Begging

Times tough....still. I know everyone says the recession is over but I dont know. Maybe this is the new norm, with less people working and more businesses closed. I dont know.

For Lease

If I didn't know any better I would swear that there is a new chain of stores called "For Lease" here in Toronto and they are taking over the city like gangbusters because as I travel around the city I keep seeing that sign more and more in storefront windows.

I wonder what the occupancy rate is for retail stores in this city these days because it used to be pretty high a few years back with new outfits just waiting to swoop in and take coveted real estate anywhere downtown. Not so now. Empty storefronts growing daily. Not just the usual fly by night operators in the usual locales getting burnt or burning bridges by not paying rent. Places that have been around for years and were seemingly stable outfits going down, out of business too.

Such is life in the recession I guess.

This photo is from Barbados, St Lawrence Gap to be exact courtesy the PlanetBarbados Blog but it could just as easily be applied to Toronto and probably just about most places these days.

If it isn't "For Lease" then Sale seems to be the byword of the day. Its a virtual utopia for bargain hunters (assuming anybody got two shillings to spare).

Every storefront that doesn't have in a For Lease sign has in a sale sign. I mean none of them aint as blatant as that sign in the picture but we get the idea. Business does suck, please buy or we'll go out of business too.


That's just the 2009 reality. A so it a go!

Things Brown

I hope allya didn't spend off big money at Christmas thinking this recession thing was just a slight blip and 2009 would be back to normal. Well if ya did and you thought things weren't that bad and this recession was just a passing fancy I have news for you.

Its real!

How I know its real? Well I always thought it was but just for further confirmation I open yesterday's paper and see a headline saying that a German Billionaire commit suicide cause his global empire ran into trouble with this economic downturn. Imagine that! The recession got billionaires killing themselves. What a ting! Tell me that don't mek ya realize how serious this thing is?

I mean we not talking about no I cant pay the light bill and my house get repossessed and I homeless suicide we talking about a cat that was a billionaire, lifestyles of the rich and shameless, caviar dreams and champagne wishes, private jet having, money wid nuff zeroes at the end falling off the page type of fellow.

So if things so dread that a guy like him say look I cant deal with this thing I want out, I dun, I gone, see ya, wha bout we dat cross hayso eating bully beef and chicken backs, with cheese cutter dreams and mauby wishes and trying to shuffle 10 cents from the light bill to the water bill? Lawd ave mercy!

And ya know a fellow like that with big money got access to nuff resources. So unlike we dat have to rely on the lies in the mainstream media where they try hard to convince us that everything gine be alright and not to panic and that we should go out and buy that new Buick and that enormous flat screen TV cause we really need them and it going help the economy, he is rich enough to afford to pay people to bring him the real news. So he must have had a few legit forecasts of the future showing him just how bad things going to get cause this thing only just start ya know.

So if he a fellow with the money and the info couldn't tek the strain and decide he couldn't tek it nuh more wha chance we pockets on E type people got?

Cuhdear!