Showing posts with label downtown eastside. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downtown eastside. Show all posts
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A pebble-sized bit of drugs in a fast food restaurant's bathroom.[/caption]
I found the tiny package pictured above on the floor of a public washroom in Fairview. I should've put a coin down for reference or double-checked the focus but I was in rush to give it back to the guy who'd just left the bathroom -- a homeless heroin addict -- I was correct in guessing he'd dropped it.
Many people wouldn't have noticed it -- about half the diameter of a cigarette butt -- a ridiculously tiny quarter-gram of heroin which I'm told costs $35 and has the equally ridiculous "undercover" name of "pants."
A pebble-sized bit of drugs in a fast food restaurant's bathroom.[/caption]I found the tiny package pictured above on the floor of a public washroom in Fairview. I should've put a coin down for reference or double-checked the focus but I was in rush to give it back to the guy who'd just left the bathroom -- a homeless heroin addict -- I was correct in guessing he'd dropped it.
Many people wouldn't have noticed it -- about half the diameter of a cigarette butt -- a ridiculously tiny quarter-gram of heroin which I'm told costs $35 and has the equally ridiculous "undercover" name of "pants."
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Regional Recycling is on Evans at the east end and north side of Terminal -- Google Maps.[/caption]
The Regional Recycling Vancouver bottle depot is now open at 7 a.m. every day. The Encorp Return-It depot still hasn't changed the hours on their Web site but word of the change is spreading among their customers. It was confirmed to me by an email from Regional Vancouver's manager Arlene Watson.
Regional's decision to begin opening one hour earlier comes ahead of another bottle depot's move into the area. United We Can is scheduled to move from the Downtown Eastside to Industrial Avenue any day now.
The United We Can bottle depot at 39 East Hastings Street is apparently still at 39 East Hastings Street even though yesterday ( January 15) was widely reported as the date it was to move to its new location on 455 Industrial Avenue.
Regional Recycling is on Evans at the east end and north side of Terminal -- Google Maps.[/caption]The Regional Recycling Vancouver bottle depot is now open at 7 a.m. every day. The Encorp Return-It depot still hasn't changed the hours on their Web site but word of the change is spreading among their customers. It was confirmed to me by an email from Regional Vancouver's manager Arlene Watson.
Regional's decision to begin opening one hour earlier comes ahead of another bottle depot's move into the area. United We Can is scheduled to move from the Downtown Eastside to Industrial Avenue any day now.
United We Can bottle depot hasn't moved yet
The United We Can bottle depot at 39 East Hastings Street is apparently still at 39 East Hastings Street even though yesterday ( January 15) was widely reported as the date it was to move to its new location on 455 Industrial Avenue.
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"No officer, the eyes are close but my friend was clean-shaven and had smaller ears."[/caption]
I saw him slouching into the McDonald's last night dragging a giant black hockey bag. That told me lots. I knew he wasn't over here just to get some fresh air.
He didn't see me. He only came over to me because he saw my laptop. He wanted to borrow part of an AC adapter -- the wall plug part he didn't have. He was kneeling down to look at my adapter and only then looked up at me.
"Oh, it's you" he said, in his distinctive gravelly voice, more a statement of fact than anything else.
I took in the cleanness of him, the dryer-sheet smell of fresh laundered clothing and his slightly mussed appearance, particularly both his eyes -- his black eyes. The bruising had to be a few days from fresh but he still brought to mind a tall, rangy, raccoon.
He had a story all right and he told it to me. In a nutshell: room broken into and burgled; took law into own hands; arrested; homeless again after five years off the streets.
How sad, but sadly not unusual. And of course he made a bee-line for Fairview -- why wouldn't he? A fellow who had been so visibly homeless in and around the South Granville area when I came out on the street in 2004.
"No officer, the eyes are close but my friend was clean-shaven and had smaller ears."[/caption]I saw him slouching into the McDonald's last night dragging a giant black hockey bag. That told me lots. I knew he wasn't over here just to get some fresh air.
He didn't see me. He only came over to me because he saw my laptop. He wanted to borrow part of an AC adapter -- the wall plug part he didn't have. He was kneeling down to look at my adapter and only then looked up at me.
"Oh, it's you" he said, in his distinctive gravelly voice, more a statement of fact than anything else.
I took in the cleanness of him, the dryer-sheet smell of fresh laundered clothing and his slightly mussed appearance, particularly both his eyes -- his black eyes. The bruising had to be a few days from fresh but he still brought to mind a tall, rangy, raccoon.
He had a story all right and he told it to me. In a nutshell: room broken into and burgled; took law into own hands; arrested; homeless again after five years off the streets.
