Denny is in town so tonight, after I spend my day trying to sew my own shirt and make dinner, I'm gonna pick him up and we're gonna do Canadian things like eat poutine and drink beer like Kokanee, Shaftbury's, Granville Island or maybe some Labatt's. That is afterall how you celebrate Canadianess.
I spent yesterday lunching with friends and walking around downtown in the sun. It's back to rain again now though. Anyways, it was really strange to walk around Granville, Robson and the other main drags. Everything is different and renovated and, since I'm a person who gets around by recognizing landmarks - stores and such - I got a little disoriented. The jewelers is now London Drugs, Eatons is Sears, Winners/Futureshop is where my bank used to be, and holy cow Granville street is clean. Back in high school when I used to love wandering downtown, there used to be what we called Granville street family, a bunch of runaway teens and their dogs who lived on that street. There's no more kids in doorways on Granville and, in fact, very few homeless in the area. Just lots of newly renovated clothing stores leading to a string of new upscale bars and lounges. But on the news I learned that even though downtown is cleaned up a bit, Vancouver's dirty little secret, an area known as Main and Hastings (aka skid row aka the Downtown Eastside) has only gotten worse. Even since I can remember this corrider right next to Chinatown and Gastown is crammed with people openly dealing drugs and shooting heroine when they're not shooting each other in drug deals gone awry. It's a very very ugly mess and an area I even avoid driving through as drug addicts often stumble right into the middle of the street. While it's "nice" to have the city's ugliness contained to a couple square blocks, that also makes it easy for the government, politicians, and law enforcement to ignore. There was a little news piece by Mike McCardell on Global comparing the area to NYC. McCardell noted that NYC, his hometown, has cleaned up and crime has gone down dramatically while the Vancouver Eastside has spiraled out of control. I once heard that the small area has the highest per capita crime rate in North America - lots of drugs, homicide, and prostitution and very few people actually "living" there, i.e. who have an address.
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I used to work part-time at a Chinese theatre half a block west of Hastings and Main ("the washroom") while attending university. It must have been ten years ago. Ultimately, the theatre closed as people stopped coming. But it was never as bad as it looked. I would walk pass that area three times a week at night and no one ever bothered me in the three years or so that I worked there. There is an unwritten code - you don't bother the locals and they don't bother you - they have their own community and you have your's'. I remember one time a middle class chinese couple had a flat tire right outside our theatre and the look on their faces were priceless. It is interesting that it was the people from "skid row" that helped them with their tire.
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