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.