by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

People living here love this city because they think it's beautiful. People who live elsewhere share the same impression. But much of this town is pretty horrifyingly hideous and dull-looking. So here, in the sacred mission of beautifying this burg, I humbly thumb my own urban aesthetic list to the door of city hall.

Ditch dumb restrictions The operators of the Guy & Guy B&B on Bannantyne have run afoul of Verdun authorities. Their treason and subversion lies in the act of painting their metal handrail lime green, building a pond, a rustic wood fence and now adding bay windows surrounded by copper mansards. It's supposedly an offence to the historical character of the area originally built as a Protestant workers' suburb. Stairs must be grey and handrails black. Such constipated restrictions deter beautification. They should be repealed and diversity and imagination should be encouraged. Ease up on pettiness, more colour, more creativity, more cowbell.

Birds I'm sick of pigeons and gulls and even my beloved sparrows got boring. But other glamorous birds want to thrive here too. I put out some nyger seed in a finch feeder and now attract 20 spectacular yellow songbirds at any given time to my balcony in NDG (although goldfinches turn brown at this time of year). Go get a feeder and help colour the skies yellow. One day I'll get a grant and buy you a feeder. I've launched the Society to Optimize Avian Return (SOAR) to encourage colourful urban birdy diversity. I've got a name, anyway. That's a start. I'll send out official faxes out as soon as I can unjam the machine.

Publisacs Homeowners spend thousands on their front doors and then let some deviant litter it with big plastic bags filled with a craptastic combination of hard-copy spam and litter that piles up or blows down the street. Publisacs are Satanic. Get a no-Publisac sticker on your door (call 872-1111). The uninvited bags make you look like a dorky coupon-clipper. They also diminish us all by allowing advertisers to bypass community newspapers, thereby depriving residents of local news and challenging crossword puzzles.

Brick roads Initiatives to transform streets into pedestrian-only walkways are hopelessly utopian, particularly the one on Mont-Royal. But resurfacing avenues with cobblestone would discourage traffic (particularly shitboxes with lousy suspension). The new old-fashioned brick surfaces would be pleasantly bucolic and dramatically lower the number of cars.

Parking lots Every mall or big box store in town is surrounded by a hideous, flat concrete space that looks like a makework project for dropouts of the Stalin Remedial School of Architecture. All large parking lots should be forced to have an occasional grassy green island with a tree or two plugged in there.

Neon lights The Silver Dragon Café at de l'Église and Laurendeau is the jewel of Côte-St-Paul (yes, the building is for sale, but the restaurant is staying). The restaurateurs are too frugal to fire up the glorious signage. But they claim it works. The city should appoint an agent to encourage such signage and protect our fast-disappearing neon heritage.

Demolitions Knock down the Tim Horton's building at Guy and de Maisonneuve to expand Too Many Pigeons Square. Demolish the rain covers on St-Hubert. Lose the hideous white wall surrounding the city lot on St-Jacques east of Cavendish.

Underpasses The narcoleptic in charge of maintaining our underpasses must be a major fan of rusted metal and chipped concrete. Take your pick of the most unnecessarily stomach-turning spot in town. I choose either the small St-Rémi underpass in Turcot Village, or the underpass on Girouard below Sherbrooke.

Vehicular diversity People feel happy when they see funky old cars. Lower registration fees for vintage automobiles.

Clothing Outlaw those ubiquitous overly-flattering kevlar bras. Make rapper pants by-licence-only.

Parks Officials frown on just about any installation in a park, as they fear the thingamajig will attract sleepy vagrants. Ridiculous (although admittedly the horizontal red plastic tube in Murray Park's playground is excellent for short naps). Anyway, every park, by law, should have a stream and a gazebo.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca