This Place Rocks! I’m going to conclude this installment of “Stuff
I’ve Seen In Powell River” by initiating a new feature in which I
mention a local business I like. This month’s business is Skeeter
Jack’s, the restaurant south of town on Highway 101. That
operation is the BLUEPRINT for running a successful restaurant
business. What they do they do exceptionally well and that’s why
they’re so busy all the time. The prices are down to earth and the
portions they serve are out of this world! I love the Jack Attack
cheeseburger they sell -- that’s the one with a hot dog in it! I had
one recently and it tasted even better than the first time I had one. In fact, it was while eating THAT
mouthwatering delight that I got the inspiration to come up with this little feature, that’s how damn
delicious it was! Thanks for being around, Skeeter Jack’s! Blessed are the food providers!
Hot Talk Alert! Next month I’ve got what is undoubtedly the COOLEST “River City Q&A”
interview ever. In this one I speak with music enthusiast Mark Lemna, owner of what is probably
the most unique shop in all of Powell River -- Roxy Records, the store on Glacier Street that sells
vinyl LPs! Mark talks about his career in the music industry, playing in bands in PR in his youth
and, of course, his record store. This interview totally epitomizes what my question and answer
exchanges with Powell River residents are all about. See you here on September 1st for that
supremely awesome discussion!
mean, that store was the ultimate magazine shop. Courtenay doesn’t even have a magazine shop
that comes close to how good Knight News was; in fact, I don’t think most cities or towns do. My
affection for Knight News went back to my childhood where it was there that I discovered these
spellbinding publications with names like Famous Monsters of Filmland, Castle of Frankenstein
and Planet of the Apes.
"STUFF I'VE SEEN IN POWELL RIVER #31"
BY CALLUM HOUSTON
Superheroes and porn stars no more! I see that Knight News, the
magazine shop on Marine Avenue, has closed down. That’s a
significant loss to what I call “old” Powell River. Old Powell River
are those businesses and institutions in town that were founded by
folks going back a couple generations or more, iconic landmarks
like the Bank of Montreal and the Patricia Theatre for example.
There aren’t too many of them around anymore.
Knight News had been open since at least the 1970s when I was a
kid here in PR (a friend told me it was a drug store in the ’60s) and
it was undeniably THE BEST magazine shop north of Vancouver. I
metal and got into playing guitar I bought magazines like Guitar Player and Guitar World there.
There was another store on Alberni Street called Odd Spot which also had a great magazine
selection but Knight News was always number one with the most tremendous selection of all.
The magazine section of the store consisted of two long racks that formed a corridor you walked
down with rows and rows of publications on either side of you. I still remember the precise spots
of my two favorite sections -- the magazine-sized comic books and the horror movie mags. Then, if
you were down at the horror movie mags near the end of the far row and turned to your right, up
against a perpendicular wall was the porno nook where they had all the adult magazines. That illicit
alcove was Powell River’s own 42nd Street, the famed street in New York City that had all the dirty
movie theaters before it got cleaned up by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the ’90s. A sign posted on the
shelf stated that not only were sales of those mags forbidden to anyone under eighteen, but
browsing of them was limited to no more than a fleeting five minutes!
Magazines to me are like a timeline of my life. When I look at a magazine I purchased in the past it’s
like a time machine transporting me right back to that place in time when I bought it. When I
decided to try my hand at writing porn in 2012 it was Knight News that I went to to purchase
material to study the craft of writing erotic stories and the store hadn’t changed one iota from the
first time I was there as a boy.
Porno magazines are an extremely rare thing to see for sale these days and with the closure of Knight
News the only one I know of that you can purchase in town now is Playboy, the granddaddy that
started it all. They sell it at the 7-Eleven. Beyond that I don’t think porno mags can be located
anywhere except maybe in the big cities. That I find kind of a drag in a way. Of course all that stuff
can easily be found on the Internet now anyway. If anyone knows of a place in town that still sells
adult magazines please send me a message with the name of the store!
It’s sad to see that Knight News is gone, but I’m not too surprised considering there are several
other stores in town that have extensive magazine selections, such as Shoppers Drug Mart for
instance. That’s a lot of competition for any dedicated magazine-only shop in this day and age
where magazines are being squeezed out by the Internet.
I’m extremely pleased to announce that my problems with Canada Revenue Agency have come to
an end. After more than a decade of stress and worry, I found out earlier this year that the debt they
said I owed has been paid off. What an ENORMOUS RELIEF that is! A MASSIVE WEIGHT
has been lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t think it would ever happen but things have finally
returned to normal, as in the days when I was Joe Unknown and not on their radar. A big THANK
YOU to the federal government for putting things in order for me! Fantastic job! I haven’t voted in
years but I’m seriously considering registering to vote this year so I can cast a ballot for Prime
Minster Stephen Harper and the local Conservative candidate in the upcoming election scheduled for
October.
I wanted to mention how there’ve been a few things I’ve observed around town that almost give the
impression of being REACTIONS to things I’ve written about in my articles. This doesn’t surprise
me considering that a lot of people read what I have to say every month. Remember that photo I
included in “Stuff” #20 of two BC government signs lying in a ditch on the side of the highway that
explained how a herbicide named Roundup had been sprayed in the area? Well, almost immediately
after I published the photo the signs disappeared. That was great to see and it’s an example of the
clout a good picture can wield as opposed to just describing things in writing. Behold the power of
the mighty photograph!
