Cities in Review - Lethridge: Tap Water and Fire Spinners

On Saturday the 4th, I was invited to join the "the magical mystery tour" to Lethbridge Alberta. My hope was to get some perspective on alternative style of Albertan living, low cost living, and decent cultural outlets. One way I judge a city is on how walk-able it is, When we got their it was sun was down, so it was hard to tell the size of the community and what the suburban sprawl is like. The three art galleries that had openings and performances where pretty much all in a three blocks, so with limited information I'd say "yeah thats an easy walk." City is pretty, lots of nice building that remind me the short stout shops lining Saskatchewan summers. (ha alliteration.) It was too bad the thrift shops I saw were closed. I like cheap shwag. Their is a park beside the Southern Alberta Art Gallery that had a vigil set up for abused Aboriginal Women and afterwords djs set up and started a kind of dance party. I was told that the park was kind of a hangout for the homeless, but rather than running a fear-monger campaign against "sketchy people" like some cities might do... Lethbridge has made an effort to host cultural events to liven up the space and get people comfortable with the idea that, yes we can co-inhabit. And the best way to co-inhabit is with fire spinning! I think I should learn how to do this, their were alot of teen-twenty somethings taking turns to practice this really wicked art form. Here's a little video and some pictures and such. Also, if these pictures are of you and you want a link some where... message me. On to another element of the city I liked. Water! zing. I found this water bottle at the SAAG opening, just an empty plastic bottle the city or someone distributed. The back side has instructions on how to fill the bottle and a few sentences clarifying the fact that tap water should be good for you. Personally I think if your town has bad water... you should take to the streets and demand money is put into fixing it! Instead of handing your money over to Coca-cola for basically the same damn thing. In conclusion, I would give the 5 blocks of Lethbridge I saw an B+, which is pretty good. With acknowledgment that I should really see more of the city and live their for a bit before I could give it a final or even just a mid-term grade.

DAY 2: LETHBRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS... or wait... no trouble at all.

Saturday afternoon I ran around during the day, trying to do some random errands and print some singalong songs in a little book for tonight's MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR!!! Mountain Standard Time arranged a special chartered school bus to take us to Lethbridge to see some art stuff! (See my review of Lethbridge for details on the city.) Who are we? People who signed up I guess, and I looked around the bus at about 14 people and I feel confident saying they were artsy art folks. Neat! So I made this book, and despite the fun promised on the cover... I think it was a huge failure.For one thing the sing-along songs had typos (dang internet). And the sudoku I printed was totally to hard. I used a code cracker on the internet to solve it, so here's it solved. Well any way, we had fun anyway. I interviewed Caitlin (in the back) and Nicole (in the front) about concerns with Calgary. Hi Caitlin, I am going to interview you on a bus. What do you think about Public Transportation in Calgary? Well I live pretty close to downtown. I usually ride my bike to work. But I know if if I have to get to place in the South or up in the North East I generally have to take two trains and a buss or two buses and a train to get there. I've had jobs where public transit would take me more than an hour to get to work and if a bus was late, I would sometimes be up to three hours late for work. What do you think of Bicycles in the city, is it Safe? I personally am one of those people who rides on the side walk as I don't feel safe riding on the streets. I find the motorists are very aggressive and they don't share the road like they are supposed to. What kind of things could be improved in Calgary? How about Rent Control? Public Transportation and Free Recreational activities such as festivals. Other cities seem to be kicking our asses on the Festival Scene. Thank you Caitlin, have a good day You're welcome Citizen Justice. So, Nicole... what do you think about public trasnsportation in Calgary? I barely use transit but I think its pretty good, its better than Edmonton. Burn! Well what about bicycles? Bicycles are amazing. BUT I think the City of Calgary's claim that they have more kilometres of bike paths than any other city in Canada is Total Bull S***. The bike paths are all along the river so for those of use who commute to work it doesn't really help. Burrrn. Also the city's version of bike lanes is too paint a picture of a bike on a road and post a sign that says to share the road. Which is not the same as a seperate lane with a curb and a division like they have in montreal. I think this city needs to re-think its bike friendly actions. What are your pet peves about Calgary? That it's taken till November of 2008 for Calgary to implement a curbside recylcling program, despite the fact that every north American city of this size had one. AND it will only be in houses, no apartment buildings. Well... thanks Champ. We got back on the bus at eleven pm. Every one was tired but it was awkward to sleep on a school bus. The stars were pretty. We drove for two hours and then A MYSTERIOUS FOG SWALLOWED THE BUS. We went in and out of long stretches of fog for the next thirty minutes till we hit down town Calgary. It was a little scary, a little beautiful and maybe a little dangerous, but our bus driver Roy knew how to handle it. He laughed at the challenge, "ha ha ha, stupid fog! you are know match for me!" is what I pretended to hear him say. Any way... we made it home safe and I spent my second night sleeping at the Epcor Center.