Craig Shutko. Plains Hotel, Regina. October 1, 2009In the list of locally famous hotels coming down for development reasons is the Plains Hotel in Regina.  It has a determined website, but it won't help.  Such bars whether old, as is Calgary's Cecil, or 60s versions, as is the Plains, are seen as rough, good fun but dangerous, and architecturally certainly expendable.  They are reminders of when the city was pretty raw and proud of it.  Their loss is a larger kind of gentrification – not about housing or neighbourhoods, but about city brand. 

This is troubling as it means that patrons of Good Time Charlie's, the bar inside the Plains, whoever they might be, do not count as citizens of Regina any more: their presence is negative.  Human rights do not allow their persecution, but god knows local police have their eye on such bars.  No, a different kind of erasure happens: the architectural infrastructure, the built environment is methodically erased instead.

Craig Shutko. Plains Hotel, Regina. Oct 1, 2009Is this an environment a city can be proud of?  Only if it understands that this is what its feet rest upon.  These people, these beers, this strip.  It is unlovely, but that is an aesthetic judgement, not a social one. 

Deep Dark Woods have a song about the Plains, soon to be replaced by a Hilton and shopping complex:  Good Time Charlie's is Coming Down:

 

S White. Cecil Hotel, Calgary. 1982

Read Tom Jonsson's essay on the Cecil by clicking on the picture above.