Smithbilt Hats

Smithbilt Hats has been doing it since the late 1910s. Most of what they make are cowboy hats, fitting given this is cattle, farming and ranching country. If you’ve seen a “white hatter” during stampede and or at the airport greeting new arrivals to the city, that topper came from here. It’s their most iconic offering. There’s nothing cheap here but the products are well made and designed and with proper care are meant to last a long, long time so the price reflects that. The firm is well known in cowboy culture circles. Yeehaw!

They just moved into a most interesting building. Seen here it’s a converted feed mill complex with grain elevator that’s said to date back some hundred years or more (although there’s some conflicting info). Well, it’s old, that’s for certain. The renovation work was so thorough that the city sees it as a new build. The previous owner was Parrish & Heimbecker, or P&H, a grain firm that no doubt some of your are familiar with, account us visiting other old elevators that once belonged to them. The company is still in business. The structure sat unused for some years prior to Smithbilt moving in.

This factory/store sits in the middle of Inglewood, a community once downtrodden but going through a renaissance of sorts (some would say gentrification). Think organic veggies, craft beer and trendy eateries with trendy prices. There’s been lots of redevelopment in the area, but the community still has some of that old gritty charm. You author, as a young punk, often sold goods “acquired” by questionable means, at many “no questions asked” second hand and junk stores that used dot the area. Those are long gone.

Just up the street…
The Nash aka The National Hotel.

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found. Or sometimes we just ramble on about Lord knows what.

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Date of adventure: March, 2019.
Location: Calgary Inglewood.

Housed in an old feed mill.