The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Panhandling problem requires city effort This was aor meant to be a perâ€" sonal atack« on panhandlers. as one aoury reader suggesied. The series was an affempt to expiain why the pracuce of panhanâ€" dling has become a concern in the core In our search for answers. we presented all sides of the issue: the penple involved. the peopie affectâ€" ec. and cossibie solutmons to this mountng problem. The in week we spoke to Anaâ€" mie @ybas. also known as the "sign ue‘ who is offen found pushing a shopping cast ajong King Sreet. asicng toe comes. Continued from page 8 would nave been defined :f it was essential Jof 30 vears? The people of Waterloo had froped to elect a council with good sense. out apparently even compasâ€" son is aciang. Council should be footing the bill in ‘act. the bviaw was not even aTren that they are suppose to be oiaung, but [ am sure council is working hard at getting that corâ€" rected and waiving the informal public hearing for it was just anothâ€" Hardcore punk alive in Waterloo A:hun:h auditorium along 4 nuntry mad on the outsiarts of warerioo. where lobbv walls are e»emniazoned with the gospel mes sige. is probabiv the last place vou uid expect t attend a hard core Junk concer?. The program featured 10 ener ferle performunces oys Malaptap stiorlace Puparazzi. For the Kids. Resniver. Through the Window. Line it Zipe Cear of ralling, ( urring the leuds ©moroform and Pigeon But tfhere it was. ~ 20 p.m.. Juty 3 it C ommunity Fellowship (hurch in ‘onservanion Orve was the first ndependent ‘Battle of the Bands‘ ‘or migh schooders since last vears smm spensored event at the Water co Vemoral Ree (entre es he dudded befts. tigh boors or Rlamones â€" shirs that make these w2i+ stand out Insread it s the nrense commutment they give to mwanng and pertorming what they call music ompared with some of the qarage and har band punks of Tornntos eartvy 1980s. a number of the unung bands that performed cach sand s staffed bw ratented suth. mnsi of whom ipend their fass drpmsed as ordinary local eerns »enmiled in one or another of nro ons high schoots. But Cordi sarm‘ hardly deserbes chem all. ts tea ofe MaonawÂ¥k haircuts or mul The Scoâ€"vearâ€"oid claims a lack of HRO job opportunities for someone his age has forced him to seek handâ€" outs so that he can buy food. But Rybas also agreed that some of his fellow panhandlers are preâ€" senting themseives in a negative light. harassing passersâ€"by and arguing with police. And it was those aggressive panâ€" handlers that our sources targeted in the second part of the series, which looked at the effects the problem is having on local busiâ€" nesses. Steve Roth, general manager of the Waterioo Stage Theatre. shared stories of coming to work to find peopie in his lobby. or sleeping in the laneway behind his building. And finally this week. we‘ve looked at what‘s being done to halt the problem. Police officers are The truth is, that the land in question could house everything from a hospital to a single detached home or a cemetery under the curâ€" rent by law. all of which are rather permanent in nature don‘t you think. or would the dead be asked to leave for 60 days? Bylaws are bylaws, even if not written well. In fact. at no point did it state one had to be out. that was just your interâ€" pretation. Sadly. once again. I see the er quick measure taken The only things that most of these local vouth bands lack is experience and competent cnachâ€" ing. Those aren‘t criucisms of course â€" every garage or bar band starts out like that could hoid their own fairty well. In fact. the Toronto hard core circuit roday doesnt necessarily have a lot that is better ERS TO THE CHRONICLI The coaching that most of the bands require is vocal coaching. it is stereotypical to think that anybody can get up and scream from the gut to create the contemporary punk sound, but that‘s just not the case. It made a signuficant difference that some singers. hike the two leads in Malaptnp. can actually carry a tune For shose that couldn‘t, not even the guitural screarming (so rampant in hard care performance todavi could make themn sound good Mast of the hands had talented drummers and were pretty good on the bass and guitar A small aumber of themn also knew haw to make the tage come alive with a fittle coord: nated movement (inot just arbitrary aggressive posing and uncharen graphed leapsi Another amazing fact about this rnncert is that most of these reenage rockers wrote their music themseives. in some cases. that meant hearing a it of what you‘ve heard somewhere else before. which is pretty standard hard core COMMENT DITORIA! doing what they can, patrolling the core and making the streets safe everyone. But they admit, enforceâ€" ment is just one part of the solution. Kitchener seems to be on the right track, implementing a proâ€" gram that sees one man relate to the homeless people and develop ways to try to help them find work and a place to hang their hats. Citizens like Dick Tyssen, of the Out of the Cold program, feel the City of Waterloo should be playing a more active role. Social issues like affordable housing seems to have fallen by the wayside, he believes. We agree. Instead of waiting for the answers to come to them â€" or relying on the Region of Waterloo â€" city council should be playing more of an active role in solving this local problem. Waterioo taxpayers and a group of citizens being