About Bartley Kives:

Bartley Kives is a city hall reporter.

• What do we want? Everything!

  In the classic Simpsons episode The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show, desperate TV producers enlist the children of Springfield to help fix a long-running but ailing cartoon. After corralling Bart, Lisa and a couple of other kids in a boardroom, the producers hold a focus-group session aimed at improving the Itchy & Scratchy Show.

  View Full Column | 02/5/2012 3:18 AM | 0

• Less whining, more two-wheeling

  In a winter when snow has been scarce and daytime highs have been hovering just below zero, it's easy to forget the malaise many Manitobans usually feel by the time February rolls around. Normally, this is the time of year when Winnipeggers start getting antsy about being indoors too much. With that in mind, the city's outdoor-recreation community has planned two races designed to make February a lot more fun for people who love to be outside.

  View Full Column | 02/4/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Reinstating park fees a good start

  In a belated holiday gift for wilderness lovers, Manitoba Conservation decided shortly before New Year to end its ill-conceived experiment with free admission to provincial parks. Since 2009, visitors to Manitoba parks have been spared the trouble of paying entrance fees. This populist policy began ostensibly as a recession-busting measure but was also justified as an attempt to encourage more Manitobans to travel within their own province.

  View Full Column | 01/14/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Prometheus, Sisyphus... and Transit Tom

  At the dawn of a new year, Winnipeggers can be forgiven if they feel like Bill Murray in bed on Groundhog Day, Prometheus bound to his rock or Sisyphus at the bottom of his hated hill. All three of these mythic characters were doomed to endure the same day over and over again as they completed despised tasks.

  View Full Column | 01/8/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• What to do when winter finally comes

  Despite his reputation for being a jolly old man, Santa Claus must have a hate-on for southern Manitoba. What else can explain the absence of snow and ice on a landscape that should resemble the North Pole on Christmas Eve?

  View Full Column | 12/24/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Naughty and ice

  'Tis the week before Christmas And all through this town

  View Full Column | 12/18/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Cured for what ails you

  Given the strong showing by the Blue Bombers this season and the return of the NHL's Jets, some people believe Winnipeg is the sports capital of Canada right now. If it weren't for Edmonton's homicide woes, we'd also be Canada's murder capital in 2011. And we consistently claim the dubious distinction of being the Slurpee Capital of the World, an honour that seems to elevate both diabetes and tooth decay from public-health embarrassments to badges of honour.

  View Full Column | 12/11/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Help for the holidays

  In a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious society like Canada, simple holiday greetings can become a source of angst. Wish someone a "merry Christmas" and you may irk a devout non-Christian. But a generic "happy holiday" greeting may be equally annoying, as some Canadians who celebrate Christmas may be saddened to see it watered down.

  View Full Column | 12/6/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Skating and pliéing

  At the height of the fall arts season, Winnipeggers are enthralled with a performing troupe that enjoys more millions of dollars worth of taxpayer subsidies every year. The group is called the Winnipeg Jets.

  View Full Column | 12/4/2011 10:05 AM | 0

• Skating and pliéing

  At the height of the fall arts season, Winnipeggers are enthralled with a performing troupe that enjoys more millions of dollars worth of taxpayer subsidies every year. The group is called the Winnipeg Jets.

  View Full Column | 12/4/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Occupy a place in their heart

  IN the spirit of the Occupy movement, the only gift you ought to give this holiday season is to avoid overconsumption altogether. It’s a laudable goal, but your friends and family would really rather you purchase them something pretty.

  View Full Column | 12/3/2011 11:53 AM | 0

• Occupy a place in their heart

  In the spirit of the Occupy movement, the only gift you ought to give this holiday season is to avoid overconsumption altogether. It's a laudable goal, but your friends and family would really rather you purchase them something pretty.

  View Full Column | 12/3/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• City throws quite a party

  VANCOUVER -- All the orange fright wigs and crazy lion masks have been placed back in drawers reserved for semi-useless household knicknacks. All the empty pizza boxes and plastic beer cups have been wrapped in bags and shipped off to the Vancouver landfill in suburban Delta, B.C.

  View Full Column | 11/29/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Face the music, such as it is

  VANCOUVER — Back in 2004, when 20th Century Fox had to promote the sci-fi shlockfest Alien vs. Predator, an enterprising copy writer came up with the tagline “Whoever wins, we lose.” For anyone watching the 99th Grey Cup today, either on TSN or in the flesh at BC Place, this may very well describe the entertainment at halftime, when the Canada’s most popular and reviled rock band takes the stage.

  View Full Column | 11/27/2011 12:09 PM | 0

• You call this a rivalry?

