Keep Your Pimp Hand Strong

Banff is a tourist trap.
Every street is jam-packed with Olde Worlde stores selling junk with BANFF stamped/sewn/burned/urinated-by-moose on it. Australian accents scrape the air. Japanese pensioners trail along, guided by flags and whistles. American and Canadian grey-hairs amble the flagstones, occasionally drifting into a gentle spin.

I'm touring with a midget Indian pimp, a midget Indian (standard issue), a mild-mannered German (standard issue) and an unemployed investigative journalist with almost entirely red hair.

Our ride: pimped out.











The town is like Queenstown, but more established. The local megahotels, unable to hire locally, recruit Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, zer Englishers, Scots and young Canadians from rural areas with honking accents. They are paid $8 hourly instead of the $15-20 locals are getting elsewhere in staff-starved Alberta. It's a pleasant symbiosis: the town gets cheap labour, and the indentured servants get to shout and throw up in the streets without being arrested.