…and we’re back.

Whew! What a great mini-vacation that was. We departed a little before noon on Thursday, so we were pretty famished by the time we got past the city limits on 22X. Lunch was in Turner Valley, just SW of Calgary along the “Cowboy Trail,” highway 22, which straddles foothills and the mountains in a most pleasing way. We ate at the much-lauded Route 40 Soup Company, on Main St (which conveniently is also 22) in Turner Valley. It was completely superb- we shared an order of “road chips,” which are thick-cut fries with various root veggies and a sort of curry mayo dip. I could have eaten a bushel of these; they’re fabulous. A cup of soup with chorizo sausage and roasted veg and vermicelli noodles was lovely, and my entree of rice penne (I wasn’t sure if rice pasta lent itself to penne, but the waitress was so adamant about its deliciousness that I gave in) with wild mushrooms and smoked turkey in a wine-y cream sauce was rich and just shockingly flavourful. We’d heard lots of good things about this place (when it was actually on route 40 somewhere else in that bucolic area south of Calgary- High River, maybe?) and now knowing that it’s at most a 45-minute drive from home (in decent traffic, mind), we’ll be back for sure.

The rest of the drive was dependably breathtaking, since we had perfect weather and not much traffic aside from an annoying house being moved VERY slowly. The weather was perfect the entire weekend, warm (mid-20s) and cloudless skies. Just amazing. We relaxed on day 1, having brought “dinner” (cheese, salami, and wine from home- we bought crackers and some fruit in town), and that was it. Free wi-fi in the hotel’s lobby meant that Brian camped out there that evening and the next morning; meantime I went for a walk to the famous Prince of Wales Hotel at the edge of the townsite on a hill with gorgeous views of Waterton Lake. I met some lovely people from Paris who took my picture and offered to house me on my next visit to France; not that I’m planning one, but still, sweeeeet. Here I am in front of the hotel:

Of course this picture doesn’t to the hotel justice, but you can see pics of it all over the place, including the link just provided. The amazing thing about this hotel, besides that it’s a WOODEN building that’s not yet burnt down, is that view- but there are even better vantage points. More on that in a bit.

After lunch, we drove the winding, precipitous (think a shorter version of the Sea to Sky in BC) road to Cameron Lake and did the little 2+ mile hike around the western shore. The lake is framed by a mountain so the whole lake looks like God took an ice cream scoop and… you sort of have to experience it yourself. I’m about halfway through the trail in this pic:

That evening we took a 2-hour boat tour of Waterton Lake, which traverses the border, so its midpoint is in Montana at Glacier National Park. We were allowed to clamber along the shoreline there. The tour is beautiful, and as the guide said, if you can only do one thing at Waterton, make it this boat tour. Here we are en route, in the boat:

And on the Montana side:

…not that you can see much of the scenery with our goofy heads in the way, but trust me, it’s spectacular.

Okay, day 3 was really something. First, after breakfast, we drove to Red Rock Canyon, which is a… canyon… and it’s… red. Very pretty, short “hike” to the top and back, and we saw David Suzuki there but left him in peace and we would with any wildlife. I think he was in town for a book signing or something. And wow, I just read that DS is an Amherst College alum. I was accepted to Amherst but chose Reed instead. We could have talked about that. Damn.

The jaunt at Red Rock was a warmup for the big undertaking that I had, I must admit (and do admit, willingly), I had dreaded but had also promised Brian I would TRY: the climb up the Bear’s Hump. A 1.2-km hike with an elevation gain of 240 metres. Let me pause here to let my readers know that no matter how hale and hearty I might come across as being, and no matter how much I love walking, I am not a hiker. I am moreover scandalised at the very idea of anyone relishing torture like this. But I did it. It was tough, but over, for us, in a little less than 30 minutes- we’d heard “a 45-minute” hike. 18 switchbacks. But I did it, and so did Brian, and it was, I must say, worth the climb. The view from the top is nothing but amazing, especially on a clear, sunny day as we had for it. Me at the top, avec shit-eating grin and sweat:

…and one of the two of us that gives a better sense of how high we were:

What an experience- the whole trip. If you’re in Calgary, you owe it to yourself to occasionally forgo that day trip to Banff or Canmore and give Waterton a chance. It deserves more of an audience.

We just arrived home this afternoon after a stop for lunch and a little shop at the Farmers’ Market. Good to be home and to look forward to good espresso, but as “vacations” go, this was one of the best I’ve ever had.

Off to Waterton

For the first time since September 2000, Brian and I are off to Waterton Lakes National Park tomorrow, and will return home on Sunday.

This pic, compliments of pdphoto.org, shows the Prince of Wales Hotel (not where we’re staying- we’ll be at the Waterton Lakes Resort). Weather looks good, so barring my being eaten by a bear, I’ll catch y’all later!

