Quote:
Originally Posted by Chadillaccc
Yes, because all there is to Calgary is its skyline. All 1.2 million people in this city just live here to work in our gleaming corporate towers, then evacuate them at 5 pm on the dot and scurry back to suburbia.
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That was largely true in 2004 the first time I visited Calgary. On a Sunday I was walking down the middle of the roads taking pictures because there was essentially zero traffic. Nearly everybody on the sidewalks was a tourist. Much of the +15 was locked down.
During the Stampede shortly after the flooding (2013 I think), it certainly was a lot better. You still have to leave the towers downtown to find a grocery store (Safeway south of the railway tracks) but it's getting there.
It generally takes a generation (25 years) for the perceptions of distant outsiders to change. They worked with a guy who did business in Calgary 20 years ago and that's what their opinion is based on.
Toronto suffers from the same effect. Hell, you still find people who are disappointed/surprised New York isn't gritty when they arrive at their Times Square hotel because it was when their parents went there for their honeymoon in the late 70's.
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