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Teetering
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
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My phone is on it's last legs - and the camera as well. So apologies for the quality of the pictures.
If you fall over - you pass out - and the high is wasted.
1 down, 2 to go.
Shooting up on West Pender. Open heroin use here has about as much stigma as smoking a joint in the Kootenays.
Moving all of your worldly possessions in a couple of garbage bags on to a new encampment.
And the debris. It's doubtful you could find a 10 yard radius within a mile of East Hastings that wasn't contaminated with something similar.
The entire reddit thread of "Took Too Much" https://www.reddit.com/r/tooktoomuch/ could be filmed here in a day.
People watching Gastown & Hastings
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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Quite possibly the best city ever for this. See past the precarious teeterers - on every block, head down, trying to fight the slumber - try and see past the addicts and the homeless and there's a genuinely interesting contingent of people. Not that they aren't - only - well, that's another post.
The addicts, they all remind me of that short - "The Burden of Other People's Thoughts" - a little masterpiece. And you can see how he came about his inspiration.
But the rest of them - 70 year old man, small, grey hair, adorned with bright gold chains and a huge gold skull pendant. WTF.
A woman stops to say she knows me -
"You were in my AA Meetings".
Not yet, not yet
"Well, then, we must have been drinking buddies..."
And proceeds upon her way.
And others - up early, someone out for a walk in full BDSM regalia, top to toe, including the BDSM mask. On his way home from a sex party? Escaped from a dungeon? The fashionably beautiful - that would fit in anywhere, including Calgary. The visibly trans and misgendered, the odd couples in every combination of age & youth, beauty and decrepitude, that you can imagine. The appalling facial tattoos. And I could go on.
Suffice it to say I'm enjoying the city very much.
And when I'm not watching the people there's always the bookstores - and antique shops - and period architecture - and museums.
All of which other big cities have - Toronto springs to mind - but - unlike Toronto - the range of personalities, fashion, and the out-and-out in your face addiction that plagues the city, makes it all a very interesting place to be. I shouldn't half mind to live here for a year or two.
Hostel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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And, I'm seldom here - to sleep, otherwise - like in Toronto - I'm roaming the streets, exploring.
When I am here there's a few things. The guy that's forever on his computer - doing what? I don't think he's left the building in 3 days. There are the people that share my room - 1 who seems to never go out, the other leaves early and is back around 4:00.
This sharing a room with men who's names I don't know, I find it despairing. It would be despairing if I did know there names - I'm merely a private person, and hate the commonality of shared sleeping or living arrangements.
Nonetheless, in the common area, reading my book, trying to ignore the euro-trash that accumulates in such places, the little Napoleon in the kitchen (short- French - with attitude to spare - although his cooking smells amazing), the perpetually drunk Brits and Aussies and various other slightly-more-respectable nationalities, sitting next to a couple of guys, they begin chatting to me. About their day, they'd woke up, dropped some acid, took some shrooms, headed on down to Stanley Park, were impressed by some drop-dead goddess of a woman that picked up the shit after her dog. For some reason it amused them greatly, they kept coming back to it, probably you had to be there. At the moment they were cracking open their umpteenth beer, rolling a joint on the table, telling me about their lives, then coming back to the woman who was beautiful - just gorgeous, and they watched her pick up her dog's shit - "just like that" - don't you know, a little gesture - I break for a cigarette. Outside, been drinking away with them, don't want to get too carried away or even try to keep up - these guys, clearly the pillars of their communities - really, I attract them. And I meet Tom, from Calgary, he's here - well, he doesn't say, works in geology in Calgary. And we're chatting and he's telling me he was doing Cocaine earlier and I'm incredulous - here? There's probably no real Cocaine for a few miles - what kind of shit was he snorting - he's not chewing his cheeks or grinding - none of the tells - and - before you know it he's telling me he's not feeling so well and does a nosedive into the pavement. Hits it hard, right on his head, before I can react or catch him. I sit him up and call 911.
8 minutes on hold.
8 fucking minutes on hold.
"We're experiencing higher than average call volumes..."
I hang up.
He's conscious - tells me he's feeling better, take him into a bar. Buy some nachos - can't leave him like this - don't want him just dying, out of the blue, and so sit with him, listen to the band, watch the people.
He's feeling fine, fine, and then - again - not so much, and he's more fortunate than I, he calls 911, gets through, the police are there in a minute, and he gets in with them to go to the hospital.
Never a dull moment.
Bill Bryson - In A Sunburned Country
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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I enjoyed this. Not, perhaps, the "Travel Classic" the reviews made it out to be - but it's thorough, well researched, introduces you to a variety of places, people & histories that otherwise I might have had no interest in - so in this it succeeds.
And Australia's treatment of the Aboriginals rather mirrors our own failings with the Native Canadians.
Easy reading, thick book, lots to think about - only criticism that I wasn't enormously sympathetic to the authors' point of view - but that is a matter of our difference in personalities, not necessarily a flaw on his behalf. Personally, I would have liked a little more information on the Geology of it all...
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