“Sukiyaki” is a food court find, and Caffe Artigiano has a new home (?)

I went for a nice long walk yesterday while Brian was still in the throes of US Open overdosing. I found out that I could more or less plot my route and find the distance I walked here. Very cool! I walked more than 5 miles.

I ate lunch en route at the unremarkable food court at the Calgary Eaton Centre, which is mostly chain-y dreck (Subway, Quizno’s, Taco Bell, etc), but it has one of the few Calgary locations of Montreal-based Thai Express, which has pretty fair Thai, but the smiling face and the, well, pleading of the woman behind the counter at Sukiyaki (no website, but the same franchiser as Thai Express manages theirs- along with a lot of familiar food-court product in Canada, like Veggierama and Yogen Fruz) compelled me to take a look at what they had on offer there. I noticed that the customer who’d just been served had a heaping, and I mean heaping, bowl of something that looked completely delicious, so I decided to give this place a shot. I asked what the last customer had ordered. “Chicken noodle soup.” Sounds good, one chicken noodle soup, please. “Spicy?” Yes, please.

The smiling PBTC proceeded to take a big styro take-out bowl, the kinds with straight sides that hold a lot, put into it an ample helping of bean sprouts, rice noodles from a noodle cooker (the “baths” that some Asian places use to cook single orders of noodles in those metal conical baskets) , some thinly sliced raw onion, cilantro, and broccoli, and (since I asked for spicy) some pepper sauce; this all she doused with piping-hot broth of some origin, and she topped the whole beautiful mess with chopped, cooked chicken. It’s not pho; the noodles were thicker and cylindrical and pre-cooked, but it was reminiscent of pho. Here is the soup after a little stir-stir by me at my table:

It was excellent. Rich, flavourful broth, nice balance of starch and protein, a really great surprise from a place that’s in pretty much every food court in town.

I actually took this walk for the exercise, since my ability to walk last week was hampered by my hunkering down to get my SSHRC grant application done (mission accomplished!), but in addition I read this tantalizing piece from “Urban Mixer” about how Caffe Artigiano is opening here in October at “6th Avenue and 3rd Street SW.” I had to check this out and see if any signs were posted or anything like that… well, no such luck, but I’ve deduced that the location must be in the new, beautiful (BEAUTIFUL) Centrium Place building at that corner. This is a rendering from PCL (the construction company) but it looks, if anything, better in real life:

So in the midst of good coffee times, we look forward to even better coffee times.

Michael Tolliver Lives, and I’m sure he’d love Vogglio d’Pizza

About that pizza

Last things first: After prodding from various ‘net sources, including what I’ve imagined to be the young crowd at beyond car forums (here’s their dining thread) and then some ecstatic reviews on chowhound as well, I succumbed and tried a local pizza place called Vogglio d’Pizza, which means something like “you like-a da pizza.” This place is mere steps from home, just a half block, maybe less, from Oishii Village that I’ve been pimping on here. It looks like shit. Hand-painted sign (for now?) on the awning and the interior is no better, some sad looking dining chairs for waiting for your order.

Looks can be deceiving. So can my prejudicial notion that 20-something, piss-and-vinegar stuffed male car enthusiasts probably know nothing about good food. I picked up a “Mexicana” yesterday, chatted up the very pleasant owner, an immigrant from Colombia named Luis, and carried it the block+ home. The pizza was tremendous- it was a felicitous combination of the best order of nachos I’ve ever had (this was in Milwaukee at an East Side Mexican place whose name escapes me), tons of cheese, sliced jalapenos, shredded beef, crumbled corn chips, lettuce and tomato, refried beans artfully drizzled on top (you have to see it to understand what I mean) and sliced of fresh, ripe avocado. AND it was on an OUTSTANDING, crisp-chewy pizza crust like none I’ve had in Calgary. The whole experience was thrilling. And Luis, who trained in Naples, where my dad’s parents came from, is nothing is not creative. He has pizzas with fruit, atypical pizza veg like cauliflower, and, be still my heart, TUNA (not visible in the portion of the menu scanned below), one of my favourite pizza toppings but one very hard to find in NA. Not any more, of course. For me, I mean.

Vogglio is on 14 St SW just north of Phil’s, south of 15th Ave, between Shawarma King and a new porn shop (new owners I mean; I don’t keep up with porn shops enough to know the new name).

Michael Tolliver Lives

The reference to Michael Tolliver being alive and the fact that “lives” is capitalised in the post title should tell you that Michael Tolliver Lives is in fact a boook title. Does that name, Michael Tolliver, ring a bell? It does for me, since I was and remain a freak for Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series. One my ex-boyfriends, Timm Elmer, introduced me to them right after we met, January 1987, and I was hooked from the first few pages of book one. I was sad when the series “ended” with book six, Sure of You in 1989, in part because, naturally, it was over, and only two years after I’d discovered it. But I was also sad, like many fans, because the major loose end that doomed to linger was how long Michael Tolliver, an HIV-positive gay man and one of the books’ central characters, would survive. I assumed that Maupin had ended the series because he didn’t want to have to “kill off” Michael.

