(As we wind down our days at the edmontonian, we’ll be looking back at some of our favorite posts, stories, items, etc from the last 2+ years. Feel free to submit your own.)

One of my earliest posts is still one of my favourites. Talking about Whyte Avenue’s empty, and abandoned, gas station lots shows what hyper-local news is all about.

About the same time we started up the edmontonian, the gas station on Whyte, at 100 Street, closed up. The owners opened a new repair shop in the Ottewell neighbourhood, but more than two years later that lot in Old Strathcona sits empty.

Abandoned gas stations aren’t something unique to my neighbourhood, nor is it a story that’s too small for the daily news to jump into, but I think I was the first to talk about this particular lot. And that only happened because I live nearby. Hyper-local news is all about stories that are not yet on the radar, or won’t get on the radar, for the bigger mainstream and traditional media outlets.

That is, to me, one of the reasons blogs, podcasts, and social media is thriving. The Internet isn’t hurting traditional news because it’s more fun or mobile, the storytelling is just that much more personal. It’s on street level, and you can hear from those living right beside the story. Talking about a gas station that’s left a hole in the community, a new bar that’s going to open, or something that’s annoying you, can create a rallying point, bring a story to light, and just connect people.

This website has taught me that you cannot have a great Edmonton conversation without connection. And connection and conversation are two things news and information should be about.

I won’t pass up an opportunity to talk about East Whyte.

For a lot of people Whyte Avenue is a hot spot of shopping and nightlife that runs between Gateway Boulevard and 107 Street, maybe to 109 Street. But if you head east, past Gateway Boulevard, you’ll find a whole other pocket of Old Strathcona.

With beer and live music pub Wunderbar, Flirt Cupcakes (their original location), The Paint Spot, The Traveling Tickle Trunk, Hardcore Bikes, and the new Red Pony Consignment offering specials, it’s worth printing off the PDF passport, or dialing it up on your cellphone. While you’re exploring the quieter side of Whyte, check out two of the best sushi houses in the city; Furusato and Maki Maki, enjoy a pint on the patio of The Empress, pick up some baked goodies at Empress Bakery, grab European foods and snacks at K&K Foodliner, eat Indian at Daawat and Narayannis, and check out Roots for healthy and organic items.

Speaking of Roots, the grocery store turned specialty store is about to move into the main floor of a spectacular new building at the corner of Whyte and 102 Street (which you can see pictured in this story), called Roots on Whyte. It may be my new favourite building.

Langano Skies will be re-opening soon, so you can enjoy the best Ethiopian food in Edmonton again.

Go on, cross the tracks, you know you want to.

(This is not the spill site, but just another road crew fixing up the city.)

There goes the neighbourhood: Old Strathcona is getting a strip club.

I think we may be seeing the official passing of the torch from Whyte Avenue to 124 Street as the place to go for boutique shops. Although the strip club may have hand-roasted coffee and gourmet food, so I guess we should just see how this plays out…

Before I get accused of being all NIMBY on X Bar (that’s its name) I will note that this bar location falls outside of my neighbourhood (East Whyte) and my community league (Strathcona Centre). I just don’t understand how this fits into the idea that Old Strathcona should have some heritage appeal. It’s got designation as a historical neighbourhood, there are still plenty of great boutique shops and restaurants, it’s home to the Fringe and year-round theatres. I know there are plenty of bars but that seemed to be settling down, moving toward more pubs and gastro-pubs, and away from cheap shots.

The City appeared to make an attempt to reign in the number of bars it was going to license in the area, it designated Whyte Avenue itself as a venue to help keep a lid on problems, there’s been a team of City, police, and liquor licensing staff working with bar owners, and Jasper Avenue’s giant bars have shifted some partying from the southside. Jasper neighbours and businesses are trying to learn from the mistakes of Whyte Avenue of a few years ago.

I guess I’m more upset with a giant bar than I am it being a strip club. It just sends me a signal the City of Edmonton cares more about money from business licenses and property taxes than building and maintaining neighbourhoods that work and make sense. Sure, that means a little government intervention, but every single decision, rule, bylaw, and law from government is intervention in the free market and public choice.

