Picture, if you will, your city’s local exhibition grounds, complete with mini-donuts, whack-a-mole and ring toss games, exuberant vehicle/boat auctions, petting zoos, and porta-potties. Now throw in horses, tractor pulls, booze, country music, more horses, hay, and even more booze, and there you have the Calgary Stampede.
My recent trip to (and thankfully back from) the Calgary Stampede took a page out of Hunter S. Thompson’s (one of my favourite authors) hallmark essay on the Kentucky Derby and what it represents.
I think the following quote from Thomspon’s essay sums up a large part of the environment that you will launch yourself into should you decide to mozey on down to the “CS”:
This was the first time I’d been to a Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. “That whole thing,” I said, “will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It’s a fantastic scene–thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We’ll have to spend some time out there, but it’s hard to move around, too many bodies.”
“Is it safe out there?” Will we ever come back?”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll just have to be careful not to step on anybody’s stomach and start a fight.”
I’m proud to be Canadian.
I’m also proud that we celebrate our heritage and culture in such ways.
What I’m not proud of, though, is the insanity, the filth, and the lunacy that surrounds the event. And I’m not the only one, it turns out. One Calgary resident, who I saw being interviewed by the national news, created a Facebook page named The Skankepede to reflect her views on what it has become. Another blogger, Martha, wonders what the hell happened.
Service, in this context, is challenged, at best. In fact, the best service I remember getting was at the Vancouver Airport (not this kind of service, mind you!)…Palomino Lounge (a Milestones gig). The fastest portable eggs benny slinging I’ve ever seen. Giddy-up.
I most likely will not be making the trek back to the Calgary Stampede as I think once you’ve seen it, you’ve pretty much seen all you need to see for quite some time.
darren
portapoties, gravel scraped knees, slivers…don’t ask.