Winnepeg or some notes on museum hating

A note on the pictures: the first is a picture of graffit on an interpretive sign to indicate the state of the city. The second was this great garden of polar bears that the interpretive sign had been destroyed so I don't know why the garden is there or what it means.

The verb I would use to describe Winnipeg is "edgy". Of all the Canadian places we've visited, it seems the most run-down, the most like a US city, in fact, with graffiti and homeless people and run down, closed up buildings. I was thinking as i was walking around this am that it's like Rogers park in Chicago (or at least like Rogers park in the 1980's when I lived there). It's got lots of 3 and 6 flats and commercial areas mixed with housing and like west Rogers park feels (felt?) a bit unsafe and more than a bit unsafe at night and east Rogers park felt more like a vibrant ethnic community, so too does Winnipeg (or at least the part we've seen). And, they have an area here called the Forks which is just like Navy Pier in Chicago (well, there's no ferris wheel) but it's got all the little shops (selling junk and cotton candy and t-shirts) and tons of little restaurants (selling generally crappy food to eat in a generally crappy, crowded, loud eating area) that tourists seem to love (do tourists really love these places?). I tried to love it and get into the whole crowded, looking for crap to buy scene, but it just wasn't working for me. (Now that I think of it, it also reminds me of a similar place in Boston--can't think of the name). Sometimes I think visiting cities is an exercise in repetition: they all offer the same stuff. it's like some master plan for city that all cities subscribe too. But small towns don't seem quite so similar, do they?
So what distinguishes cities? How did I end up in a philosophical debate about the nature of cities when I started out intending to discuss Winnipeg? Generally, I don't like cities, and Winnipeg is why. Cultural attractions is one potential difference in visiting different cities: in Chicago you can go to the Art or History or Science and Industry museums; in NY, the same; in San Fran you can go to golden Gate park or Ghiradelli Square (hello shopping for crap scene). Hmm. But, as much as I would like to get into visiting cultural attractions, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that I generally don't like them (and this is almost inclusive--I don't like the theater, I don't like ballet, I don't like concerts--with the exception of Bruce, and I don't like art.
This is embarrassing. I used to think that once I "grew up" I would like them. And for years I would force myself to walk around them nodding sagely at the art and the Indian stuff and the dinosaurs but I just never could appreciate enough the differences. All the Indian stuff looked the same (clay baskets, straw baskets, beaded stuff, hatchets, etc.); the art (with few exceptions) was similar; and the dinosaurs just seem kind of silly--what's the point at looking at recreated animated dinosaurs in a museum? Okay, I must sound like quite the "fun sucker". Geez, she can't even enjoy a fake dinosaur or two. But, I guess I'd just rather be somewhere else. So, either I haven't grown up yet, or even as a grown up this stuff will never interest me, or I haven't found the right museum, or some other yet to be discovered explanation.
Winnipeg will be the subject of my next post since I got a bit side tracked here.