We saw a story on CBC New Brunswick today, Saint John urged to rename city centre ‘downtown.’ We’re curious to hear what you think. From the CBC story:
A former Saint John mayor (Eric Teed) is pushing to have the long-held expression for the city’s centre switched from the confusing “uptown” moniker to the more traditional term of “downtown.”
When asked, Liz, the owner of the Urban Deli, said, “That’s crazy!” We’ve had a few tweets from others that seem to agree.
Liz is actually very proud of being part of Uptown Saint John. Of course, she’s always been a fan of the urban core, everywhere, feeling that’s where the heart of a city should be. It’s where all the vitality of its business, culture, arts and, yes, people who live there, should be and interact.
She has some pretty strong opinions on this, particularly in the context of Saint John. When we asked her about this uptown-downtown thing she started in on how there are more important things to worry about, like the usual issues that affect any city’s urban core — housing, drugs, business support and so on.
But what do you think? Uptown? Downtown? Does it matter to you? We’d like to hear what you think.
I don’t mind the slight quirkiness of the “Uptown” moniker. Frankly, I think the comments attributed in the article to Teed are ridiculous.
Example:
“My personal view is it shows we’re strange,” Teed said.
Saint John is a strange, strange town but that strangeness has nothing to do with whether the core is called “uptown” or “downtown”.
“If the whole world says we’re doing this and Saint John says we’ll do the opposite, you wonder why, what kind of a strange people are they there.”
What kind of strange people leave shopping carts all over the city? What kind of strange people tolerate Marsh Creek? What kind of strange people build an oil refinery in the middle of their city.
The list is endless and, frankly, raising the “uptown”/”downtown” issue is a waste of time.
The term “uptown” referring to what was once the main shopping district of Saint John, was coined in the 1950s, when the merchants of the area got together and organized “Uptown Sale Days”. Before that the area was known by anyone who bothered to call it anything as “downtown”. I think they used “up” as a sign of optimism, which proved unfounded because the new shopping malls that they were trying to compete against mostly got the upper hand. The terms “uptown”, “downtown” and “mid-town” originated, as far as I know, in New York City. Uptown is somewhere around Central Park. Downtown is somewhere around Wall Street and Greenwich Village. Greenwich does not rhyme with “sandwich”, but I am lookiiing for an opportunity to buy a real deli smoked meat sandwich somewhere in downtown Saint John!
Hmmmmm Uptown…..Downtown what is confusing? If your confused about this…..daily life must be a real challenge!
Uptown is and has been the norm for “Uptown Saint John” why change a positive thing to a negative?
Upbeat to a Downbeat?
Up makes a world seem a little brighter and happier! In these times of question up is good!
My vote is for Uptown!!
I’m definitely voting for Uptown. Honestly. Are there not more important issues for us to be fretting over than uptown versus downtown, like “Be dot dot dot in this place”. Now *that* one might make people wonder what kind of strange people live here.
Being different doesn’t mean you’re “strange”. Unique, eclectic, creative, positive – just like Saint John! Why should we feel obligated to follow “the crowd” over something as silly as up/down town.
You’re right RedWhaler “Up makes a world seem a little brighter and happier! In these times of question up is good!” And aren’t we the “happiest city in Canada” … maybe this “up”town thing says something about our general outlook and attitude!
Plus I like the quirkiness of being a bit different from the rest anyhow.
In the end, I agree with the others – there are more important things to worry about.
🙂
I think we should call it “The Fundy Vortex”
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