R.I.P. to both Doans and Army and Navy which are closing permanently because of the Wuhan Flu.
I occasionally shopped at Army and Navy but it was more useful to always know it was there. Crazy to realize that a business founded in the wake of the Spanish Flu and the selling of surplus WWI army equipment has bitten the dust thanks to the ChiCom virus. The days of buying Edmonton Eskimo hoodies that fell apart after a single wash are over.
Doan's I'm less concerned by personally. I've only eaten there once (and then once at the also-shuttered downtown location), and the food was the generic good Chinese food (and yes yes yes I know it's Vietnamese: I even made out with one of the Doan children at On the Rocks a while back).
What I'm more concerned with is what this speaks to for Whyte Ave in general: ever since the early 2000s the strip has been doing that annoying gentrification thing where more and more ridiculously frew-frew businesses open up and force out the funkier places that made it worth going to in the first place. Whyte Ave's proximity to the UofA generally will protect it as a destination for now. But between Asshole Iveson's tax increases and the impact of ridiculous government regulations, Whyte Ave businesses will continue to deteriorate. I like Meat as much as the next guy (I actually got to give Asshole Iveson the finger and call him a fag-lover to his face a couple years ago) but any urban renewal process that brings in the pathetically overpriced garbage they serve at Apersand27 and removes Doans cannot be considered a success.
It's just another of the closures causing the deterioration of Whyte Ave. Traded Purple Onion for The Pint, and both Marble Slab and Baskin Robbins for frozen yogurt. We lost Iron Horse, The Keg, Strathcona Hotel, Urban Lounge, Elephant and Castle, Chili's, and Funky Pickle. We gained Meat.
Which brings us to another closure that didn't get as much media coverage: Funky Buddha. Yes, the former Sherlock Holmes has finally shuttered its doors. Good riddance to the place. I think I've been there twice since I last blogged about it way back in April 2012. Then, as now, my biggest gripe was that they jacked up their drink prices while falsely claiming it was forced upon them by the provincial government (which closed an actual good place and Whyte Ave institution on par with Army and Navy: the aforementioned Purple Onion). Hearing that a policy by the provincial government, even though I disagree with it beyond all human comprehension, has finally felled them is just poetic justice.
Though this raises the question of where nubile young girls will even get their dance on unless they abandon Whyte (which, frankly, has been happening ever since The Rack closed down). Twist Ultra Lounge eventually had to permanently ban their last asian and that dried their clientele up. Iron Horse became MKT. The Rack became Beercade. Urban Lounge became that Hawaiian themed dance bar for about 18 minutes and do you remember its name because I don't. Thirsty Turtle became The Buckingham. Suite 69 became Have Mercy. Club Malibu became a youth emergency shelter. Purple Onion became The Pint. That nigger bar next to Block 1912 gets shut down for gang activity faster than it can reopen (it can't live down the Monkey Island reputation!) Parliament became something else became something else became something else became something else became something else became something else Club 82 nobody cares anymore.
Will they all go to the sadly renovated Blues on Whyte? Can The Buckingham and Hudson's really keep their interest? Will Beercade's legacy force them all there? Or will they just go to 34th Ave like the last time Whyte Ave's club scene died down?
