The LAST Jim Chapman Post (?)

Well, except for future times when Jim writes something more head-scratching than usual in his electronic educational app. www.thevoiceoflondon.ca , this will be it for a while, my friends.

Because there's nothing that can suck the life and joy out of the soul more than reading Jim's weekly missives and trying to make sense out of Jim's world. The sad reality is that when you do, it all boils down to the same thing. Follow the money. At the end you will usually discover his agenda. And it's not that hard to figure out. Most of Jim's opinions are like advertorials for his client base (as a public relations consultant) of local businessmen and in particular, the development community.

And today's 'Jim Chapman's Boner of the Week' is a prime example and good enough reason to move on to more fun (and far more important) things to blog about - for instance, the upcoming Andy Kim concert at the London Music Club on Wednesday, June 2nd.

Anyway, Jim really pulled a boner in this week's 'Voice' in a column titled 'Downtown Danger Pay?' He tells the story of a friend of his who runs a business downtown with about 50 employees. He wants to expand and hire fifty more - "But he may not be hiring them to work in London."

Why? Because "I would have to pay a premium for them to come here."

The problem isn't London's questionable lack of attractions for young urban hipsters. Or our reputation as "The Town that Fun forgot."

Nope. It seems that this fellow has offices in the Richmond and Dundas area - and once potential job applicants get a whiff and look at all the riff-raff, drug-dealers, panhandlers and neer'do wells who have to catch a bus to East London, well, after that they don't want to work in London AT ALL!

Of course if they took a walk around the entire block they would see the Covent Garden Market right behind there, the upscale restaurant row on the block of King Street. A handful of trendy upscale nightclubs. The John Labatt Hockey and Concert Hall and coming full circle back to Richmond and Dundas - to the north lies the delights of Richmond Row - starting with the Grand Theatre - and to the south of Richmond the other side of King, a collection of independent shops - a music shop, a used bookstore and a comic-book shop and places to buy a bong or get a tattoo.

But because Richmond and Dundas is such a scruffy place and known as Oxycontin Central, these job applicants are too afraid to move and work in London - from presumably Toronto, a city which apparently is free of homeless people, crack-heads, panhandlers and people who use publc transit.

According to Jim's friend, he would have to pay a high premium to these potential employees. They would want danger pay of an extra $10,000 a year. And Jim's friend can't afford to pay them that so he's considering a move to another city.

Now, of course, it hasn't occured to Jim or his friend that there are certainly more desireable places to rent office space in London which would be safer and more attractive to young out-of-town job seekers. Like maybe a couple blocks from there where Jim has his own downtown office. Or the corner of Wellington and Dundas where he does his radio show in a giant office tower. Or to the North, where all the real action is for young urban trendies.

Now, I don't claim to be a businessman, but let's do some math here. You have 50 potential employees. But they won't work in London for less than an extra 10-grand a year. So, naught times naught is naught and five times all those naughts is 500,000. Shit, that's $500,000. That's like half-a-million bucks!

C'mon, fellas - GIVE YOUR COLLECTIVE HEADS A SHAKE!

You mean to tell me that you can't find any good office space in a safe and 'hip' neighbourhood for half a million a year anywhere in this town? Gaze north down Richmond Street boys. Or just relocate to Masonville.

Like I said, I'm not a businessman but that would seem a lot smarter than starting up a separate branch of your business in another town. It all kinda makes me suspect that perhaps Jim's unnamed 'friend' might be an imaginary friend invented for the purposes of telling a story.

... Anyhoo, that was Jim's latest on the Downtown. And in fact it was a sequel to his column from the previous week - 'Fear and Loathing in London' from April 8th. In this one, Jim is talking about how one recent afternoon, he was waiting for a client on the corner of Richmond and Dundas and how "afraid" he felt.

"I wasn't really frightened, a better word might be uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable," writes Jim. "There were eyes on me from people who looked like trouble on the move. There were punk kids (not punkers - I do understand the difference)with angry faces, teenage mothers with tattoos and babies in scruffy strollers, washed out drunks looking for a handout, stoners glassy-eyed and unpredictable, and a nice old lady carrying a handbag half her size. She didn't worry me. But the rest of the cast did."

Jim had his business appointment and then deliberately came back to the same corner. "And stood there for a while. Same people, same feelings. And I noticed something else - the place was filthy and littered with garbage and cigarette butts. Lots of cigarette butts."

Well, NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! That corner has been a human cesspool for at least the past 15 years. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! Geez, this is a guy who fancies himself as an authority on the current state of Downtown - and yet, he expresses SURPRISE at the very long-evident sorry reality of Richmond and Dundas, the very heart of that Downtown?

