Just a few minutes ago two burly women came into the McDonald's at Broadway, and Granville. I noted they looked like Vancouver School Board union members -- whatever that means -- and went back to pondering why nearly a third of all my blog views are down to one inconsequential post. Before the two women departed the restaurant, they paused by the door, I saw they each had a big plastic carrier bag full of something, and they were both looking around, as if trying to find something. And on the back of their identical blue jackets was emblazoned "Lookout Outreach." They were volunteers with the Lookout centre located in the Downtown Eastside. They had come across False Creek, and into Fairview, and into the McDonalds to find some homeless people to help -- except, they couldn't find them.
I watched them both look at my bike and trailer, locked up on the street, with a tastefully small bag of bottles bungeed on the trailer. They talked amongst themselves, as they scanned the restaurant. They both looked straight at, and through me, and then left the McDonald's. I watched them head down the back alley.
In fact, there were two homeless individuals in McDonalds. There was yours truly, and there was a fellow named Ivan, sitting right behind them. Ivan's bike -- with bags of bottles hanging off the handlebars -- was leaning against the alley side of the restaurant.
Like tracking animals by their scat. The two outreach volunteers saw the evidence of binning as a sure sign of the homeless people they were hunting (be vewy, vewy quiet!). Apparently, we don't all look the same as our Downtown Eastside counterparts.
It's Vancouver's annual Homeless Action Week, this week, which helps explains why the Outlook Outreach people were over on this side of the pond, and why the Downtown Eastside's Union Gospel Mission was over here the other night, and gave my friend Florida Pete a pumpkin pie -- I got a slice. It was good. Thanks Pete. I think it would be a cool idea, during HAW, if all the homeless across Vancouver chose to wear a common emblem for a week. If some of us are invisible, let Vancouver see all of us for a change.
I watched them both look at my bike and trailer, locked up on the street, with a tastefully small bag of bottles bungeed on the trailer. They talked amongst themselves, as they scanned the restaurant. They both looked straight at, and through me, and then left the McDonald's. I watched them head down the back alley.
In fact, there were two homeless individuals in McDonalds. There was yours truly, and there was a fellow named Ivan, sitting right behind them. Ivan's bike -- with bags of bottles hanging off the handlebars -- was leaning against the alley side of the restaurant.
Like tracking animals by their scat. The two outreach volunteers saw the evidence of binning as a sure sign of the homeless people they were hunting (be vewy, vewy quiet!). Apparently, we don't all look the same as our Downtown Eastside counterparts.
It's Vancouver's annual Homeless Action Week, this week, which helps explains why the Outlook Outreach people were over on this side of the pond, and why the Downtown Eastside's Union Gospel Mission was over here the other night, and gave my friend Florida Pete a pumpkin pie -- I got a slice. It was good. Thanks Pete. I think it would be a cool idea, during HAW, if all the homeless across Vancouver chose to wear a common emblem for a week. If some of us are invisible, let Vancouver see all of us for a change.
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I'll make you all up name tags for next year