Lessons learned on the #10

On the #10 Hastings-Downtown bus through the heart of the infamous Downtown Eastside* of Vancouver on Friday, a couple of under-housed** people are chatting eagerly about that night's hockey game. They don't care about our local team and their playoff chances; they care that this was a home game, so there would be crowds downtown. Crowds downtown mean bottles and cans discarded on the streets. One of them speculates that he might make $90 that night in returns.

An elderly woman gets on the bus and sits down between them. She has come out from her assisted living facility home in Surrey for an appointment. She'd promised a fellow resident ("Poor man. He's pretty much housebound, and no one visits him.") that she'd buy him some cheap cigarettes while she was downtown.

"Cigarettes are his only comfort. No friends; no family; nothing. So sad, really."

The two DTES residents advised her on where to find the cheap cigarettes:

"OK, you'll get off at the next bus stop and then just talk to people back along Hastings here to see who has cigarettes. People will have packs for $5 each."

"But if you talk to the Chinese people, they'll have 'em for $4. The Chinese people sell the packs for $4 each, and everyone else buys from them and then will sell the same pack to you for $5."

As we pull up to a red light, he points out the window at a middle-aged Chinese woman who seems to be just strolling past the pawn shop: "That woman right there, in the blue hat. Talk to her."

"Do you think I can catch her?" the elderly woman leans forward, trying to figure out where the next bus stop is.

"She'll just walk back and forth on that block. You'll catch her, no problem."

"She just carries them in her purse?"

"Yeah. She'll have $4 cigarettes."

I didn't know that about Vancouver.

* AKA, the DTES.

** Possibly homeless, but more likely residents of some of the many single room occupancy hotels.