Luggage tags

It happened suddenly and unexpectedly. One day everybody in our city had started calling it by a new nickname: YYC. Ten years ago nobody knew Calgary’s airport code except frequent flyers. Nobody knew we were YYC unless they happened to look at a luggage tag then Twitter changed everything.

I was sceptical at first. Twitter seemed like it was just a place to post what you were eating/drinking (Irish breakfast tea) and what music you were listening to (Simon & Garfunkel). There wasn’t a whole lot else going on.

Then Twitter grew up. The city got a Twitter famous mayor. When our buses were late or failed to appear we knew who to Tweet at. We got Crackmacs a Twitter account devoted to observations from a downtown apartment overlooking a notorious convenience store.

We also knew what hashtag to use (before we knew hashtags were even a thing): #yyc. That was our city, who we are, who we were to become. It would be fitting if the city were to erect a YYC statue spelling out loud and clear.

We were a community of people all in one place, and we had a new name for ourselves.