Nelson

Nelson B.C. has somehow packed in all the good things you might find in the downtown core of a large city yet still kept the feel of a small town. How are they able to sustain 4 or 5 high-end restaurants, independent coffee shops, and organic bakeries & grocers in a town with a population of about 10,000 with no major industry? They even have their own police force.

Two answers to the question come to mind. The first is City council fights tooth and nail to keep franchise restaurants out of Nelson, which gives the independent shops an advantage over the Burger Kings, Tim Hortons, and McDonald’s, none of which are in Nelson. A few unfortunate slip ups have occurred; the Subway, A&W and Starbucks (you can’t stop the evil empire), but for the most part Nelson is refreshingly original. The second is the people of Nelson have money, and it isn’t from working in a mine or cutting down a forest, it’s from growing marijuana.

All of a sudden the Nelson Police Force makes sense. A town that thrives on the profits of the Devil’s Lettuce, and collects taxes from the influx of money generated by growers of the Giggle Bush, and furtherly uses that tax money to pay civil servants, has a police force that is technically being paid by Jungle Juice. To me, a guy who does not partake in the Mary Potter but is otherwise not opposed to it, this is sheer genius. Stage a few phony busts to make the squares think the fuzz are on their game and otherwise leave the urban farmers and the City of Nelson to prosper.

Apparently, Nelson was one of the few places in North American that wasn't hit at all by the economic disaster that crippled the U.S. I guess even when people are short on green, they still buy Green.

So was Nancy Reagan wrong when she told us to “just say no”? I think the people of Nelson might just say yes.