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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 27 June 2023

Hits: 621

Coffee, before work at the fishbowl on Ward & Baker.

Sit inside, only E***** is there, the Big City Blonde, holding court with a table of older blonde ladies ranging from 30 to 50 odd, presumably she's selling her line of skincare and beauty products. She catches my eye, that glance of shared recognition and dismissal.

She's always a show but I'm not always up for it, move outside.

Reading my book, Hegel's "The Philosophy of History", I'm only just starting to get into it. I'm about halfway through.

Inside the café there's a beautiful girl looking out the window. She doesn't see me, or - more probably, isn't paying attention, slender with dark Semitic features, dark curly haired pulled up behind her head, gazing across the street with a melancholy, thoughtful air. She's looking at Shoe-La-La, no, she's looking into the beyond in that way that people do when they're distracted. She'd make a great painting - through the window reflecting the old apartments on Baker, the bus stop, blue sky and white clouds, the veils of reflections filling in her body, I surreptitiously snap a photo with my phone, how to paint this?

I'm interrupted from my own reveries by H*****, the fashionably dressed dog walker. We chat, about my book, about Yoga & Vedic Masters', he's studied in India, 5 years, about ...

Classical fluffy woo-Nelson conversations, but nothing out of the ordinary. It takes a turn, though, when he talks about the UFO's he's seen on Baker, a couple of years ago, why, even, just again last night - right there, over Pulpit rock, there were, then they opened a portal and just disappeared, our alien overlords, and it wasn't in the paper and why isn't anyone talking about this...

This is my cue, I've had my coffee, my refill, time to get to work...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 22 June 2023

Hits: 784

Seasonal homelessness in Nelson reaches new heights.

Always the new faces - 6 eyes, a "girl" (??) who was in the restaurant - wearing 2 pairs of sunglasses, one upon the other, dressed in layers of rainbow burlap, a spirit hoody on her head. Sat on the patio a couple of hours, then couldn't pay her bill, debit declined, she left some "ID" behind - expired, address in Queen's Bay (as well probably expired). JR took it in stride, I saw her a few days later walking down Baker, leading her best addled life. 

Then there's the Pigeon Master - whos' been around as long as I remember, usually sat in the runoff or overflow behind the public toilet. He takes the free bread from the Salvation Army and uses it to feed the pigeons. Maybe in his 50's, hard to tell, the street ages people, he rarely talks to anyone, just a cup out, head down, passed out. In the evening he moves locations, finds the sheltered doorways to set up camp, you can see the fluids running down the street from wherever he perches, he's no longer fussed to find amenities or an alley, just attends nature wherever he's sat. The city crews find his perches and hose them down every morning. They must budget an hour a day just for him.

And there's a new one - only been seeing him around town this past year or so, tall, young, maybe 6'2", mid 20's, close cropped hair with a model's startling good looks, dressed always well - for a homeless person, and roaming the streets from sunup to sundown, talking to himself, staring into the distance, laughing or grimacing, he's working his way through a blotter of acid, or schizophrenic, locked in his head, the images and people without of no consequence, it's what's going on in his head, daily, skipping, tripping, or finding him passed out on a bench in the rec center - a shame, young, this good looking, relatively well kept, and yet gone, gone, gone...

There was Panda - spirit hoody, junkie, forever a fixture but he's disappeared, moved on - perhaps to Kelowna but quite possibly OD'd - street people don't get obituaries.

Then there's the camp on Government, and down by the railway. This city tolerates the homeless, but they push it to extremes. The encampment on government, it's on the way out of town, set in some big boulders and trees, beneath the highway, an idyllic location for a campsite, not too far from downtown, but no sooner do they set up camp then you see the shopping carts and rubbish begin to pile up, in no time at all it's a dump of abandoned tents, televisions, stereos, old tires and bikes, scattered, strewn, the city once installed a porta-loo but it was soon tipped over, so the city cleans them up, but the area is soon squatted again...

As is the railway, a tent hidden in a thicket soon festooned with toilet paper and all manner of garbage, another graveyard of shopping carts, soiled sleeping bags, it disappears, then - as suddenly - reappears as if it'd never been removed.

Now, these are problems, no trifles, and not easy to deal with but that's another post...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 10 June 2023

Hits: 801

Ken, back at the restaurant full time - his town job, the dive pub run by the Village Idiot and his wife, didn't work out. 

I'd worked there a couple of years ago. They were without a doubt the Village Idiots. When someone looks like they're the village idiot, talks like the village idiot, acts like the village idiot and then shows you they're the village idiots it's a pretty safe guess to say they're the village idiots.

They've a bit of a reputation, but in a town where no one wants to speak ill of anybody else you have to read between the lines. They'd lobbied to get the the spouses of Selkirk College students work permits - ostensibly so they could have a lower paid employee pool. Poor Ken was a victim of that, the "Browning" of the kitchen, a certain nationality working minimum wage jobs at 7-11 and Pizza Hut (and driving Cadillacs and Mercedes...) had taken over and didn't want Ken there anymore.

This is funny. They said that Ken is too slow.

And - you know, he is slow - but - go into any of the minimum wage jobs they've taken over and find one working passably hard - I dare you - double dare you. The 7-11, you'll find one person ahead of you in line, an 7-11 employee just off shift, and you'll wait 10 minutes for service.

Anyways, the Village Idiots gave him they're condolences and let him go. "Wasn't their problem..." the owners said. For a locally focused business they have surprisingly few locals working for them. 

They're the kind of people that complain that nobody wants to work, when in fact nobody wanted to work for them, at the wages they pay and the hours and conditions they offered...they took the Covid relief from the government and used it to build a 3 story patio that if either the owner or her husband had to run up and down it 3 times they'd be dead of a heart attack.

They have political ambitions, and while easy to refute - the sort of Alberta Conservatives that believe that speaking louder than their opponent wins the argument - they're a pretty toxic bunch. 

Back to Ken. 

As we've a whole new contingent of under-aged child staff this year, pretty 14 year old girls and such, certain of my topics about Ken will have to remain off limits.

It kills me. 

So I've renamed him "Mister Tickles" and introduced him to the young girls. 

They're young but they're not stupid and they get the implicit caution, and I'm free to elaborate with the aid of certain therapy puppets I've acquired...skits performed for the benefit of those staff sitting at the bar to eat their staff meal:

"Mister Tickles You can untie me now...noooo, Mister Tickles I have to go home...Mister Tickles that hurts...." 

While on that bent I've taken the liberty of elaborating upon Sean: "I thought I heard Curtis still screaming in your basement..." and Ankush- a likeable & harmless (albeit Useless) kitchen Helper hired under the same "Selkirk College" umbrella, chosen specifically because the owner liked the fact that he was taking women's studies "The Butcher of Bengal...He took women's studies!!! WOMEN'S STUDIES!!!"...

And suggesting to Ken that we take the 2 kitchen helpers to DQ on a double date, Ken's denials that he ever goes to DQ somehow implausible given his appearance, his laughing "Shhhhh's" aren't fooling me...Ken's arguments they're "too young" is irrelevant, they're saved from him not by his better judgement but by his own bumbling incompetence, the inept aspiring pedophile...

Details

Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: People

Published: 10 June 2023

Hits: 754

Talking to JR, explaining to him that the homeless, they've more or less accepted me as one of them. I'm on the same schedule, up too early in the morning, scrounging for coffee, I'm the better dressed homeless guy with money for coffee and cigarettes and then disappears with places to go...

...but the café owners, they know, I'm fooling no one, and JR is joking as we pass a few of them on the street and they greet me and after they pass he begins the low chant..."One of Us...one of us..." and I'm laughing, my fate appears inescapable...