Pubdate: Wed, 06 Feb 2002
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Page: A20
Copyright: 2002, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Bill McGinn

A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Travelling Among The Hopeless Denizens Of Vancouver's Main And Hastings 
District Is A Sobering Experience.

I have been a little down lately. Perhaps it is because of the grey, rainy, 
winter skies, with barely a hint of sunshine lasting just long enough that 
by the time you put your shoes on to go out and investigate, the sun has 
already slipped back into its hiding place behind a sea of blocking clouds 
that would make any CFL offensive lineman envious.

Perhaps it is because I have barely worked more than a day or two in the 
past couple of months. It is the off-season for my work. Normally this 
would be a joyous occasion, but for some reason this year it has thrown my 
system out of whack.

I decided to try and lift my spirits. I put on my oldest, worst-looking 
decrepit rag clothes. Clothes which ought to have been thrown out long ago, 
for they aren't even suitable to wax a car, or clean up an oil spill. This 
is a special set of clothes, kept on hand just for this purpose.

I left my apartment in Vancouver's West End, which is next door to Stanley 
Park. I wandered past the overpriced, high-fashion shops of Robson Street 
that carry yesterday's fashions, because fashion, by its own definition can 
never be up-to-date. It is always trying to catch up to itself, like a dog 
chasing its own tail.

I continued on through the business district, which is surprisingly small 
for a large city like Vancouver. The men in suits and gold-rimmed 
spectacles, carrying their leather satchel passports to board rooms and 
cubicles, scurried past like escaping rats, all the while avoiding eye 
contact with me in my rag costume lest I accost them for spare change.

Once past the business district, I was just reaching the edge of where 
civilization has begun to crumble. This is Main and Hastings, an area about 
10 blocks long and four blocks wide.

Vancouver is famous for its beautiful panoramic mountain landscape that 
drops down into the sea. It is famous for friendly, beautiful people and 
safe streets. The people have a gentle calmness and sense of well-being 
that comes from living close to the sea and mountains.

Then there is Main and Hastings. It is full of over 10,000 hard-core heroin 
and cocaine needle addicts, who must shoot up at least every three hours or 
they get physically ill as they go into withdrawal. Withdrawal makes them 
get chills, shake uncontrollably, throw up, and do all kinds of nasty 
things. Many of them, although perhaps very nice people on good days, would 
literally sell their own mother for a fix on a bad day.

Here, there were many suspicious looking people who couldn't be trusted in 
broad daylight across the street. Men wore oversized, kangaroo-style jacket 
hoods, so I could barely see their faces, even in the daytime. At night 
they would probably scare the Grim Reaper away.

Even at 3 in the afternoon, people were openly sticking needles into their 
arms, without even glancing around to see who was looking. Throngs of 
people milled about in a mass stupor, the same people who are always there, 
24 hours a day. Although I was wearing my rags, the crowd knew I didn't fit 
in. My baseball cap barely concealed my short, neatly trimmed hair. My face 
was clean-shaven, my eyes not sunken into their sockets. For all they knew, 
I might even be a cop, or I could be a customer.

Individual dealers canvassed me, slightly blocking my path and attempting 
eye contact while whispering "up or down?" (cocaine or heroin). I satisfied 
them by acknowledging them street-style, with a barely perceptible shaking 
of the head (no) that could not have been seen 10 feet away. It implied 
that I was there for something illicit but that this was not it, for it is 
almost as though you cannot be in this area unless you are doing or 
preventing something illicit. This minor communication was my passport to 
this area, just as the businessmen wielded their satchels in their area.

I passed two blocks of over 100 dealers and entered the wasteland zone of 
$200-a-month rooming hotels. Here, virtually everyone is permanently 
intoxicated. People milled about on the streets, the majority perhaps not 
even knowing where they were. Jaywalkers in this area routinely step out in 
front of moving traffic, not because they want to be hit, but because they 
forget that the cars or they themselves even exist. This place smells 
terrible even in the rain.

A young woman about 18 years old, wearing obvious prostitute clothes, spoke 
on a pay phone amidst all the zombie anarchy. She didn't miss a beat and, 
without even interrupting her phone conversation, attempted to solicit me 
with a wink, a smile and a sudden upward twitch of her eyebrows. I smiled 
at her as I continued through the urban decay of Vancouver's ground zero.

I passed blocks of this urban nightmare from which many of the participants 
never wake up. About 300 of them every year are carted off unceremoniously 
for autopsies. No one should have to go through this in any civilized society.

I began to smile and feel good. I was smiling at my own life which was now 
back into proper perspective. I realized that the homeless junkies serve a 
valuable purpose in society. Their harsh lives show us what can happen if 
we don't take care of ourselves.

Bill McGinn lives in Vancouver.
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