Chappell Roan Puts Saskatchewan On Notice
New developments are happening swiftly!
Breaking up after a serious relationship is never easy. While Canadians continue to collectively say no to sleepovers south of the border no matter how cheap the flights to Vegas are now, Americans spent about $2.5 billion CAD taking off to the Great White North between January and March, an increase of 27 percent from the same period a year ago when there was a sane president and the exchange rate wasn’t that much different.
Keep in mind this means an increase in visits to Canada in winter.
One of the country’s least enticing provinces might also soon see an influx of visitors thanks to a new hit song by an American about the pain of ending a relationship because the dumbest timeline ever still has its moments of irony.
“I made a promise, if in four months this feeling ain't gone / Well, fuck this city, I'm movin' to Saskatchewan,” sings Chappell Roan in her new single “The Subway” currently sitting at #3 on Billboard’s Top 100 and causing a seismic shift in online interest in the prairie province.
The queer icon admits it was chosen simply because they needed somewhere that rhymes with “gone” and settled on the breadbasket place with the funny name best known for being Canada’s only rectangular province.
Which it actually isn’t.
She’d be even less likely to run into her ex by moving to the even funnier-sounding Blanc-Sablon, although she’d have to learn weird French and most Canadians have never heard of the largest town in northeastern Quebec either.
“It’s about time Saskatchewan got recognized globally,” Roan recently told Kiwi radio host Zane Lowe, presumably without intentionally disrespecting the Proclaimers, who gave the place a shout-out in the protest song “Cap in Hand” a full decade before the 27-year-old was born. (It goes without saying the Scottish duo put in the miles themselves and have toured the province repeatedly.) “I’ve never been there but promise I will perform one day and I also just love that the capital is called Regina.”
This is major news in a province A-listers rarely bother visiting and that is still recovering from their rejected offer to Taylor Swift to temporarily rename the city Swift Current in her honor in exchange for a stop on the Eras tour. No friendship bracelets for them! Katy Perry also recently passed on a performing in a place where the new guy she might be dating is widely despised.
The Conservatives handily won 13 out of 14 available seats in the last federal election, with the sole Liberal victor taking the mostly uninhabited north. Regina may be best known for being — in Mick Jagger’s words — “the city that rhymes with fun,” but the name is actually from the Latin for queen and meant as tribute to Queen Victoria, who also never visited the place.
But the self-styled Queen City is very much not a special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day like at the Pink Pony Club, and progressives fantasizing of escaping the Fourth Reich to Saskatchewan like the way Vietnam draft dodgers made British Columbia home should know it’s actually a pretty backwards place despite having once elected North America’s first socialist government.
MAGA minstrel Sean Feucht, for example, recently saw permits revoked for several free outdoor shows across the country once local officials got wind of what the hate preacher was actually all about, but the show in Saskatoon nonetheless went on without much of a hitch.
The Midwest Princess and/or fans might be equally disappointed to learn the province’s third largest city, Prince Albert, is named for the aforementioned queen’s consort instead of peener piercings. Even worse news might be that the village of Climax is named for a brand of 19th century chewing tobacco and has no more bragging rights to calling itself O-town than Ottawa does.
But hopefully she’ll follow through on the promise to play the prairies if not relocate permanently as it would put a spotlight on a new law brought in by the governing Saskatchewan Party requiring the parents of kids who want to use different names or pronouns at school be informed. The policy was forced through by Premier Scott Moe, a man who talks about the sanctity of children’s changing rooms a lot, using the notwithstanding clause, essentially the rarely used nuclear option in Canadian legalese that allows provinces to override Ottawa on certain portions of the charter for a period of five years.
The courts recently ruled a challenge by UR Pride, a group connected with the University of Regina, can continue and the new law on outing kids to their possibly bigoted parents could even be struck down before the star follows through on the promise to bring a little love to the prairies.
She could even put on a show in a town that wouldn’t need renaming simply for the rhyming opportunity of “fuck this city, I’m movin’ to Estevan, Saskatchewan.”
[Globe & Mail / CBC / Estevan, Saskatchewan / Wonkette Bluesky]
On my evening walk I spotted something magical. Something that would confirm that I had arrived, that I was indeed a Clevelander. I saw the Rocket Car! Those Clevelanders in the know have told me this is a special moment. I belong! I have been looking forward to seeing this funky vehicle, it zipped by before I could grab my phone and photograph it, like the rocket it is named!
"The Euclid Beach rocket car is hard to miss. You might hear it coming first: the band organ music blaring from its speakers or the delighted shrieks coming from its passengers. Then you'll see it, the biggest thing on the road: a shining silver steel body shaped, improbably, like a rocket ship. The nose cone, the tail - it's all there, along with the waving hands and smiling faces of the 20 or so people seated inside its bright red interior. You might ask: What is it? Where did it come from? How is it allowed to be on the road? Inevitably, however, you'll want to know how you, too, can go for a ride in the rocket car.
The rocket car seen on the streets of Northeast Ohio (and, during the winter months, in Florida) has its origins at Euclid Beach amusement park. The rocket ships ride opened there in the 1930s. Its three rocket ships, suspended from cables, would be lifted off the ground and fly in a circle at high speeds. The ride remained popular until the park closed in 1969. After the park closed, the ride was taken apart and the three ships were sold. They languished in warehouses around the city for the next few decades. One even ended up in its owner's backyard Christmas display, while another was abandoned in an Eastlake warehouse. In the late 1990s, two different owners got a hold of the three ships and converted them into street legal automobiles. And 'rocket car' is not a misnomer: one was clocked at 136 MPH! All three can now be rented out for special occasions, and pop up at events all over the city."
https://www.euclidbeachpark.com/
When I was going to college in Spain in 1975-76, I had 2 weeks of spring break so I traveled around Spain by bus by myself, which was not an entirely safe thing for a 19-yr-old woman to do, but I was fearless. I had very little $$. I met a nice older man in Burgos who offered to drive me to Valladolid so I could save the bus fare. We had talked for a long time, and he seemed OK, so I accepted. Big mistake. In the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere he made sexual advances, which I refused, so he dumped me out on the side of the road.
I had to hitchhike, which was very dangerous, but I had no choice as the nearest town was MILES away. And then a big, black Mercedes came down the country highway and saw me and stopped to offer me a ride. The driver was dressed in a very expensive Italian suit and said he was a lawyer from Madrid and that as soon as he saw me he knew what had happened. His English was perfect. He asked where I was from. I didn't want to say USA because then Spanish men immediately assumed I was a whore, so I said "Canada." He asked what city. I said "A small town in Saskatchewan" because I figured he'd never heard of it.
Well fuck me if he hadn't gotten his law degree in Toronto, which is why he spoke such perfect English. I quickly made up the name of a town in Saskatchewan which he had never heard of, of course.
He was a perfect gentleman and drove me to a highly recommended hostel in Valladolid.
I didn't write down his name, but if he's still out there, then "Thank You Señor Lawyer from Madrid for being such a gentleman, and I'm sorry I lied to you, but it's now 50 years later and I wish I really was from Saskatchewan. Who knew?"
I never told my parents about this experience. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.