Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackArcher101
Ah, gotcha. That arab remark wasn't making sense to me, haha.
Leaving the west side would actually allow you to acurrately review the City of Lethbridge, instead of just a small portion of it. I always found the difference between west and north/south to be night and day. Especially north  .
I have sinced moved away, but from family that still remains there, it sounds like lately the wind hasn't been occuring as often as it would normally. I'm far under 55, and frankly the wind is a key factor in my decision to never live there again.
Pros:
- Quiet and laid back (if you like that).
- If it rains in the summer, the green coulees can be fairly nice.
- Nice parks/public lakes.
- Cheaper housing.
- Henry's chinese restaurant (great lunch).
- Close to waterton.
- Better chance that a stranger will converse with you.
Cons:
- Quiet (if you feed off energy)
- Large ratio of students to permanent residents.
- Shopping and availability of products are more limited.
- Not a lot of things to do, fewer entertainment options.
- North Side
- Few jobs, especially in a few certain lines of work.
Basically, I feel it's not a place that really allows a person to grow to their full potential. It feels limiting in career and personal life development. |
Yeah, I don't disagree with much of what you said, except for the ratio of students to permanent residents, ha.
I've heard a lot of crap about the North Side. Let me put it this way, I'm a Calgarian but I have never really done more than just pass through whole swathes of the northeast to get to the airport. I have heard from East Indian acquaintances about a few really superb hidden gems for kebabs and tikka and such, so I check those out. That's really the limit of my exploration of NE Calgary, aside from some of the more inner-city areas. Does this make me unqualified to discuss my time in Calgary?
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my roommate when we were driving up to Calgary on a weekend this past fall. We were sharing travel stories and we ended up talking about our vastly differing perspectives on London (England), despite having both lived there for some time. Over a long discussion of it, we came to the conclusion that while there are some objective criteria by which we can discuss cities and towns (travel and civic exploration being a hobby of both of ours), ultimately we really
make our own reality when it comes to where we live. To me, Calgary is downtown, Sunnyside/Kensington, Inglewood, and several parts of the NW and SW, mainly inner-city areas. To others, Calgary is the drive from their house in Royal Oak to the Costco to Walmart and back, with the occasional visit to their equivalent of downtown, Crowfoot.
Similarly, to me, London is great music at pubs in Fulham, intense soccer matches, incredible hustle and bustle, and the immense psychogeographic reality of a TWO THOUSAND year old city which one could really lose themselves in and find anything and everything in it. To my roommate, it was really just a bunch of dirty, ugly streets with a lot of crime and poverty, and he hated the romanticization of London in our culture. And he pointed out that we really say a lot about places we travel to and visit without really
experiencing them, only portion(s) of them. For example, I mentioned Muscat, Oman in this thread already. Absolutely amazing place. Really opened my eyes to the history of the gulf region. Absolutely amazing, eye-opening, fascinating political history, ripe grounds for new anthropological advances. Yet ignored by the most of the world, thank heavens. Yet I had the benefit of knowing Canadian expats there who knew their way around and showed me a lot of the stuff worth seeing and a lot of really awesome hidden gems. The other day I went on youtube and saw a video of a British couple who had obviously got some package deal, and it was just them sitting at the hotel bar, going to MALLS, and going to the souq (local marketplace). They missed out on everything that's really cool and vital about the place, and it was a complete waste of their time.
For the record, I'm not really saying Lethbridge is a great place to live, I'm just saying it's not nearly as bad as I'd heard and assumed, and that it's sort of neat and decent for what it is.