How sad, but sadly not unusual. And of course he made a bee-line for Fairview -- why wouldn't he? A fellow who had been so visibly homeless in and around the South Granville area when I came out on the street in 2004.
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This hot new phone at that price? What a steal![/caption]
That question -- Know anyone who wants to buy a smartphone? -- was being repeated around the Fairview McDonald's I was in yesterday evening.
It was after 9:30 p.m. There weren't many customers, but someone was hitting on each one of them in turn.
When it came to me I turned to the fellow asking me the disingenuous question and answered "no." I didn't add -- not even it was the last phone for sale on Earth and he was only selling it for a dollar -- I didn't say that part out loud. No colour or heat in my voice; just "no," with minimal eye contact. I wasn't giving the fellow anything to hang a spiel on.
The next customer heard the clear question -- everyone could hear it -- he replied: "what?"
That's the question on the lips of the fish as it bites down on the hook.
What follows was predictable in how it went and how it went wrong.
This hot new phone at that price? What a steal![/caption]That question -- Know anyone who wants to buy a smartphone? -- was being repeated around the Fairview McDonald's I was in yesterday evening.
It was after 9:30 p.m. There weren't many customers, but someone was hitting on each one of them in turn.
When it came to me I turned to the fellow asking me the disingenuous question and answered "no." I didn't add -- not even it was the last phone for sale on Earth and he was only selling it for a dollar -- I didn't say that part out loud. No colour or heat in my voice; just "no," with minimal eye contact. I wasn't giving the fellow anything to hang a spiel on.
The next customer heard the clear question -- everyone could hear it -- he replied: "what?"
That's the question on the lips of the fish as it bites down on the hook.
What follows was predictable in how it went and how it went wrong.
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I can't find any bedbugs in Fairview. This old photo of a sleeping mouse will have to do.[/caption]
This morning's daily Blatt provided an evocative tableau on its cover: the banner headline "Infested" atop a larger-than-life rat snout.
"Umm, coffee, two eggs, and a side of Downtown Eastside for breakfast this morning?" I thought to myself.
Pretty much, but with a judicial twist; the story described how Vancouver's provincial courthouse on Main street, smack in the heart of the DTES was having escalating problems with bedbugs, mice and now rats.
I can't find any bedbugs in Fairview. This old photo of a sleeping mouse will have to do.[/caption]This morning's daily Blatt provided an evocative tableau on its cover: the banner headline "Infested" atop a larger-than-life rat snout.
"Umm, coffee, two eggs, and a side of Downtown Eastside for breakfast this morning?" I thought to myself.
Pretty much, but with a judicial twist; the story described how Vancouver's provincial courthouse on Main street, smack in the heart of the DTES was having escalating problems with bedbugs, mice and now rats.
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Lift with your back kid! One of the best photos in the history of garbage photography.[/caption]
The magic of Christmas isn't really visible from the alleys. It's pretty much buried under the mountains of holiday-related garbage.
It would be bad enough without the horde of dumpster divers who have galloped into Fairview -- mostly from the steppes of the Downtown Eastside -- to sift the trash with a fine tooth comb to find all the imagined treasure the "day after."
I encountered a few in the evening preparing to work the "night shift."
Where some night shift workers will fortify themselves with coffee, all three of the intrepid lads I saw were sped up like a recording by Alvin and the Chipmunks -- all the better to be able to spend three hours getting to the bottom of whatever might be in a big old dumpster.
Normally this could be chalked up to the fact that Fairview's dumpsters mostly stay unlocked while downtown they are kept locked by law. But today? I can't believe the dumpsters in the downtown West End neighbourhood would be any less full than in Fairview, where they couldn't lock them if they wanted to.
So anyway, all the dumpsters I saw on Boxing Day were either overflowing with garbage or they looked like they erupted, spraying their contents far and wide.
Oh the crows will have a field day tomorrow morning! As will the garbage pickup trucks. Click the images to enlarge them.
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Disappointing scene. Mostly because it doesn't photograph as badly as it looks in person.[/caption]
Lift with your back kid! One of the best photos in the history of garbage photography.[/caption]The magic of Christmas isn't really visible from the alleys. It's pretty much buried under the mountains of holiday-related garbage.
It would be bad enough without the horde of dumpster divers who have galloped into Fairview -- mostly from the steppes of the Downtown Eastside -- to sift the trash with a fine tooth comb to find all the imagined treasure the "day after."
I encountered a few in the evening preparing to work the "night shift."
Where some night shift workers will fortify themselves with coffee, all three of the intrepid lads I saw were sped up like a recording by Alvin and the Chipmunks -- all the better to be able to spend three hours getting to the bottom of whatever might be in a big old dumpster.
