I was having a pint at the Palomino yesterday when one of my favourite covers came over the speakers. I’ve gotten to the point where I normally ignore the music in the bar, and I was disconcerted that it only took one good song to make me think about the bar scene in Calgary.
I was living in Red Deer when I turned 18, and, at the time, everyone I knew was fairly fanatical that “their” bar was the best. If you were a drunk, you went to Albert’s and your second pint was 25 cents; if you called yourself a goth, you had metal Wednesdays at the catwalk; if you wanted to two-step with a ten-pound belt-buckle, you went to Billy Bob’s; and if you hated cold beer and good decisions, you went to Branley’s. Sure, I’ve got a few bars I love in Calgary, but I doubt any would elicit a fistfight over which one is the best.
Business suits jive next to rockabilly hillbillies in the Palomino; the ’90s metalheads, punk-rockers, and pool-league hustlers all call Dickens home; and don’t even get me started on the University bars. And, certainly, fanaticism is worth sacrificing for the kind of diversity that the Calgary bar scene offers.
After the 2013 flood, there was this girl who I met during the volunteer cleanup in Mission. Despite the weather, she was dressed in all black and was wearing a pair of Dr. Marten’s that she had glued metal spikes to. She invited me out to the Distillery for a local punk show. I gave her a squinted “are you sure” kind of look (I was having a particularly Woody Guthrie esque week, so I was dressed in my best This-Machine-Kills-Fascist-garb).
Sorry Woody
In return she shrugged her shoulders as if to say whatever. I remember thinking that this was Calgary. The kind of place that doesn’t have to wear the hat to be a cowboy. The kind of place that thinks it’s assumed you’d want to share a beer with a friend—even if it is a cowboy drinking a Caucasian in lieu of a sarsaparilla.
*feature image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/glebd/