Opinion: Learning to love the sweet sounds of downtown life

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It’s an old downtown situation that happens every summer: the tree-lined streets aren’t necessarily very quiet, like most other neighborhoods. The downtown neighborhoods have movement, energy and sound. Sometimes the sound is just plain off-putting and an annoyance, like the heavy bass lines coming out of the Stampede area at two in the morning, very off-putting and rude to say the least. But the local sounds of buskers, park jazz, theater, patios, street markets, and festivals are often seen as a plus.

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That’s not the case for everyone, it seems. Community associations, Business Improvement Areas and even the town hall receive a substantial portion of the complaints each summer.

I live in Inglewood and would like to send a note to my neighbors to that effect.

First of all, I love our Inglewood neighborhood, I love living in the heart of a city, and I love so many of you. I chat with you on the street and in cafes and parks. We give each other that little smile that says, “Aren’t we lucky we made the decision to live here?” I recently met a couple on Calle 8, desperate to find a home here. I think they would be delighted to know that there was a Sunfest and Jazz Festival happening down the street that they would love to live on.

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Apparently, however, there are some people who are not so happy.

You and I made a very specific decision to live here. We made the decision to live in a neighborhood in the center of the city. We could have picked any number of beautiful suburbs, for God’s sake, but we didn’t. We didn’t even choose a classic suburb that was close to downtown.

We chose an inner-city neighborhood with inner-city issues like trains, industrial yeast, planes, traffic, parking hell, high-rise buildings, density, and the noisy buzz of a place where real work meets culture. vibrant of a city.

It’s not your quiet suburban landscape, and you and I know it. In fact, you and I chose it, and now you rebel against it. We chose it because we know those lovely people from the suburbs love to come here for the theater, the food, the music, the art, the artisan shopping, the markets, the beer gardens, the museums, the loud pedals and the view from real streets.

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We chose to live here to save ourselves the constant urge to come here. After all, when you take your loved one to New York, Paris or Toronto, do you take them to the suburbs or to the center of the city? Yes…

There are people in neighborhoods all over Calgary who would give anything to have a jazz festival in their neighborhood.

But you have chosen to see it as one more disturbing thing in your life that needs to stop. Along with the scourge of night markets, street festivals, car-free Sundays, and music in the parks, you see these things as a threat to your lifestyle.

Know that most of us do not.

We choose this lifestyle and life as a source of cultural richness and spirit. A jazz festival and street festivals are a blessing to us, not a curse. I am so sorry that your soul has been damaged by the lively vitality of this slum life. Maybe there are people like you who chose to live in a lovely lake community who now curse the noise of children playing in the water, but I’ll choose not to.

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It was not the city, the BIA, the Music Mile or the jazz festival that made decisions about what an inner city community should be. Inner cities around the world are becoming what they are supposed to be: centers of art, music and culture. They just naturally attract people who seek those things more intimately in their life.

So stop complaining and consider making an important decision:

I hope you choose door number 1. It’s already a great summer in the city center and you should be there.

Bob Chartier is a speaker, writer, craftsman, and musician who enjoys living in Inglewood.