Fast forward to two days ago, and for some reason- maybe it had something to do with the conclusion of Harry Potter, I don’t know- I mentioned to Brian that Armistead Maupin should really think about writing a new book for the series (he’s written two other novels since then, one of which, Maybe the Moon, takes place obliquely in the same universe as Tales, but neither of which are in any way part of it). I said with having NO IDEA that this new book has been out since June. I went to e-reader to buy some books to load onto my Palm for my trip to Europe next month, and thought how great it would be if Tales was available in that format. It’s beyond great to be able to carry, as I do, dozens of books on a memory card. Well, no Tales, but lo and behold, there is Michael Tolliver Lives. I bought it, loaded it, and read it in two days, the way I seem to be devouring all of my fiction lately.

It’s a superb book, a really emotional read for me, and Maupin’s decision to make this a first-person account from Michael’s narrative perspective really works. It’s more… serious than Tales, I’d say, but the opportunity to meet many of those characters again, all having aged in real time and representing so many “real” experiences, was like a reunion with old friends. It’s sweet and beautiful.

The battle against NIMBY forces in Bankview

I’m an official neighbourhood activist now. There’s an application to tear down the houses across the street from ours and to change zoning to accommodate higher density (probably in the form of four-storey condos), and as soon as I saw the application posted, I knew that somebody would be knocking at my door. Our next-door neighbour is opposed, or concerned, on design principles (he wants houses that have entrances on the street, townhouse-style) but he heard me out when I said that I wanted HIGHER densities. Yes, HIGHER. No great dispute there; his concern is aesthetic, mine is “social,” and I can see a middle ground here. But then I got a letter from some purported rep for the “community association,” and it really pissed me off. So I called the city planning department and also wrote this letter:

I write to express my SUPPORT for the application named in the subject line to change zoning to allow for higher density residential development at and around 14A Street and 19 Avenue SW.

I am aware of some of the complaints about this application, but as a homeowner who lives directly across the street from the properties, I suggest that my support is important to state. The arguments of the community association are, in my view, misguided. The property is virtually on the “edge” of Bankview and so most of the dreaded new traffic will not occur in the community per se but will sweep out onto 17th Avenue and 14 Street. Parking will be no more of an issue than it is currently on 19th Avenue, since any development will provide off-street parking for residents, just as is now available for residents. 19th Avenue, on the portion to be redeveloped between the Nimmons House parking area and 14A street, is one of the least attractive sections of Bankview, with small, heavily “Eisenhowered” older homes in generally poor condition, and the development would comprise what is currently an extremely ugly pair of empty lots, on 14A and 19th (the latter directly across from my home, and a terrible eyesore that persons opposing this development do not have to witness every day as I do).

I support RM5, because as a sociologist, I understand and appreciate the importance of increasing inner-city densities as a means of curbing urban sprawl. With this property we have a golden opportunity to turn what it currently a mostly derelict corner and surrounding strip into a lively, populated block. We would lose a strip of ugly, absentee-landlorded houses. Because the proposed zoning is RM5, the new construction could contain housing that is more affordable than detached houses, semi-detached houses, or townhouses would offer. We have a new townhouse development at 19 Avenue and 17 Street where units are priced at nearly $900,000!

The community association speaks of maintaining “diversity” in Bankview, but in resisting RM5, it is only assuring that the rich, and only the rich, can purchase here. I don’t want this for my community. I want new, denser, more affordable housing. I want people; I want mixes of income; I want eyes on the street. I want more of the ingredients of a vibrant urban neighbourhood. This zoning change is part of how this might be accomplished.

In the letter I received from the community association’s representative, there was a reference to the notion that people move to Bankview because of its “character,” and the idea that opposing this zoning change would support this “character.” I contend that this is elitist nonsense. The majority, the vast majority, of Bankview residents are renters, and many are poor (by Calgary standards). They move to Bankview because of the availability of housing, especially rental housing. To insist that only single-family homes be built on sites like this, we destroy the nature of the community and impel its unfortunate transformation into a refuge for the wealthy.

This is a great opportunity. Change the zoning, please. After that, the community association can have its say with the developer about the quality of the new project, and I will be as insistent as anyone on those matters. But nothing positive will come out of refusing this application.

Thank you.

And this is the beautiful, characterful empty lot that the NIMBYs want to save:

Choked with weeds, a nice homeless campsite, makeshift parking lot, and dogshit receptacle. That’s “character” all right.