Showing posts with label binners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label binners. Show all posts
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Marco poses beside the poster for Rob's "Last Toast." The two were inseparable friends.[/caption]
Early Saturday morning the Go Green bottle depot hosted a memorial for Rockin' Rob, the long-time binner who passed away at the beginning of November. He was as well-liked as he was well-known. Word of the farewell get-together spread through the binning community for over a week after it was set for the first Saturday after welfare cheque day.
Marco poses beside the poster for Rob's "Last Toast." The two were inseparable friends.[/caption]Early Saturday morning the Go Green bottle depot hosted a memorial for Rockin' Rob, the long-time binner who passed away at the beginning of November. He was as well-liked as he was well-known. Word of the farewell get-together spread through the binning community for over a week after it was set for the first Saturday after welfare cheque day.
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A lot of street folk would snap these up![/caption]
Doctors have ethical restraints, that don't reign-in bloggers. I have no responsibility to tell the truth or make sense, or keep a civil tongue in my blog. I can suggest hare-brained schemes till the cows come home -- and by all means, let's bring them all home, now! So which of us -- blogger, or doctor, is suggesting putting a one-cent deposit on cigarette butts? Doctor Stuart H. Kreisman, MD Division of Endocrinology St. Paul's Hospital, that's who!
A lot of street folk would snap these up![/caption]Doctors have ethical restraints, that don't reign-in bloggers. I have no responsibility to tell the truth or make sense, or keep a civil tongue in my blog. I can suggest hare-brained schemes till the cows come home -- and by all means, let's bring them all home, now! So which of us -- blogger, or doctor, is suggesting putting a one-cent deposit on cigarette butts? Doctor Stuart H. Kreisman, MD Division of Endocrinology St. Paul's Hospital, that's who!
Look at this great idea for a simple bicycle trailer: It uses the plastic box from a shopping cart. I was going to do something like this around two years ago, and had cut the box off a cart, in preparation, but a binner named Steve beat me to it.
Steve beat a lot of binners to everything. He started binning some 20 years ago, before the City of Vancouver's blue box recycling system, and the current Encorp bottle depot return system. He's one of a handful of binners left from those oldest of days -- when dumpster-diving was the rule. Most of those real old-schoolers are taciturn, misanthropic trolls. Steve's a human being -- a nice one.
As a young man. he stuck it out for three years in the Royal Canadian Navy -- just long enough to know it wasn't for him, and says he was homeless for about 10 of his 20 years binning. Steve went through real chronic alcoholism, and come out the other side. He talks about needing to drink in the morning just so he could walk.
He's not homeless now, and is more-or-less a semi-retired binner, not to mention that he doesn't drink that much anymore. So his life has changed a lot for the better, but he's still the rock-solid character I've always known him to be. Click the images to enlarge them.
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Aaron didn't let the rain stop him from bringing a load of bottles into an otherwise empty depot, except for that fine-looking bike pannier on the table ... Click image to enlarge.[/caption]
Not Erin with an "E." That's how Aaron explained his name to me, when I first met him eight years ago. I think he was homeless then. These days he lives in the Downtown Eastside. He is a member of the Lil'Wat Nation, and was born and raised in the small Lil'Wat community of Mount Currie, 164 kilometres north-west of Vancouver and 40 kilometres north-west of Whistler along Highway 99.
Aaron is good-natured about the ribbing he takes for being, well, a really prodigious alcoholic. He told me his distinctive, Karl Malden-like nose -- a result, he admits matter-of-factly, of years of drugs and alcohol -- began to take on its present form when he was only 18-years old, which is about the time, he says, that he started collecting bottles in Vancouver.
Aaron didn't let the rain stop him from bringing a load of bottles into an otherwise empty depot, except for that fine-looking bike pannier on the table ... Click image to enlarge.[/caption]Not Erin with an "E." That's how Aaron explained his name to me, when I first met him eight years ago. I think he was homeless then. These days he lives in the Downtown Eastside. He is a member of the Lil'Wat Nation, and was born and raised in the small Lil'Wat community of Mount Currie, 164 kilometres north-west of Vancouver and 40 kilometres north-west of Whistler along Highway 99.
Aaron is good-natured about the ribbing he takes for being, well, a really prodigious alcoholic. He told me his distinctive, Karl Malden-like nose -- a result, he admits matter-of-factly, of years of drugs and alcohol -- began to take on its present form when he was only 18-years old, which is about the time, he says, that he started collecting bottles in Vancouver.
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