How real do you want it?
Jul. 13th, 2006 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreaminghope"Downtown and in the rich areas, people can be completely cut off. They only see the prettiness of this city," David, my British co-worker muses, "I like working here because it reminds me of what's really happening."
"Can I have a banana?" there's a skinny woman at the gate. She holds the gate with both arms, her body bowing and swaying away like a windsock with the tip caught. She's either on drugs she shouldn't be taking, or off drugs she should be on.
"Sure," David grabs a banana from an open box and takes it to the gate. She mumbles a "thanks" and stumbles away.
"When you bus through the downtown Eastside, you see our poorest, our most desperate citizens. You know, it, uh, keeps it real," David smirks at his word choice, "and here, working here, with the crack and the prostitutes and the bottle collectors... it is real."
How real do you want it?
I live and work on the edge of the bad neighbourhood of Vancouver. The most notorious corner in Canada, Main and Hastings, is less then 10 blocks from my house. On my way to work, I pass a homeless man sleeping in the park and a prostitute waiting on the corner for her next customer. A group of addicts shoot up in the doorway outside my workplace. The vacant lot on the corner is an improvised dump where pilfered garbage bags have been ripped open and emptied of any useful or slightly valuable contents.
At home, we keep our recycling box under the deck. We used to keep it on the deck, until the morning where I walked into my kitchen to see a stranger on my deck, checking the box for returnables. We leave all our returnables in the alley where a man with a liberated shopping cart picks them up – the East side recycling system at work.
To me, this sums up how un-romantic the real reality is, when you are here:
On top of a cupboard on my back deck, I had stacked a couple of old litter boxes. They were clean, in that Russ had sprayed them with the hose, but they hadn't been soaped or scrubbed. That's why they were still outside, actually. We had bought the cats a shiny new box, with a roof and a filter, and the old ones were just sitting waiting a need.
They were stolen.
"Can I have a banana?" there's a skinny woman at the gate. She holds the gate with both arms, her body bowing and swaying away like a windsock with the tip caught. She's either on drugs she shouldn't be taking, or off drugs she should be on.
"Sure," David grabs a banana from an open box and takes it to the gate. She mumbles a "thanks" and stumbles away.
"When you bus through the downtown Eastside, you see our poorest, our most desperate citizens. You know, it, uh, keeps it real," David smirks at his word choice, "and here, working here, with the crack and the prostitutes and the bottle collectors... it is real."
How real do you want it?
I live and work on the edge of the bad neighbourhood of Vancouver. The most notorious corner in Canada, Main and Hastings, is less then 10 blocks from my house. On my way to work, I pass a homeless man sleeping in the park and a prostitute waiting on the corner for her next customer. A group of addicts shoot up in the doorway outside my workplace. The vacant lot on the corner is an improvised dump where pilfered garbage bags have been ripped open and emptied of any useful or slightly valuable contents.
At home, we keep our recycling box under the deck. We used to keep it on the deck, until the morning where I walked into my kitchen to see a stranger on my deck, checking the box for returnables. We leave all our returnables in the alley where a man with a liberated shopping cart picks them up – the East side recycling system at work.
To me, this sums up how un-romantic the real reality is, when you are here:
On top of a cupboard on my back deck, I had stacked a couple of old litter boxes. They were clean, in that Russ had sprayed them with the hose, but they hadn't been soaped or scrubbed. That's why they were still outside, actually. We had bought the cats a shiny new box, with a roof and a filter, and the old ones were just sitting waiting a need.
They were stolen.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-15 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-16 12:32 am (UTC)