And then there was the photo I included in “Stuff” #21 of that stop sign improperly placed too far
back from Manson Avenue next to a big hedge. I happened to ride past that same stop sign a while
ago and saw that the hedge had been trimmed down to half the height it had been at previously, thus
perhaps improving the visibility in the location for drivers slightly. That was interesting to see, but
the problem WASN’T the homeowner’s hedge, it was the ill-placed sign and how the police were
using it to entrap motorists. That sign should not be as far back from Manson as it is.
Unfortunately, one thing that HASN’T been corrected is the OUTRAGEOUSLY ILLEGAL
property tax scam some of us get hit with every year that I exposed in “Stuff” #26 and #27. I got
nailed with that goddamn rip-off again this year too!!! What a fucking nutcase that loon of a
provincial finance minister in Victoria is to be sending out concrete proof of fraud through the mail
that can be easily posted on the web for all to see!
And then there was that VERY SUSPICIOUS power outage in PR on July 21st. I rode my bike
into town that Tuesday, but when I got to Marine Avenue I saw that the entire street had been shut
down for the day! Then when I went up to Joyce Avenue I saw the same thing had happened there
too. Strangely though, up there it was only HALF the town that’d been powered down. In the
Crossroads Village Shopping Centre, McDonald’s was powerless yet Quality Foods and the other
stores in that building complex had all the juice they wanted. Then a few blocks away, the Town
Centre Mall was open, yet the Staples/Canadian Tire plaza was closed. I wanted to get some money
from my bank, but not only was the bank closed, but their ATM wasn’t operating either!
That blackout was no accident though, it’d been preannounced, and it concretely confirms what I
said last month about how these big utility companies are engaging in muscle-flexing deployment
exercises which involve pushing us around. I mean, why else would they turn off the power to half
the stores in town during business hours on a weekday, causing them to lose a day of sales and
forcing all the many employees to lose a day’s pay?
And speaking of hassling people, many PR drivers may have seen that
radar speed sign apparatus that someone wheeled onto the side of the
highway just south of town in the spring. That thing irked me for a
number of different reasons.
For one thing, the readout didn’t seem compliant with the actual speed
limit in the area. What I mean by that is, the speed limit where they put
the device is 50 km/h yet the giant screen would start blinking and
telling you to slow down at sixty or higher. As well, if you weren’t
violating the speed limit WHY was it necessary to have your speed
displayed on a big billboard for everyone to see? And why was it
located only in THAT spot and only aimed in one direction? Very
I was a huge fan of horror and sci-fi movies and the magazines I
found there that celebrated them were equally as important as the
movies themselves. I just devoured them. I also discovered comic
books there and came to love the Marvel line, especially The
Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk. During the
summer holidays I used to go into work with my dad who was an
accountant with an office on Marine Avenue and every day I went
to Knight News and it seemed like a new comic or magazine that I
wanted arrived with my every visit. This was the golden age when
comic books and magazines of all kinds were the rage, all the corner
stores sold them. Then when I got a little older and discovered
arbitrary. And it’s not like there was a problem with speeding drivers in that area. I stood and
watched that sign for about an hour one day in June and according to the device almost all of the
motorists were driving safely under the speed limit. Thus there just wasn’t any justification for
having that apparatus there.
But more importantly, having your speed suddenly displayed in big glowing orange digital numbers
on the side of the road is a dangerous distraction that drivers can do without. And the way it would
jarringly flash at some drivers and demand that they slow down elevated the danger, especially since
the device was hidden behind a curve on the road so as to surprise people AND it was a small
distance past a change in the posted speed limit. I photographed that thing one day and the
commotion when it started flashing was so violent it would actually knock my lens out of focus, as
though it was sending out LASER BEAMS or something. Considering that distracted driving is a
violation of THE LAW in this province, it seems pretty fucking stupid that someone would erect a
device on the side of the road that deliberately distracts motorists from concentrating on their
dashboard and the road ahead of them. We already have speedometers in our cars, we don’t need
them on the sides of the roads too!
As well, I was curious as to whether the device had been put there by the Crown or if it was a
private citizen with a grudge who’d placed it there as a personal message of some kind. As you can
see in the photo above, it doesn’t have any identification on it other than a company name and a
website address -- www.speeddatasystems.com -- and that site doesn’t appear to be a government
site and I wasn’t able to access it on the Internet.
To me the device just sent the wrong message to everyone. It screamed surveillance is going on in
the area and it wasn’t a very welcoming thing for visitors coming to Powell River to see. That thing
would even display my speed when I was riding on my bicycle and I started getting really fucking
tired of being clocked every time I rode into town. That kind of prying nosiness is a total lack of
respect for our privacy, the same thing I spoke of last month when I talked about the Telus invasion.
Yes Powell River, they DO snoop on us around here!
There are other examples of Powell River overeagerly getting in our faces without justification. I’ve
noticed that for some inexplicable reason firetrucks are showing up at car accident and medical
incident scenes despite the fact there aren’t any fires to put out. One day I even saw a big fire
engine show up when a woman was simply having mechanical problems with her bicycle! Nuts!
Presumably it would’ve been these same keener PR fire authorities that called in a Mars water
bomber in 2013 even though there wasn’t a fire anywhere to be seen. That threatening behemoth
buzzed my home a couple times at a low altitude and scared the living shit out of me. I thought it
was going to dump a load of liquid chemicals on my house!
