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. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl