A Shout-0ut to my Former 'Hood

So, as most of you probably know, I now officially live in suburbia. 'Well of course you do!' is what you're probably all thinking; after all, this is Calgary, land of suburbia. But no, friends, it has not always been this way.......


Contrarily, I grew up the great land of Thorncliffe/Greenview/North Haven. You see, all of these neighbourhoods are sort of thrown together into a glorious pile of confusion, and they're a mere 15 minute bus ride or 10 minute car ride to the center of the city. And...this will make many jealous....a 6 minute drive to U of C if you do 100 on John Laurie! Ahhh, how I miss sleeping in 'til 8:30 and still parking, grabbing a coffee, and getting a good seat in a 9 am class.

Now that I'm immersed in bona fide S.W. Calgary suburbia, I feel like a martian here. After sorting through this, I've come up with some striking parallels between suburbia and my former neighbourhood, which I've lovingly dubbed the 'T-Cliff.'

1. S.W. Calgary is a mono culture of well-off white people who only speak English and eat meat and potatoes. Honestly, I have not met a single immigrant since living here, and everytime I see a person of colour I'm actually surprised, and I want to run over to them and make friends. And the vast majority of our neighbours are BORING!! They're incredibly predictable; on Saturdays, they get up at 8, put on their $400 mountain biking jackets from MEC, cruise around the Glenmore Resevoir for about an hour, and then go sit in the local Starbucks and talk about their renovations. Don't believe me? Head to Glenmore Landing (90th Ave SW) on a Saturday around noon.

And on the food: seriously, I cannot find a good Vietnamese, Thai or Indian restaurant to save my life here. What is available is miles of Earl's, Kelsey's and Steak Houses, though. Oh, everything also closes at about 9 pm, too. After a night of partying, Nate and I ended up having a $65 cab ride 'cause we spent so much time trying to find a place that was open for a druken snack--we didn't.

Alternatively, the T-Cliffe is a cultural mosaic: tonnes of new immigrants settle in this area that's relatively close to downtown, and people really keep their cultural connections and practices burning in this area. Put it this way: in my elementary and junior high schools, ESL classes were at capacity or more. Down in the SW, most schools don't even run ESL programs. And the white people that did live there were not a monolith: on our street alone, we had a retired farm couple who's wife used to drop the f-bomb on him from the front stoop, a Wiccan couple who home-schooled their three children who decided to become goths at about 12 years of age, a pot-smoking oil executive, an elderly couple who wore matching jogging suits and knew everything about everyone who lived on the street, an ultra-boring geologist couple and their ultra-boring children (they'll probably move to the SW), a crotechty old British woman who threw garden tools at my brother, a Polish Holocaust survivor who made his own shoes, painted his house orange, and built an illegal carport that practically touched my parent's roof (they didn't care), an Italian couple who would get so bombed that the husband would stumble over to the local Safeway and buy his neighbour's steaks if he saw them there, and a Thai couple who started a totally rad restaurant and had karaoke parties with transvestites at them. I'm honestly not making this up: ask Kaitie, who lived on the next street (which would be a whole other post). And, I know of two families who lived in T-Cliff who actually brought HORSES to their homes as pets--yes, HORSES (Kristina--you should tell this story on your blog!).

2. Nobody stays put in the SW. Seriously, EVERYONE who lives here talks about moving on to 'bigger and better.' In our particular spot, we've got plenty of the young and ambitious, who constantly stress about when they're going to get a bigger, fancier place and when. They visit showhomes constantly, and direct conversations around home improvement techniques designed to maximize sale profit, not their own enjoyment.

Alternatively, NOBODY leaves the T-Cliff. No matter how much money someone acquires, or if their occupation moves them to a different part of the city, they do not leave. They paint, renovate, whatever, but they don't go until it's time for a nursing home or they die. And, so many people who I went to school with can still be found there. Case in point: the pot-smoking oil exec wasn't always rich. But once he made the bucks, what did he do? Move to a giant walk-out in suburbia with a bonus room, five piece ensuite and oversize double garage? Fuck no! He stayed in a spot where he could smoke his morning blunt on the stoop in a peaceful, nonstigmatized setting, and he bought the orange house with the illegal carport (the owner moved to a nursing home) for his also pot-smoking and once arrested children, so they too could stay in the T-Cliff. He figured it was the best gift he could ever give them.

I think he was right.