Wandered through Calgary today until sore feet and a need for sleep convinced me to head back to my computer and bed.

Calgary is a fun and fascinating city. Right at the foothills of the Rockies, it was founded just in 1875 and now over 1 million people call it home. It lies on the Bow River, and the city's geography has been profoundly shaped by the water. But while in the US it's a pretty safe bet that river cities were placed there for the commercial opportunities provided by shipping, that isn't the case here. Calgary began as an outpost of the RCMP, who likely found the river useful for drinking, bathing and washing only. It later became a convenient place to trade in cattle, and first part of the small city's identity (it's still called 'Cowtown' today) was set. The second part of the city's identity came in the early 1900's, when oil was discovered in Alberta. Calgary has, for basically a century, been a boomtown, although the amplitude has varied over time.

I started the day on a recommendation from a few Calgarians to explore the neighborhood of Inglewood. It was the perfect choice. I stumbled into the midst of a street fair called "Sunfest", which had swelled the streets with locals, arts and crafts, cheap eats, people on stilts, pie eating contests, and a man carrying a Chuckie ventriloquist dummy who said to his companion "everyone is staring at me!" in a bewildered tone as I gawked. Knowing that this neighborhood was among the ones more affected by the devastating June floods made the fair shine even brighter. Inglewood is a neighborhood that has been shaped by a peculiar isolation from the downtown. By distance alone, it is quite close to the CBD, and you can see the towers of the center city from any street. But the lone road that runs between the two is hemmed in by the Bow and the active Candian Pacific RR tracks that run straight through the heart of downtown. There's no room for development on this singular stretch, and thus, no connective tissue between the shops and residents of the center city with the shops and residents of Inglewood. It's a neighborhood that projects an artsy, independent feel.

My path was East-West to start. I forded the barren stretch and fell under the shadows of the downtown skyscrapers. Because it was there, I forked over 16 CAD and went up to the top of the Calgary Tower. This is a Space Needle knock-off built by city fathers who possessed astounding foresight (or reckless confidence) that their city would become a national power in need of a symbol. When the structure was constructed, it was nearly double the height of the next tallest building. Now it is significantly shorter than some nearby buildings, but it still commands an impressive view. Being a geographer who is also deathly afraid of heights, I went up, did a quick circuit, snapped some photos and went down.

The downtown of Calgary is modern and full of glass. The newest serious edition to the skyline is "The Bow", a giant building shaped like a... you guessed it... bow. Out front is this striking white sculpture which gets a lot of sun throughout the day. In a world where public art is often terrible and boring, this is a sure exception. Calgary's CBD is experiencing a lot of growth and some outward expansion. I counted over six new luxury high rises in various stages of construction. For a Saturday afternoon on a long weekend (Monday is a national holiday in Canada), a surprising number of people were out on the street. 8th ave has been given the pedestrian mall treatment with phenomenal success. There are a ton of trendy bars, restaurants and shops, all getting great business when I strolled through. The street is anchored at the east by Olympic Park, which has a charming wading pool in the center. It was extremely refreshing to take off my shoes and cool my feet there during the afternoon.

I found dinner at a poutine restaurant on 17th ave, which is south of the downtown. Just as Inglewood is separated from the city center by the rivers and the rail-river squeeze, so is the Beltway neighborhood separated by the train line. It's allowed another big commerical street to develop, one which feels a lot like Uptown in the Twin Cities, my second hometown. I walked along a parade of sleek bars and restaurants and a hordes of young people.

Tired, but still in the mood for exploring, I hopped on the light rail and took one of the lines out to the end, which was the interestingly named "Crowfoot" station. This line took me out through a very narrow ring of suburbs and into a tenuous in-between land, where suburban malls existed in front of hills of untouched pastureland. The University of Calgary is out here; a miserable place to put a bunch of people who would be much happier in the city center, and would probably reward the city for it. The trip isn't so long, but any distance is a barrier, especially if the train stops at night.

While on the LRT, I thought about the nature of Calgary. It's a fascinating city. There seemed to be a battle being waged over the city's identity and future.

On one side, the town's roots as a break point for cattle herders. The city hosts the world famous Calgary Stampede ("The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth"), and despite there being almost a year until the next one, there is still a full-court press of ads for the event. Valuable real estate is tied up in the Stampede fairgrounds. In the middle of this is the city's iconic Scotiabank Saddledome, which is a hockey arena with a roof shaped like a horse saddle.

The other side is the oil town, represented in the big gleaming towers of the CBD, and as the symbol, I'll take the Calgary Tower. Calgary isn't in the heart of oil country (that'd be Edmonton), but it's the "on high" from whence orders come. The major energy companies have their headquarters here, and thus do the major financial institutions that serve them. The young people who filled every bar and restaurant to the brim, the people filling the luxury condos, they're on this side.

Calgary is still booming. I have heard more languages spoken in Calgary than I have since I last left NYC. It's diverse, it's attracting immigrants from all over. Calgary has plenty of room for expansion, plenty of space still remaining to increase density in the core. But can it do so while keeping it's frontier identity? Plenty of places have shrugged off their wild west past. Does it want to keep it? It'll be very interesting to see how the future washes over this city.

Final story. As I walked across the lipstick-red Peace Bridge, designed by starchitect Santiago Calatrava, I fell into step next to a Black Canadian family walking with their young son. As we neared the end of the bridge, he spotted some dogs out for a walk and shouted "DOGGIE! DOGGIE!" while trying to hide behind his mother. His parents and the dog walkers both conspired to bring him close to the dogs and his mother tried to get him to go up and touch them, but he pulled away as I went to pet the dogs, and everyone smiled and laughed. It was a funny and cute moment, one of those small little interactions that fill out one's day. But when I'm driving for long hours on the road, or New Yorking my way through streets, blowing past pedestrians and thinking about the street grid or the design of the buildings, I miss a lot of that. I might notice it, but it never really happens with me as a participant. That may sound sad or lonely, but it's not really, I'm perfectly happy exploring on my own as a pure observer for a few days. I'm not retreating to a cave along the Bow River, or disappearing into a Saskatechwan wheat field anytime soon. It's just an observation.