  VANCOUVER -- At the Elephant & Castle pub on Burrard Street, a home away from home for Winnipeg football fans this weekend, the cover charge is supposed to be $5 a person -- or $10 if you're wearing green. "It's just a joke," insists the hostess, promising anyone who walks through the doors of Blue & Gold House will be charged a fiver, even if they're fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

  View Full Column | 11/26/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• A lot of Blue in Lions territory

  VANCOUVER -- With apologies to the earnest anti-capitalists who've been living in tents on B.C.'s Lower Mainland since September, Occupy Vancouver no longer belongs to the political protest movement. At least not this week. For the duration of Grey Cup festivities, the activist slogan has been appropriated as a mission statement for an entirely different group of underdogs striving to gain attention in downtown Vancouver: Winnipeg Blue Bomber fans.

  View Full Column | 11/24/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Cops and sobbers

  If you reduced all the verbiage about crime reduction in Winnipeg into a single, ridiculous statement, you’d be left with “after-school basketball prevents homicide.” Yes, it’s idiotic. But faced with the daunting task of appearing to be doing something — anything — to prevent violent crime and make Winnipeggers feel safer, political leaders resort to the simplest imaginable concept. This is not because elected officials believe voters are stupid, but because politicians want to believe there are simple answers to complex problems.

  View Full Column | 11/20/2011 9:29 AM | 0

• COPS and sobbers

  If you reduced all the verbiage about crime reduction in Winnipeg into a single, ridiculous statement, you'd be left with "after-school basketball prevents homicide." Yes, it's idiotic. But faced with the daunting task of appearing to be doing something -- anything -- to prevent violent crime and make Winnipeggers feel safer, political leaders resort to the simplest imaginable concept. This is not because elected officials believe voters are stupid, but because politicians want to believe there are simple answers to complex problems.

  View Full Column | 11/20/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• What's a newcomer to think?

  If there’s one mistake lifelong Winnipeggers tend to make, it’s assuming everyone else has lived here their entire lives. Thanks to decades of relatively slow population growth, it’s easy to assume the only people who choose to live here simply haven’t bothered to go anywhere else. This self-deprecating sentiment, so famously parodied on The Simpsons (“Welcome to Winnipeg. We were born here. What’s your excuse?”) can actually wind up being annoying if you are in fact a newcomer trying to figure out the place.

  View Full Column | 11/13/2011 9:58 AM | 0

• What's a newcomer TO THINK?

  If there's one mistake lifelong Winnipeggers tend to make, it's assuming everyone else has lived here their entire lives. Thanks to decades of relatively slow population growth, it's easy to assume the only people who choose to live here simply haven't bothered to go anywhere else. This self-deprecating sentiment, so famously parodied on The Simpsons ("Welcome to Winnipeg. We were born here. What's your excuse?") can actually wind up being annoying if you are in fact a newcomer trying to figure out the place.

  View Full Column | 11/13/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Throwing another log on campfire debate

  After a long, hot summer when the forest floor felt like a tinderbox and the tall-grass prairie actually went ablaze, the first few dustings of snow probably came as a relief to people who love campfires. For the first time since the spring snowmelt, it's now relatively safe to build a campfire in most wild sections of southern Manitoba.

  View Full Column | 11/12/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• A CRAPPY situation

  If there's one aspect of urban life most city-dwellers rather wouldn't think about, it's what happens to all their urine and excrement after they flush. Sewage simply isn't sexy, unless you're unusually dispassionate or an engineer or both.

  View Full Column | 11/6/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• Headlines haunt

  OK, so there's only two more nights left in the Halloween-party season and you have yet to wear a costume. But you're still hankering to engage in a little masquerade. You could follow the masses by dressing up as one of the Halloween standbys, such as the ever-popular Sexy Cowgirl, the omnipresent Grim Reaper from Scream or the laziest costume ever, Guy Wearing Hockey Gear.

  View Full Column | 10/30/2011 1:00 AM | 0

• High-stakes game

  IT’S a great time to be a sports fan in Winnipeg, and not just because the Jets and Bombers are playing home games on the same day for the first time in decades. If your spectator sport of choice is watching developers compete for land, grants, incentives, approvals and ultimately profits, then keep your eyes on the City of Winnipeg.

  View Full Column | 10/23/2011 9:57 AM | 0

• Five simple rules for going solo

  MOOSEHEAD LAKE -- When the alarm goes off at 5:45 a.m., nobody in the tent complains. When I start fumbling around in the dark to begin packing up my gear, nobody at the campsite complains. When breakfast consists of a Clif bar, there's no milk or sugar for the morning tea and I start plodding along the trail with the help of a headlamp before dawn, nobody is around to complain.

  View Full Column | 10/22/2011 1:00 AM | 0

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