The Social Page: Art on the edge

Brown goes down, so do Blue

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers suffered one of their most embarrassing and inexcusable losses in recent memory on Thursday night.

A one-win B.C. Lions team — featuring a rookie quarterback making his first career start, a rookie running back making his first career start and two backup offensive lineman in action — somehow, someway dealt the Blue and Gold a 35-19 defeat in front of 31,509 disgruntled fans at Princess Auto Stadium.

The Bombers, now 1-4 on home turf this season, have dropped back-to-back games to fall to 4-4. The Lions improved to 2-5.

“Shit wasn’t good enough. Offence, defence, special teams. Wasn’t good enough,” said defensive end Willie Jefferson.

The bountiful harvest: Thousands of visitors flock to St. Norbert Farmers’ Market every Saturday

While most of Winnipeg is still sleeping, or perhaps just starting to think about making the morning coffee, a patch of shade and sun just south of the Perimeter Highway is already humming with life.

Crews work to restore power to final 6,500 customers after storm

About 6,500 Manitoba Hydro customers — mainly in and around Winnipeg — were still without power Friday morning, more than 24 hours after severe thunderstorms rolled through southern areas.

Some outages could continue into Friday night, the Crown corporation said.

“Crews are repairing damaged power lines, poles, transformers and other equipment as quickly and safely as possible,” a statement said.

Hydro said crews made significant progress overnight to restore power to thousands of customers. More than 30,000 customers lost power due to storms that began Wednesday and continued early Thursday.

South Osborne residents fail in bid to prevent construction of 131-unit apartment tower

A proposed 10-storey highrise on an empty south Osborne lot will move forward despite concerns from residents about the impact the building will have on nearby parking and traffic.

The city-owned lot at 425 Osborne St., which previously served as a gas station but has long sat vacant, will be developed into a mixed-use residential building with 131 units, 39 of which would be affordable, along with additional office space for the adjacent Winnipeg Transit garage and the Transit customer service centre across the street, along with a two-level parkade for tenants and Transit employees.

The property is being developed by the University of Winnipeg Community Renewal Corp. 2.0, and designed by Prairie Architects Inc.

At a meeting held by city council’s appeal committee Wednesday, several residents said while they supported the idea of more housing in the Lord Roberts neighbourhood, they had lingering concerns about the impact the development will have on the already-busy area.

Downtown Winnipeg comedy club Yuk Yuk’s closes

A downtown Winnipeg comedy club, Yuk Yuk’s, closed after being one of the company’s worst performing locations across Canada.

“We’ve opened many clubs,” said Mark Breslin, Yuk Yuk’s founder. “They’re like oil wells — some of them gush, some of them trickle and some of them are just dry.

“You never absolutely know which is going to be which.”

The franchise counts at least 10 locations nationally.

Rollins becomes fifth councillor to bow out of fall election

Sherri Rollins says she’s withdrawing her bid to keep her city hall seat after eight years, citing her concerns about the “gradual erosion of the role played by council” and the struggle to work co-operatively with the mayor’s office.

The Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry councillor called her time in council “one of the great privileges of (her) life.”

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in the city, but I’m hoping my residents know that it was always personal to me, and bringing my A-game was what I wanted to do for them as long as I could. I’m going to be doing it until November inauguration day,” Rollins told the Free Press Friday.

She listed her achievements as biodiversity-focused amendments to the OurWinnipeg 2045 development plan, her work in parks and recreation, and the city-owned public washroom on Main Street.