How real do you want it?

[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.

Comments

[bonanzajellybee.livejournal.com]

Vancouver amazes me. There is a quality to this city that I have yet to experience anywhere else. A sense of something blistering just under the surface. An intangible, dream-like quality to it. Perhaps a person can only feel this way about a place one calls home.

I would like to share with you this dream a friend of mine had about Vancouver. Quite powerful. When I find the letter I'll send it your way.

[meoka2368.livejournal.com]

I am, for now, in the same kind of thing.
I live just off of Commercial Drive, and right next to Hastings. I work the graveyard shift at a 24 hour gas station that is closest to the downtown east side.
We deal with people, and what remains of people after years of drug use, all night long.

What I find odd, though, is that the people in this city that cause the most problems aren't those who have no money, but rather, those that have too much. I have had more issues with upper middle class people than anyone else. They, in general, think they are better than everyone else, and are above the laws and rules.

[firerainchild.livejournal.com]

so much you can see if you only look. But so many choose not too.

[zabbiness.livejournal.com]

i read bananas are the best food so if you can give them away...wonderful!!

[storm-in-az.livejournal.com]

I could never handle living in a big city--mostly for those reasons. But seriously, someone stealing used, unclean litter boxes? That's pretty desperate. EW