forced to spend money on legal fees that SHOULD and COULD have been avoided by a council. When will we ever get a council to foot the bill for the legal fees that they deliberately incur? style any way. But for the most part, each band put out a unique sound creatively their own. The winners of the night were Through the Window (scoring a $200 prize}. Revolver (sconng $100] and Malaprop (getting honourable mention}. Most people there, though. seemed to think that Malaâ€" prop‘s superior talent as a group went unrecognized. For this writer‘s part. I agree, but I also think that the band most surprisingly over looked was Shoelace Paparazz). the only band to perfectly recreate both the sound and atuitude of the 80s punks. They should have at least gotten honourable mention for defying authority by playing insis tently past their allotted time. even after the curtain was closed and the guitars were unplugged For $2 a ticket. there are few con certs that could match what took place at this Battle of the Bands_ If the show wasn‘t marketed to the teenage crowd, a somewhat higher admisstion would not have been inappropriate. That only means we should keep aut eyes peeled for same of these bands when they per form elsewhere; which. if they don‘t already. they undaubtedly should Judy Greenwoodâ€"Speers Waterioo Michael H. Clifton Waterioo ast week I had the pleasure of playing in the Canadian I Professional Golfers Association Proâ€"Am tournament in upport of Grand River Hospital at Whistle Bear golf club in North Durmifries. The CPGA was founded in 1911 and is the oldest profesâ€" sional golf association in North America. Its membership is comprised of over 3,000 club profession als and tournament players across Canada. Past champions include local golf legend Moe Norman, who has won the championship twice, and fellow Canadians Stan Leonard (eightâ€"time winner}, Al Balding (fourâ€"time winâ€" ner}, Geoarge Knudson (fiveâ€"time winner}. Dave Barr and Richard Zokol. A couple of other notable winners include Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino. Professionalâ€"amateur tournaments are customary warmâ€"up days where professionals can begin to familiarize themselves with the course and tee it up for local charities in the commuâ€" nities where they are playing. At the end of the year the top money earners on the Nation wide Tour get an exemption to play on the bona fide PGA tour next vear. 5 siou n d o e O Mc coat The tournament last week was part of the "Nationwide tour, which is a notch below the regular PGA tour. Having the CPGA choose Whistle Bear as the site of the championship was a real coup for the local golf club and for golf enthusiasts in Southwestâ€" ern Ontario. Hopefully Whistle Bear will be sucâ€" cessful in securing a multiâ€"year deal with the PGA and the tournament will return for a few years in a row. Just making a living Our group of hackers {actually we _ weren‘t too bad and placed fourth ‘ overall) was teamed up with a pro from South Carotina who had expenâ€" | enced some success on the big PGA tour with the big guys, for the big monery. He unfonunal‘él_\‘i lost his pla;:ing card in 2003 and was releâ€" gated to play on the lesser nationwide tour, and found himself in Waterloo Region this past week. * All guts, no glory for most pro golfers My chats with the pro were quite interesting and he had some memorable quotes like, "I‘ve gone from playing for a total purse of $5 million a week on the PGA to $500,000 on the Nationwide". The winner of the PGA tourney on the weekend took home $630,000 compared to the winner of the CPGA who took home $81.000. Obviously this is a heck of a lot of money for most people, but the point was being made about how good the big guys are. Mike Weir, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Stephen Ames, Emie Els. you name ‘em, week in, week out. they play competitive, consistent, near perfect golf and get handsomely rewarded for doing it. Contrast that with most of the guys on the Nationwide Tour who are eking out a living driving from tournament to tournament in cars, campers and mobile homes. The players in this past week‘s tournament were in West Virginia the week before and Wisconsin the week prior to that. On Sunday they left Cambridge for Wichita. Kansas, then on to Nebraska and then Missourt All in all, the pro we played with said he is on the road 42 weeks a year. When asked about the grind, he simply said "this is what I do for a lving" Obviously there are far worse vocations in the world than professional golfer. And it didn‘t seem like any of the pros were looking for sympathy. But until this week it never really occurred to me that for every pro golfer who makes it big, like Mike Weur, there are a 100 or so who are ‘simply making a liy ing The pro we played with has not won a dime on tour this year, zero prize money. he missed the cut at Whistle Bear and is getting ready to try it all over again in Kansas this week A quick congrats to the tournament winner, Charles Warren from South Carolina, whose four day total of 269 was 19 under and seven shots better than the secondâ€"place finisher, Doug Barron of Tennessee Also a tip of the hat to the fine folks and volunteers at Whis tle Bear. head pro Brad Matthews, and the local golfers who tried to qualify and fell short, and to those who qualified but didn‘t make the cut to play on Saturday and Sunday Eâ€"mail your sean@seanstrickland.com. question/comments to