When we exchanged maps, I was partnered with Amber and given a map of supposedly haunted places around campus and Old Strathcona, with a quick trip across the river to the Hotel Macdonald. THIS WAS REALLY GREAT, BY THE WAY. (And Amber, if you see this, I forgot to ask/tell you: are you making it public? Because you totally should.) Seriously, I love ghost walks. I keep wanting to do that one around here that they've got in the summer, but everyone calls me a loser and won't go. ANYWAYS.

What I mean to get at with this is that one of the themes of the map was the idea of places having a "dual history" -- the "official" one that everyone knows, the facts and figures and documented things, as well as the other one, what I want to call the colloquial history, the bits and pieces that aren't official or necessarily really there on record, but the stories and legends that everyone knows. I was thinking about it again today with the discussion of the Rossdale site and the fact that everyone just kept forgetting about -- or maybe in some cases, ignoring -- the history and importance of the place. Why? Going back to the dual history thing, I think sometimes that we forget the importance of the other histories, the off the record versions. And this is really rather terrible, when you think about it (aside: I need a synonym for think. Sorry.) The other versions of history are no lesser just because they're not endorsed by the public or the government or whoever the hell is in charge of writing horrible elementary school texts that pretend like racism doesn't exist...the people who decide what should be on record, in other words. The ghost stories I learned probably aren't on official record anywhere (the gruesome murder of a prostitute at the Strat, for instance? And her bloody figure? Probably not going on that plaque on the outside of the building.) I think Amber got at least a few of her stories from Barbara Smith's book Ghost Stories of Alberta, which is, yes, a collection of stories told by one person or a passed among a few over the years.

I think I'd like to see more things like this, really -- collections of the stuff that everybody knows, but isn't really recorded. Or maybe they exist and I just haven't found them? Either way, it'd be cool. And since we're on the topic -- do you kids know any such stories? I'd like to hear them.

PS. Excuse the lateness, dear hearts? I drafted this yesterday (really) and forgot to publish it, and I've just now gotten to a computer.

As someone who doesn't drive, I'm constantly at the mercy of ETS (and their perpetually late buses. Are they still late if they're never on time?) It's annoying, and it does rather prevent any kind of drifting. I went walking around campus the other day, trying to clear my head to write a paper, and it was really fucking weird, to be walking without any kind of direction or set destination. It's always like that. Edmonton is not a city meant for drifting, I don't think. Maybe if you want to drift between giant shopping complexes? Drifting at West Edmonton Mall? We're a driving city, for the most part, and it doesn't work. I move through Edmonton with a purpose, and that makes me slightly sad. The best way to know a city is to walk it, get lost in it, and it's difficult to do when you confine yourself -- on purpose or not -- to the same few areas.

I'd like to do more UrbEx, too. A friend of mine was showing me pictures the other day from when he'd broken into some abandoned building a few months ago -- I can't remember where -- and it was the best thing ever. Apparently there's an abandoned train tunnel around here you can get into fairly easily, and the walls are, naturally, covered in graffiti. I'd like to move through Edmonton like that more, on a mission to see New and Exciting Things.

My laptop battery is about to die, though, and it's Friday and we're going to go celebrate the start of break with beer, AND it's hard for me to be coherent right now, because something really lovely just happened. I might edit this later, if that's allowed? Are there rules about that? I'd like to expand when I can think clearly/rationally.

little houses on the prairie

So I'm trying to come up with a cool idea for a map that's not "here are the same ten places in the Garneau area that the rest of you are using too". The thing is, though, is that I go the same places as everyone else, even if my memories are different and all that jazz. I'm trying very hard not to be boring (hopefully I don't come off as trying too hard, y'know?), and honestly I wish I could like, hand over a list of 10 pubs or something and tell you to be on your merry way, because I think that could potentially be one of the greatest assignments of your undergraduate career. (And now I probably sound like the lush I'm not, excuse me.)

Anyways, in doing that I've gone back to thinking about places and why I like them or cannot stand them. I was having a conversation with someone earlier -- I don't know him all that well -- and we ended up talking for a while about the kind of places we'd like to live when we become Real Adults With Jobs and Lives. I have all these ideas about peace and solitude and 10 foot high hedges and rooms full of books and such, with an old oak forest out back or something. Not suffocating, but small. Protected. Everything he told me he wanted? Lots of space, or at least the illusion of it. And pine trees. Something about how growing up in this province can make you crave wide open spaces, I suppose. 

I didn't grow up there, but my people live in what is possibly the most miserable province in Canada for six months of the year. Possibly all year, come to think of it. Anyways, it's Newfoundland and it's stormy the whole fucking winter (cousins had two weeks of actual snow days last year), and every time I go back I'm kind of struck by all of these tiny little houses, especially when I go to the outports, sort of just there, on the rocks. Basically holding on for dear life. The trees are like it too. But the houses are all so compact, and homey, and that's why it appeals to me, I think.

Where was I going with this? Right. Open spaces. Trees. Mmk. I used to think I hated -- or at least, really disliked -- all the open space we've got going on up here. How you can drive for tens of miles sometimes and see about one tree in the middle of a field and that's it.  But I've realised over the past few months that it's not all that bad. I went skiing in Banff with my family over Christmas, and driving down there, for once in my life I didn't fall asleep as soon as we pulled out of the driveway. So I started looking at all of these fields going by, completely covered in snow, with these huge skies up above. And you know, they're actually kind of beautiful. I still feel completely exposed and rather uncomfortable around them. I couldn't live it. But it's really the same as it is back east: these trees, or these little houses, just completely exposed, clinging on. There's strength in that; it's kind of quiet, but it's lovely and it's there. (Alberta also has llama farms, and I am rather fond of that too.) I can appreciate that.

