On Sunday the Mayflower restaurant and pub in Ottawa closed after 35 years in business. It was located on Elgin Street, just around the corner from where I went to high school in the 80s. The truth is that there really wasn\u2019t anything remarkable about the place. It had a small, British style pub in the back, a nook for secret, afternoon drinkers, I always thought, and a generic, motel-style type of restaurant at the other end. Our bus stop was right in front of the place and if it was freezing out we\u2019d make a nuisance of ourselves by huddling inside the front doors, or if flush with money, settle into a booth and nurse a hot chocolate for as long as possible, maybe adding a soup (the type that always came with a little package of maternal crackers) if we felt pressure from the waitress.<\/p>\n

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The bar was pretty much off-limits for us at this age, but every once in awhile we might catch a glimpse of one of our teachers leaving the pub. It felt scandalous, that, like seeing the gym and math teacher skinny-dipping. Teachers just weren\u2019t supposed to be people, more like mannequins, and to see suggestions of a life exterior to our school was shocking.<\/p>\n

The Mayflower was a part of the constellation of my youth, part of a web that included the vintage clothing store Andy Upstairs (impossibly cool!), Cantor\u2019s Bakery (awesome cookies!) the Penguin, (so sophisticated!), Johnny Shampoo ( New Wave haircuts!) the Party Palace (best hot dogs in the city!), and many other small points of light that connected our high school years.<\/p>\n

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In an indirect way, Lou Reed, who also came to his terminal point on Sunday, was a part of that network, too. A friend, who had a particularly keen and scholarly interest in music, introduced me to the Velvet Underground in grade 10, and although they weren\u2019t of our generation, that band opened a big, thrilling window into the world that could be. Impossibly cool, dangerous and Avant-garde they were the very opposite of Ottawa, representing everything bigger, edgier and closer to the bone than we were.\u00a0 When I put on my Velvet Underground and Nico t-shirt I felt transformed, as if lifted up and out of my high school life and moving toward a limitless and exotic horizon, and now, some 30 years later, the news on Sunday reminded me that horizons recede and end, too.<\/p>\n

And so, a melancholy day.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QLaq5usTJrg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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