In this job, you learn to expect the unexpected.

And the unexpected is exactly what I got yesterday, when my editor asked me to head out to a media preview of Assiniboine Park’s new Children’s Nature & Adventure Playground.

I’m not sure if my story  on page B1 of the Free Press today really did the place justice, even with the benefit of Ruth Bonneville’s delightful photos.

I’ll say this: the place is only about half-done, and my jaw quite literally dropped as soon as I walked in. I hadn’t heard of the nature playground project before I went to the preview, so I was completely taken by surprise by how beautiful, whimsical, and well-designed it was.

The place sounded good, great even... though not quite too good to be true.

In a city with a slim 1 per cent apartment vacancy rate, there it was: a cozy two-bedroom for rent on Young Street. It’s only $600 per month, a very bargain price, though not outrageously so for a cozy old place in a shabbier corner of the city. The pictures on Craigslist’s apartment rental directory looked lovely: warm old interior, remodelled bathroom.

On the hunt for a rental residence, I pounced on it, hoping to set up a tour. I planned to bring my chequebook and put a deposit on the spot, if it looked as good as the pics.

That’s when the, uh, “landlord” emailed me back.

In this gig, there are days when you cover breaking news. And there are days when you cover features.

But sometimes, if you’re lucky, there are other days: in particular, days when you feel like you’re stuck in an issue from The Onion and can’t escape.

That was the case for this humble reporter yesterday, when I was asked to cover the official demise of the Beer Cup Snake. Apologies in advance if I offend anyone who takes this plastic monstrosity’s life or death with the utmost gravity, but I’ll be blunt: while Blue Bombers president Jim Bell was holding a brief press conference to announce the snake’s ban, I couldn’t stop smothering laughter.

It started, for me, when Bell so firmly intoned that any “beer snakes gaining momentum” will be axed. It continued when he explained that stadium staff needed to “find a way to discontinue the beer snake,” that some fans had been hit in the ear (I kept hearing Tyler Durden in my head) and that despite the buzz over the snake this week, the “beer snake initiative” is new to Bomber brass.

Landing in the middle of downtown Portland, Ore., you notice the mural first: carefully painted 15-ft. letters blaring on a well-worn brick wall.

Then you see your first bumper sticker, and a pin tacked to a ratty backpack, and a cut-off t-shirt, all bearing the same famous missive: "Keep Portland weird."

Keep Portland weird. It's both a motto and a mission, a sort of rallying cry for a hippie-chic city that guards its oddities with a cultish fervour. But the thing is, they're not entirely wrong: Portland is weird. But not necessarily for the reason its residents think it is... and it's the ways that the Rose City is truly weird that Winnipeg could stand to learn from.

Ask most Portland residents what makes Portland weird, and the answer will generally involve one of the following: the city's glut of men in skirts; a donut joint-slash-wedding chapel that sells phallic pastries; roughly four brewpubs for every resident; well-attended nude bike rides; and Chuck Palahniuk.

In January, my heart sank when I stumbled across the news on my Facebook feed: the city of Winnipeg was buying the historic, rambling old Windsor Hotel, with plans to tear it down and turn it into a parking lot.

Or at least, so the rumour went. After a frenzy of grassroots activism, media attention, and outpourings of raw emotion, it became known that the city didn’t want the building and definitely didn’t want to make it a parking lot. Phew!

Now, I find myself wondering: did that wildfire of baseless panic and community-mobilizing outrage inspire anyone else – say, any gutsy marketing folks – to try to evoke the same passion in their audience?

On Wednesday, the news broke (again on Facebook) that downtown nightclub Whiskey Dix would be closing its enormous patio and turning it into – here’s this idea again – a parking lot. Say sayonara to the biggest nightclub patio in the city, organizers said, and wave hello to what owners said would be an expanded lot that would add 20 more spots for staff and a “VIP valet service.” On a Facebook group for the patio’s scheduled demolition party on April 3, someone (presumably bar management) wrote that the expanded parking lot made better business sense for its “year-round value.”

Fargo has a lot of things Winnipeg has: floodwaters, big-box mazes, a Youth for Christ chapter.