And that's what I'll keep in mind tomorrow and the next day and the day after that when I'm bitching yet again about how I can't wait to get the fuck out of here. If those trees can stick it out, I guess I can give it another go, right?

Rabbit Hole at the Walterdale PSA

Tomorrow night (Monday night), it's free for students. Just bring your ID. Show's at 8.

One of my best friends is stage managing it, she swears it's gouda. You should come.

"You think drag queens are "scary"? Well I think you're 14 and an idiot."

A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from a friend telling me that security had just kicked him out of a place...because he'd been making out with his boyfriend. Not in an OMG GROSS CHRIST JUST GO HOME AND DO IT ALREADY way, but as you do sometimes when you just can't help it. Implicit in all of this was that it probably wouldn't have happened had his partner been a girl. One summer night, too, saw me with the same friend and another guy we know, wandering around Donsdale on a drunken midnight Sobey's run (don't ask.) An Escalade started following us, for no apparent reason other than for its  bro-tastic occupants to scream "FUCKING FAGGOTS" at my friends. They followed us home, too, for the same purpose.

Neither of those friends are comfortable with holding their boyfriends' hands in public. I don't know. I'm a straight white girl, I can hardly pretend to really understand the gay experience in this town, no matter how many friends I've got who identify as some variant of LGBTQ or how many times I've been out with them. I know Edmonton's not perfect. The bros above are a pretty good example of some of the worst. My teenage brother prefaces hugging his dude friends with "no homo" and was the bad kind of confused when he saw I was reading a book about drag queens (I really hope this is all a phase.) But sometimes it's hard to tell whether these are just examples of personal prejudice or indicative of a larger problem. I think both. You can't have one without the other.

On the other hand, remember back in the fall when the Westboro Church people said they were planning on coming to protest the staging of The Laramie Project? I think the counter-protest was organised in something like three days, and yet when I went, there were a few hundred people there, cheerfully carrying signs (my own made use of the Sassy Gay Friend videos on youtube) and having a total fucking blast. Linda Duncan spoke, and so did Fred Phelps' estranged son. In the end, the Westboro crazies didn't show (apparently they hardly ever do), but it didn't really matter. The solidarity that night was the best thing -- it didn't matter if you were gay or straight or polka-dotted, you just wanted to support the cause, and your friends or your girlfriends or boyfriends or parents.

Again, it's not perfect. I've seen it be pretty awful, actually. But getting to be part of something like that is proof, I guess, of the fact that not everything sucks.

We used waste hours just walking around.

In the past few years -- since I started university, I guess -- I've come to realise a few things. That things aren't always black and white -- or conversely, that they can be. That beer really is delicious and should be consumed as often as possible. That I was really f-ing sheltered growing up, and that the suburbs are both good and bad. That the world is really very large, and my life is actually pretty small and inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things. And, yesterday, that bad things really do happen to good people. I could go on, but those are the most important.

I grew up -- and still live -- in one of those little neighbourhoods on the edge of the city, where the houses were all built according to the same five plans and almost everyone is white (seriously, and that holds true even now) and middle/upper-middle class and has some sort of smiling dog. Everyone's parents are still together, and half your friends have a cottage somewhere -- if you don't, you've at least got an RV or a boat or something. Vacations to Disney and every extracurricular you can imagine and the assumption that you'll go to university and get a decent degree (if you're a girl, a MRS degree should also be in the plan.) My childhood was spent riding my bike around quiet streets with my brother and the two neighbour kids who were remotely our age. 25 cent slurpies at Red Rooster and babysitting. There was nothing bad about any of it, unless you count scraped knees. Orderly and idyllic.

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that is that yes, I was one of the really sheltered ones. My entire worldview was my neighbourhood, my school, and any place my parents thought might be safe enough for more than five minutes. I had almost no concept of much outside of any of this until high school, when -- like half of you, I guess -- the world started to be too small. Branching out was necessary, spread your wings, whatever the eff else. And that was the same point, too, when I started to realise exactly how large the world was. My normal suburban lifestyle was really just like its houses, probably only going to go a few ways. Odd feeling, coming to that conclusion. (I don't mean to really knock the suburbs, by the way. It's good to grow up that safe. But when you manage to do something like get lost taking the LRT...well, there's probably a problem.)

That's why the Arcade Fire video was my favourite "map", I suppose. Because it's a visual representation of my feelings about the suburbs and growing up in them and how it might make you crazy some days and exactly how small and ordered my life really is. When it zooms out (which we all do, playing around on Google Earth, everything getting further and further), and everything you know gets smaller and less significant...it makes you think, I guess. (And there. An explanation other than just "I love Arcade Fire.")

"Edmonton" -- The Rural Alberta Advantage

Posting this was probably going to be inevitable (I love these guys so much), so I figured I might as well do it sooner rather than later. Thus: a song about Edmonton that -- if you hate this place as much as I do -- might warm the cockles of your heart for it at least a little bit.

From a session at Blackbyrd in 2009:

(In all honesty, I like this one better, but how could I not post the Blackbyrd version on an Edmonton blog? Exactly. I couldn't.)

Anyways, references to/whole songs about Alberta (and how people who live here/aren't here feel about it) were a pretty big aspect of their first record, Hometowns, and they do it in a way that actually makes this province sound kind of interesting. In my last post I mentioned how I sometimes get nostalgic for Edmonton even though I haven't left yet (and I know that still doesn't make much sense.) These guys usually manage to do it. And I'm just throwing it out there since they're coming back soon, but that drummer is insane and their live show is great. So. I hope somebody likes this and this post wasn't in vain.

(...they are, of course, based in Toronto.)