Aug. 19: Uptown
I've always been confused about where uptown is? How does uptown
differ from downtown? When I lived in Calgary, we lived near the
southend. Downtown was north of us and that confused me. Shouldn't that
be uptown? Especially since uptown and downtown seemed to be synonyms.
When I think about downtown, I think about a city's core where a whole lot of restaurants and shops and nightclubs are packed into a concentrated area. You don't see that in the suburbs. You only see it downtown (or uptown.)
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When I was a kid, I had a game called Electronic Detective. Here is a picture of it:
In Electronic Detective, you had to solve a murder and one of the questions you could ask a witness was "Did the murdered go uptown, midtown, or downtown?" This solidified, in my mind, that uptown and downtown were two different things.
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To me, uptown sounds like a place where you'll find gay bars or poodle grooming salons or restaurants that serve quiche. You'll find movie theatres uptown and they might even be called The Uptown. You'll also find clothes stores where you'll have to shell out $2,000 for a pair of jeans.
Downtown is more gritty, more urban. You buy dope if you go downtown. There are stores that sell T-shirts for five bucks apiece downtown. Downtown you'll find dingy dark bars where flies crawl on the tables and where you can get chicken wings for 20 cents each. Downtown smells like garbage and wet pavement and rap music coming from someone's car stereo.
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I don't think I could ever tell anyone I was going "uptown." Downtown is part of my vocabulary. That;s what I like.
When I think about downtown, I think about a city's core where a whole lot of restaurants and shops and nightclubs are packed into a concentrated area. You don't see that in the suburbs. You only see it downtown (or uptown.)
-
When I was a kid, I had a game called Electronic Detective. Here is a picture of it:
In Electronic Detective, you had to solve a murder and one of the questions you could ask a witness was "Did the murdered go uptown, midtown, or downtown?" This solidified, in my mind, that uptown and downtown were two different things.
-
To me, uptown sounds like a place where you'll find gay bars or poodle grooming salons or restaurants that serve quiche. You'll find movie theatres uptown and they might even be called The Uptown. You'll also find clothes stores where you'll have to shell out $2,000 for a pair of jeans.
Downtown is more gritty, more urban. You buy dope if you go downtown. There are stores that sell T-shirts for five bucks apiece downtown. Downtown you'll find dingy dark bars where flies crawl on the tables and where you can get chicken wings for 20 cents each. Downtown smells like garbage and wet pavement and rap music coming from someone's car stereo.
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I don't think I could ever tell anyone I was going "uptown." Downtown is part of my vocabulary. That;s what I like.
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