It's time to sink monster boat rally
By JAMIE SWIFT
Kingston's farmers' market on a typical early August Saturday. The square is abuzz, as people stroll around with cloth bags and baskets, chatting across tempting displays of fresh corn and new potatoes, pungent garlic and green filet beans. Fresh local eggs, gathered last night. There's still local lettuce. The tomatoes are in. Salad days.
It's a cornucopia of local fare. More farmers are selling produce from Kingston's countryside. And more of us are buying their produce.
City hall is urging us to make adjustments in our food choices by purchasing locally grown food, with its official Kingston Environmental Advisory Forum (KEAF) urging us to "Think Globally, Eat Locally!"Why? Faraway fare is oil-intensive. Locally produced food boosts local farmers and the economy of this area.
"There is clearly an environmental benefit in local sourcing of food in terms of reduced transportation requirements," explains KEAF.
So why is it that, on one particular harvest Saturday every August, Market Square shoppers find the calm shattered by the scream of monster motorboats? Vendors and customers are left shaking their heads.
Once again, something called a "poker run" has brought a crowd of affluent American speed freaks to town, their 1,000-horsepower "cigarette boats" capable of well over 150 kilometres an hour on calm water. I imagine that the men in their cockpits feel quite virile about it all as their prows thrust through the water.
Local critics have long complained that this form of conspicuous consumption pollutes our air and water, wastes non-renewable resources and churns up wakes that damage sensitive shoreline habitat. What's more, they say, the brazen extravaganza symbolizes everything we should be avoiding if we want to save the Earth from human folly. Why should a city that so regularly pledges fealty to "sustainability" sanction - or even tolerate - this sort of thing?
The answer, of course, is a familiar one. It's about money. The poker run brings affluent visitors to town. You can't sleep comfortably - or often at all - on a cigarette boat so you need to book lots of downtown hotel rooms. People also come downtown to gawk at the brightly painted gas guzzlers. They might drop a few bucks at a bar or restaurant.
The event's key local backer is Downtown Kingston, representing the hotel and restaurant lobby. We should be wary of magical thinking that confuses self-interest with economic development.
A bit of hype culled from the 1000 Islands Cruises promotion during last year's poker run speaks volumes: "Roaring Engines, 100 miles an hour on water, the Rich and Playfull having fun. It's a sight to be seen. Best viewing from the top deck of the Island Queen as 100 million dollar speed boats scream by to Port and Starboard."
One local booster website that flogs ads to Kingston businesses features a promo for "Poker Runs America" and its powerboat rally. It showcases photos of boats with pricey paint jobs emblazoned - without apparent irony - with words like "Bad" and "Danger Zone." To top it all off, we have an image of that essential symbol
of absurdity and environmental recklessness, the Hummer, launching a cigarette boat.
The Baja Boat Company, makers of the Outlaw series of powerboats, has spiced up its website with slogans like "You can't become an Outlaw without breaking a few rules ... It's so good to be bad" and "Outlaws never follow ... you'll be in control."
Apart from the obviously Freudian aspects of their hobby, the men who see themselves as marine gladiators may well be attracted to cigarette boats because of their outlaw image. Hence "bad" and "danger." It's similar to Harley-Davidson's remarkable success in marketing its image to consumers who have nothing to do with outlaw bikers but keep snapping up Harley-branded paraphernalia.
These go-fast boats, designed for speed and nothing else, gained notoriety as the boat of choice for drug smugglers in the 1980s.They would later be used in the lucrative-but-illegal cigarette trade from the U. S. to Canada. Hence the "cigarette boat"moniker.
The power boat rallies, however, seem to be getting officially unpopular here in town. The Kingston Economic Development Corporation, once an active backer of the event, has withdrawn. There's nothing about the 2008 poker run on the city's website. These are good signs. Yet Kingston still accommodates the monster boats by closing off streets and offering a regatta rate to the poker run boats at its marinas.
We need to get around the thinking that this sort of thing can somehow be excused because some people like to watch while a few others make money. The same logic was once applied to bear-baiting and cockfighting, but such spectacles became socially unacceptable.
The poker run should go the same way, particularly in a community that recently passed an anti-idling bylaw. We're eliminating the cosmetic use of pesticides. All our new city buildings officially aim for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a rating system aimed at environmentally responsible design. The city rightly points out that this puts us "on the leading edge of sustainable development and ensures that new city buildings maximize energy efficiency."
Energy efficiency and sustainability are exactly not what overpowered speedboats are all about. A group of concerned citizens has begun a campaign to show the poker run the door once and for all. They're passing out protest postcards around town, urging Kingston to protect the waterfront from the monster boat scourge by becoming the "First Capital of Eco Boating." Some may find their way to the farmers' market even before the "Rich and Playfull" hit the water.
Kingston writer Jamie Swift has a longstanding interest in energy and environmental issues. His most recent book is Hydro:The Decline and Fall of Ontario's Electric Empire.