Keep your clothes on, there’s more Edmonton news ahead.

*****

The Edmonton International Airport saw the smallest growth in passenger numbers of Canada’s big airports. But it’s also at capacity and building out, so maybe it just didn’t have much room to grow. The EIA led Canada in growth for a number of years this decade, thanks to the oil boom.

Most University of Alberta grad students are using their summer bus passes. See, Edmonton Transit, people like you, now just live up to your potential.

Road crews spilled a bunch of tar while working in the Callingwood neighbourhood. It sounds like most of it was contained, though some made its way into the sewer. That will mean water monitoring. I’d like to see this spun as “Instant road re-paving for Callingwood.”

An Edmonton lawyer you might have recognized from some higher-profile cases died over the weekend. Sid Tarrabain practised law in Edmonton for a quarter century.

Mysterious deaths at a Thai hotel, including that of an Edmonton man, puzzled many. Now a report says pesticide may be to blame for many of the deaths, though it doesn’t confirm that.

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The Fraser Institute must have use confused with another Alberta, we aren’t just relying on oil and energy prices. Oh, wait, that is our Alberta.

As a follow to a Monday story about a Fort McMurray man who paid for an expensive brain surgery in the U.S., opposition politicians are asking the Alberta government to pay for the treatment. Today’s story also confirms a fact which was speculated on in the first story (and probably could have been left out) that an Alberta teen had the same surgery, and had it covered by Alberta Health Services.

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A new study out of the U of A says as long as you eat nutritious food and get exercise you should be healthy. Even if you’re overweight.

Mosh pits and metal music just won a U of A student an award, and will see her paper published.

Could we turn cow parts into plastic?

I would like to see the next Fast and Furious sequel be about dB drag racing.

If you click through a lo of these links you’re going to see The Gateway appears to be back to work on the U of A campus. And I’m happy to have them back from summer vacation. I guess it could also mean the U of A’s media relations department is ramping up for school, since a couple of the university links are from all-year newsrooms.

This was the scene Tuesday at 9pm. So bright!

While this column spins its way around the downtown arena quite a bit, municipalities do get the worst deal when it comes to taxes. Provincial governments, which have power over municipalities like Edmonton, should think about changing the tax rules to allow cities and towns to tax more than property.

Police want you to be on the lookout for an older Chevy Suburban after a shooting in south Mill Woods. The two guys shot are known to police and aren’t talking. No crime should go unpunished, and no crime is more important than another to the victims. But this kind of crime, a shooting that happened in public, is one that justifiably leaves people upset and scared.

We should hear more from the police chief today on new plans to take on violent crime, but the largest way to solve such problems lies outside of policing with social agencies, housing, mental health, and addictions treatment, community groups, and school and recreation resources.

Here’s a good example of a couple of guys who used sports to get university educations.

While there’s going to be a need to involve all kinds of other groups in keeping our city as safe as possible, police budgets are not going to get smaller in the near future.

Five years after a man was shot by Edmonton police the case is still in the courts in appeals and reviews.

Alright, that’s where we’re starting today, but next we’re heading to Whyte Avenue.

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Every now and then we get a good example of how newsrooms do the same story. Not just when they attend the same event or news conference, but when one of them breaks a story and then everyone spends the next day doing the exact same story.

On Tuesday the Journal wrote about a new Whyte Avenue late-night transit project. We linked to it in the Headlines.

That didn’t take me very long, maybe a couple of minutes to read the story, write a couple of lines about it, and pop in the link.

Newsrooms could also have mentioned to their audiences the Journal had a story about a late-night bus on Whyte, and worked on their own stories the rest of the day. Instead, they assigned reporters, editors, producers, video editors, and camera operators to produce the same story for Tuesday night and Wednesday.

Here’s the first story: Journal

And here are the follow versios: Metro, CBC, CTV, Global, CHED/iNews (The Sun is the only not to do the story. Correct me with a link if you’ve got it.)

