

Now and Then is indeed dead, but it was a merciful death. After Harry Kramer died, a young man who used to work for him took it over from his estate, tried to run it in the old mode (but with an updated spin of some sorts), and really didn't do very well at all. No it's essentially a goth head shop. I don't know if the young man still owns it and just decided to go into the goth head shop business (seems likely), or whether it's new ownership.

Kitchener Waterloo used to be a town that was absolutely replete with comic and hobby shops. Now we have two comic shops (one in each city), and two gaming shops (again, one in each city), and one internet-boardgame sales business run out of a local home. And none of these places have any particular interest in the RPG hobby.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Not a brewery, a distillery. The breweries are just up the road from the CIGI in either direction: one is a craft brew-pub, and the other is the original location of Brick (which still brews there, but it's not AFAIK the main source of their suds any more).

[pyat.livejournal.com]

You're right! I did mean Waterloo. :)

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Hey, if Huckabee wins, I know where I'll job hunt. The places looks sort of like a cross between the two places I studied science at, Olympia and Ann Arbor. BTW, if you ever get a chance, it's worth wandering around the campus of The Evergreen State College with a camera. The whole place looks like a higher education institution that survived the apocalypse in "Gamma World".

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Whereabouts is Evergreen State?

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

Not far from that Space Time Square was a gaming bookstore called Imperiums to Order. I think its failing point was that it was on a sidestreet and on the main road which the sidestreet fed out to was yet another gaming bookstore.

The Space Time Square used to have a retail outlet on its main floor which I used to make deliveries at. I am very familiar with that area, though by familiar I mean "I know what it looked like 10 years ago"

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, you're completely off in your judgement of location. That "Space Time Square" place is in downtown Waterloo, and is the historical Waterloo Post Office building. At one point it was the headquarters for Mortice Kern Systems (another KW-local software company, and one I used to work for), but they've long since moved out of there. Then, for a while it was a bistro-restaurant-club type thing. I'm not at all sure that it still isn't, but I never went there, so I'm not sure.

Imperiums to Order used to be in downtown Kitchener, right around the corner from Now and Then Books. Actually, the locations of Imperiums and Now and Then sort of wobbled around each other like sattelites around the Sun that was Cafe Mozart in downtown Kitchener. All three have now vanished into the ages. 8)

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

That move onto the side street probably kept Imperiums To Order open for as long as it was. First, it got the owner out from under the thumb of a landlord who really didn't care for their building at all well (and still charged lots of rent), and secondly it allowed the owner to get into a building which he came to own (thus reducing his overhead significantly after a time). He was close enough to the corner that his customers knew where to find him, and word of mouth did the rest.

On the main street, next to Now & Then, there was another gaming store (Nexus) with an interesting and convoluted history, affiliated with Games Workshop (which Imperiums wasn't AFAIK). The owner of Nexus tried to open an adult video business upstairs from his gaming store, which didn't last long (I believe the city informed him that he needed a special permit to open such a thing, which Mr Nexus hadn't secured, but that's just the rumour I heard). When his sideline was closed, Mr Nexus closed up his street level storefront gamestore, and moved it upstairs into the place where had tried his sideline, because the second floor space was cheaper to rent and had more floorspace.

Not long after that move, Mr Nexus decided he'd had enough of the game business and sold it off to another gentleman (again, only rumour, but I'd heard that Mr Nexus had decided he'd rather be a professional poker player than a game store owner). Not long after that the store re-opened (in the same up-rickety-stairs second floor location) as Phoenix games and hobbies.

It is still a Games Workshop outlet. But the owner knows little (and doesn't seem to care much) about other kinds of boardgames or RPGs. As such, while there is a selection, it's very poorly stocked and looks a bit like the pickings of a business he'd acquired (that cardboard box in the corner of an antique store, sort of). He does get in new things from time to time, but his prices on boardgames and RPGs are much higher than his competition in Waterloo.

As for the competition in Waterloo (J&J's Cards and Collectibles), they have a huge selection of boardgames at reasonably cheap prices. They have a very small RPG collection, and don't actively stock or promote it really (other than ordering some new WotC stuff as it comes out). They will special order anything they don't have (as presumably would Mr Phoenix), but their prices tend to be aggressively cheap (a few dollars above US cover, usually), plus "membership-ed" discounts (it's possible Mr Phoenix offers these as well; I don't know).

In short, the RPG hobby in KW, from a retail point of view, is all but dead. The boardgame hobby, on the other hand, is vigorously supported by one storefront, and one internet business whose office/warehouse is in Kitchener. Time will tell whether this will flip-flop back, but I doubt it. I suspect that the RPG industry is well and truly moribund at this point, and rather like the wargame business: supported by a very small core fan-base and several dedicated craft publishers, but well out of the maintstream of what's already a marginal hobby category.

[kaijugal.livejournal.com]

Just found out that you are Pyat the Mouse.

Just when I thought there were no local furries to my knowledge.

Wow you were only a block and a bit away from my COSTUME SHOP* yesterday. Small world. (I know because you took a picture into the Magic Shop window) XD
*(I initially wrote "comic shop". I need more sleep!) XD

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Me? Pyat the Mouse? Nonsense!

*Involuntary squeak*

Hullo. :) Had you heard of me elsewhere?

There are a number of furries in K-W, I believe.

[(Anonymous)]

MKS, that was the place I used to deliver to. They had another location up in the north end of King St in Waterloo past the Home Depot. We delivered the ADP to the Downtown Waterloo location and packages (many small ones, but a lot of them) to the one up off King N.

Now that you mention it I do recall that being way up in Waterloo and Imperiums being just south of the Downtown core of Kitchener. When I would frequent Imperiums, it was in a house which I am sure the guy who ran it actually owned. He also had a cats. A good number of them.

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

That anon post was me. Forgot to log in.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

No worries!

[kaijugal.livejournal.com]

The Imperiums to Order fellow got out of the buisness, (sadly for us), to persue a career in professional book editing. (happily for him).

Wow that was some time ago...

[paka.livejournal.com]

It's so beautiful! I wish I could get out of this part of the world and live in Canada instead!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, come on up! We have ice cream.