I won't bother you too much with Jim's solutions. One is having a better police presence. A good idea, even though they obviously monitor the drug dealing and report mass arrests on a regular basis. The other is to have welfare recipients walk around the place on their free time with a broom and shovel. I guess the logic is that since they are at that building picking up their Social Service cheque and Oxy at the same time, they may as well make themselves useful and sweep up some cigarette butts before hopping that bus headed east. ... oh, and ban pan-handling.

But what's far more interesting about all this is the sudden concern on Jim's part. Two consecutive columns devoted to that particular corner - even though Jim also admits in the same 'Fear and Loathing' that "I know the downtown crime numbers are low and my chances of getting mugged are likely higher in some other areas of the city ..."

Well, then WHY are you even writing about it, Jim?

For the answer, all you have to do is go back a few Voice issues to March 18th and 'There are Dreams and there are Dreams,' Jim's profile on Downtown London's biggest landlord and property owner, Shmuel Farhi - who just bought the Market Tower Building which sits on that very corner of Dundas and Richmond. He also owns the office tower - the Royal Bank Building right next to it on Richmond. And between them, that corner of downtown is basically Oxy Central for all your one-stop drug-shopping needs.

As Jim points out at the end of him puff-piece on Mr. Farhi, the guy who owns most of downtown also happens to be a friend and the biggest client of Jim's PR firm. 'Nuff said.

And all that's fine and harmless enough. But about a week after buying the Market Tower, Mr. Farhi was on the A-Channel News strongly suggesting that the City of London get rid of having bus-traffic on Dundas street and re-route the buses. Well, that makes sense. The corner of Richmond and Dundas is the major transfer point of all city buses. So if you get rid of them and the bus-stops right outside your building, then there's no reason for people standing around outside it. People who might not be able to be charged with selling or waiting to buy drugs, can be scared off with charges of 'loitering.' And all of that would be a good thing, even though it would only move all the drug action farther down the street. And since he owns most of downtown, it would probably to in front of one of Mr. Farhi's other downtown office properties.

I happen to be a fan of Mr. Farhi. Our downtown would look a lot bleaker if he hadn't bought so many old buildings and restored them or saved from demolition. The Scotts Building on Dundas between Clarence and Wellington; the old Art Deco post-office on Richmond; the old Public Library on Queens; the Wright Lithography Building. Shit, I'd give the guy a medal just for the Wright Litho Building alone.

And then there's the just restored Capitol Movie Theatre and Bowles Lunch right next to it on Dundas. If you remember right, after buying the long-empty Capitol Theatre, Mr. Farhi demolished the actual auditorium (W.C. Fields once performed there as a juggler in his vaudeville days,) to create parking for his downtown office workers. And when city hall was dragging its feet about renting him more parking spots for the people who worked in the office buildings he owned, Mr. Farhi threatened to demolish the remaining facade and lobby of the historic theatre. And suggested he might do the same with all his heritage properties unless he got what he wanted. See the London Free Press, 2005-07-27, 'City to Study Parking Ills' by Joe Belanger for details.

So I get a bit concerned when I see Mr. Farhi talking about the City changing the same downtown central bus corridor we've had for decades before he was even born. I get more concerned when I read two columns in a row about that very block of real estate from his PR flack. How long till Jim pens his newest epiphany about how we ought to get rid of buses on Dundas?

And that, my friends is why this is hopefully the last of these posts. To quote Holden Caulfield, if there's one thing I hate, it's a goddamn phoney. But what's the point of telling people what a goddamned phoney someone is if they willingly do it themselves in such a blatant obvious manner? Evidence of Jim's phoniness can be found in Sonny's Archives for February 19, 2010 'Jim Chapman: Yesterday's Man' in which Jim is exposed for taking credit on his own website (www.jimchapman.ca) for someone else's writing. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's reprehensible. That's stealing. And anyone who does it has ZERO credibility in my books.

According to what Jim promised on his radio show, The Voice would be a voice for "silent majority." You know, for the regular folks and working stiffs who listen to his radio show. The same kind of low-income workers who daily catch a bus on the corner of Richmond and Dundas.

But for a weekly newsletter only seven weeks old, THREE of the past FIVE issues have a column devoted to the interests of Jim's "major client."

It turns out that, in Jim's columns anyway, The Voice is really only the Voice of the Development Community and Millionaire Downtown Landlords.

Stayed tuned to future advertorials on some of Jim's other clients in his "communications consulting company" - Aboutown Transportation and Drew-lo Holdings.