While most newsrooms worked to repeat the first story, the Journal worked on a follow-up which looks at a late-night bus program in Boulder, Colorado which Edmonton Transit is using as a template.

This says to me that newsrooms are hoping their audience doesn’t have Twitter, doesn’t have Facebook, doesn’t check RSS feeds or Google News, and ignores all but their own in-house content. It’s the Internet-age; you’re free to work on your own stories, providing your audience with your style, your best possible content. Embrace it!

But, I am open to hearing why this is a good idea. (It is a criticism I’ve made before). Are there enough minor follow-up angles and reactions to warrant a full-out blitz on the story when it’s already been done?

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This story makes it sound like the oil industry basically writes the government’s PR strategies for them. Which probably hurts the image of the oil industry even more.

Speaking of oil (and gas) companies…that “environmental registry” scam has resulted in fraud charges. It’s a good thing the companies did their due diligence before trying to pay any environmental fees.

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On the anniversary of The Trade, the Edmonton Rush made a blockbuster trade of their own.

Noticing a lot of aphids around?

Don’t forget about your cat!

Our saviour.

Let’s start Tuesday with the good old downtown arena, shall we.

The Mayor says the City of Edmonton is negotiating a downtown arena deal in good faith and would hope the other side – the Katz Group and Oilers – is doing the same. The question arises after a story last week about Enoch as a possible back-up location for the Oilers. The Mayor also wonders what impact the Katz Group’s PR offer to MLAs will have on a request for $100-million in provincial government money.

Daryl Katz might need a few “No Men” around these arena planning meetings.

Also, wouldn’t it be funny, at least a little, if the City of Edmonton just said “You know what, enjoy Enoch.”

Come on, it would be hilarious.

Not hilarious: that “revitalizing downtown” almost always includes mega-projects.

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I threw in an update to Monday’s Headlines shortly after posting, but the update from the chief of the Edmonton Police Service yesterday was to wait for Wednesday.

But, any plan will need help from everyone. I’d also like to see more 24-hour (or at least 18 or-so hours) opportunities for libraries, school and after school programs, recreation, community centres, and things that can generally occupy kid and teen minds and time. That, more police on the streets (on the actual street, not another 3oo officers or anything), increased police, social worker, and mental health treatment in schools, greater resources for mental illness and addiction, and housing-first plans for the homeless and I think we’d be on track for a city everybody could agree on as safe.

But I fear we might just see more police hired.

Monday afternoon in south Mill Woods didn’t pass by quietly. A drive-by shooting, in the Knottwood portion of the neighbourhood, has put two young men in hospital. This is not a random shooting, and the victims aren’t sharing any details about who might have opened fire on them with police.

As an update to some talk we had yesterday on a crime blog, here’s Adam’s follow-up.

The man convicted of beating Edmonton bus driver Tom Bregg is looking to appeal his “dangerous offender” status. That status puts him in prison without a set release date. Though, one story says he’s filed that appeal and another says it’s just in the works. That means we’ll likely be waiting some time before this gets to the Alberta Court of Appeal.

It might take some time to wind through the courts, but it’s going to have to get to that before we know if Edmonton Police made the right call on releasing the name and photo of an HIV-positive 17-year-old, accused of not disclosing her status to sexual partners – which is a crime in Canada. But we will have to wait for the court case before knowing who is a victim of what and if there are changes to how police may act in a future case.

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It’s long, long overdue to try some late-night transit on Whyte Avenue, and Edmonton in general. A bit strange that Southgate becomes this cab drop-off. We should just run 6-12 bus routes through the overnight that allow people to be transported to other busy hubs and neighbourhoods. Will this just shift problems to Southgate where bus-loads of people try to get cabs? Why is the Edmonton Transit System so scared of all-night transit?

A fatal fire at an Old Strathcona senior’s home will push back others waiting to get into seniors housing.

Edmonton, and Canadian, soldiers continue to come home as the military mission in Afghanistan winds down.

The University of Alberta is offering a new certificate in aboriginal sport and recreation.