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Christopher Frost
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Joined: 24 October 2016
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Posted: 13 October 2018 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

These pictures make our downtown look nicer than it actually is, lol. That part of the city is in a transitional phase where they are trying to build up and revitalize parts of it like the East Village and the riverfront, but it still has a lot of scummy areas and pretty much any block has it's fair share of drug dealers, drunks and other undesirables. It's getting better but it's still got a long way to go to be what they want it to be.


Edited to add... Rebecca is right about the Calgary Sun, it's about one step away from being a tabloid. It's pretty biased, has trashy features like the "Sunshine Girl" and has way more advertising on each page than articles. The Calgary Herald is a much better newspaper.


Edited by Christopher Frost on 13 October 2018 at 8:43pm
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John Byrne
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Posted: 14 October 2018 at 6:18am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Calgary must really have taken a nose dive since I lived there!!
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Christopher Frost
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Posted: 14 October 2018 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Don't get me wrong, like any city it has it good parts and it bad ones. The thing is that the city has had a lot of growing pains over the past twenty years or so. In the mid 90's and early 2000's, the city boomed economically and that brought with it a host of problems. The population exploded to over a million people, crime increased,  the housing market couldn't keep up so rents and property values went crazy and the city began to spread out rapidly at a pace the infrastructure couldn't keep pace with.

 The economic  troubles of 2008 and the collapse of oil pricing about five years ago also took their toll as Calgary has always had a large interest in the oil industry. So today we have a situation where unemployment in Calgary continues to be well above the national average (8.2% in Calgary vs. 5.8% nationally according to the news the other night), many outlying communities lack access to local schooling (as the house went up faster than the amenities could keep up), lack of transit in those areas for the same reasons, roadways that can't adequately accommodate the excess volume (as they were designed decades ago for a much lower population), etc. Downtown became something of a ghost town for a while when many of the oil companies based there laid off huge numbers of staff which in turn caused a number of smaller business like stores and eateries to close their doors due to lower customer traffic. 

 On top of this, drug usage and related crime has been increasing significantly over the past decade. Murders are more common than they used to be, unthinkable crimes like home invasions and carjackings are taking place. The opoid crisis has hit the city particularly hard recently.

Now, it's not all doom and gloom. The economy is improving, though behind the national average (due to the over reliance on the oil industry), and the city still boasts a number of good points.

Bottom line is that we aren't Detroit but we're hardly the shining jewel of the prairies that the tourism folks would have you believe.
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Steve Coates
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Posted: 23 October 2018 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I'm doing some file clean-up and realized I hadn't post these photo comparisons.
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Phil Kreisel
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Posted: 24 October 2018 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

About the newspapers

Christopher Frost said:
"Rebecca is right about the Calgary Sun, it's about one step away from being a tabloid. It's pretty biased, has trashy features like the "Sunshine Girl" and has way more advertising on each page than articles. The Calgary Herald is a much better newspaper.:
------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------
I do agree with the comparisons between the two papers - however, the Sun no longer has the Sunshine Girl feature (it doesn't in Edmonton, anyway), but more importantly, due to a major economic shakeup, the Calgary Herald now owns the Calgary Sun, so the content is virtually the same.  This also goes for newspapers in Edmonton.  The Sun is still tabloid shaped, but it's not as trashy.
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Martinho Correia
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Posted: 05 November 2018 at 5:26am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Looks like the corner of 5th Ave and 5th St. 
When I was living in Florence I noticed that any building that was home to a noted artistic figure would have a plaque recognizing that fact. Calgary definitely needs one for that building.
Calgary still remains a very easy and safe city to live in. Culturally its a bit of a wasteland but a good place to raise a family. The city has this boom and bust cycle which and right now is a bit of a bust (although not as bad as the 1980s). The best part is easy access to the Rockies and some of the most beautiful places on the planet.


Edited by Martinho Correia on 05 November 2018 at 5:29am
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John Byrne
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Posted: 05 November 2018 at 5:37am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

5th and 5th. Yup. Dunno about a placard tho. It was the last place I lived in Calgary, but there were two other apartment buildings (one further along that same street) and, of course, my parents house waaay down on 89th Ave. and Elbow Drive.
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Martinho Correia
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Posted: 05 November 2018 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

89th and Elbow! Currently I am in Calgary and I am driving by there daily. 
Thats practically inner city these days. 

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John Byrne
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Posted: 05 November 2018 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Yeah! Last time I was there I was amazed at how much the city has spread south.
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Martinho Correia
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Posted: 08 November 2018 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Found myself at 5th and 5th today.....



Edited by Martinho Correia on 08 November 2018 at 9:13pm
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Trevor Smith
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Posted: 09 November 2018 at 6:15am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

"When I was living in Florence..."

**

Braggart :P
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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 November 2018 at 6:27am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Kind of amazing, isn’t it, that when I was living and working there, the technology that makes this website and the posting of these pictures possible was barely a gleam in anybody’s eye. Even the technology to take the pictures was virtually nonexistent.
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