Saturday Morning, 9:45, after all the garage sales fit to peruse I head home up 14th Street. Already, outside the liquor store at the bottom of the hill there's a line up of the usual suspects...
The 14 Street Panhandlers, grown now to practically a community that lives off the medians and by wandering desperately sober into traffic, they're at every intersection, 17th Ave, 12th Ave, 11th Ave, Kensington Road, the roadworks have backed up traffic and increased their captive audience by twofold, triple even...
...and there's a few I recognize from outside the Ship, the locals, there's a few of the early morning bottle pickers who've already filled their bags and redeemed them for cash, they're all outside the liquor store at the bottom of the hill in an orderly line, of sorts, chatting about the night before, waiting for it to open...
The 10 O'Clock Alcoholics.
Up the hill, past my apartment to the liquor store by my place, it's 10:00 AM now, surely, no line but the parking lot is full. I've a bit of a taste, time for a nap before work, inside, the liquor store filled with the more marginally acceptable alcoholics, the ones with cars and a place to live and party, those still carrying on from the night before, whores and tarts still up looking to take the edge off of too many lines, bleary eyed and checking you out, no shit, who's in a liquor store at 10 AM on a Saturday morning?, but we're all in this together...