Normally this could be chalked up to the fact that Fairview's dumpsters mostly stay unlocked while downtown they are kept locked by law. But today? I can't believe the dumpsters in the downtown West End neighbourhood would be any less full than in Fairview, where they couldn't lock them if they wanted to.
So anyway, all the dumpsters I saw on Boxing Day were either overflowing with garbage or they looked like they erupted, spraying their contents far and wide.
Oh the crows will have a field day tomorrow morning! As will the garbage pickup trucks. Click the images to enlarge them.
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Disappointing scene. Mostly because it doesn't photograph as badly as it looks in person.[/caption]
Busy day in the Lower Mainland today: The City of Abbotsford and the Jubilee Park homeless group are back in court today -- apparently the loser has to get out of town -- and the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, brings down it's budget for 2014 and Vancouverites find out how much the our police department gets to spend on combating jaywalking in the Downtown Eastside next year.
Phew! Good thing I'm not a journalist. Click the Bobby the wiener dog to see more of him.
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.
Vancouver's eighth annual Homeless Action Week started on Sunday, October 13, and runs to the 19th. With the Thanksgiving long weekend, HAW 2013 really started Tuesday, October 15 -- so how will the City of Vancouver be using these next five days to raise the issues of homelessness?This year's HAW is focused on the "invisible homeless," what physicists call "Transient Dark Matter." HAW organizers describe the "invisibly homeless" as people who have a shelter but not a home. They say the solution to homelessness starts with a home. This is so trite that it's easy to forget that it is exactly true
The Vancouver Coastal Health authority has been testing the health benefits of giving crack cocaine users smoking kits. Between December 2011 and November 2012, 65,000 such kits were freely distributed in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, to 4,213 crack smokers, at a cost of $118,000 CDN, according to a several reports, including this Vancouver Courier item. Now they're crunching the numbers and looking at the results.
Vancouver Coastal Health is telling the media that the 13 month program met it's harm reduction goals, reducing both burns to crack smokers, and reliance on used smoking equipment -- without increasing drug activity.
Knee-jerk conservatives may blanch at what they see as another example of lefties enabling the druggie lifestyle, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. "Harm reduction" means reducing the harm drug users do to themselves, and -- this is an important point -- reducing the harm drug users do to the society at large. Reducing the sharing of drug-taking equipment, is meant to have far-reaching social benefits:
Vancouver Coastal Health is telling the media that the 13 month program met it's harm reduction goals, reducing both burns to crack smokers, and reliance on used smoking equipment -- without increasing drug activity.
Knee-jerk conservatives may blanch at what they see as another example of lefties enabling the druggie lifestyle, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. "Harm reduction" means reducing the harm drug users do to themselves, and -- this is an important point -- reducing the harm drug users do to the society at large. Reducing the sharing of drug-taking equipment, is meant to have far-reaching social benefits:
- Reducing the transmission of infectious diseases among drug users.
- Reducing the number of drug addicts who become chronic health care cases,
- Reducing the risk of drug users spreading infectious diseases to the general population.
Being homeless isn't illegal -- yet, but there's already a fine line between living on the street, and breaking the law. Florida Pete crossed that line yesterday in a park near Kingsgate Mall, at Broadway Avenue, and Main Street. Police issued him with a $115 CDN fine for -- Pete insists -- smoking a cigarette in the park, though the ticket lists the offense as being intoxicated in public. Pete's on the far end of alcoholism, where a person needs alcohol just to function, so, technically, he's a walking by-law infraction. Pete explained to me that the same offense on a city street is a $165 fine. and that he got off cheap because he was in a park. if Pete had any intentions of paying the ticket -- that's something like 2300 pop cans -- the police miss-spelled his last name.Speaking of police issuing tickets to the poor, and homeless ...
After it was revealed in the spring that the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) were issuing most of their fines for jaywalking to people in the Downtown Eastside, the so-called poorest postal code in Canada, I wrote a post suggesting we make the DTES a car-free zone. Fortunately, the Pivot Legal Society, and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), took a less trivial approach, and filed a complaint with the Vancouver police board, chaired by the city's mayor, Gregor Robertson. The complaint, based on the VPD's own data, alleged 95 per cent of tickets for illegal street vendors and 75 per cent for jaywalking were issued in the Downtown Eastside. The Province newspaper this morning is reporting that the police board have dismissed the ticket-target complaint. Click the images to enlarge them.
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The Downtown Eastside. Jewel in Vancouver's crown, or pain in the arse?[/caption]
I'd like to suggest we, the City of Vancouver, seriously consider making the Downtown Eastside a car-free zone. If you think this is a wacky a proposal, like Dr. Stu's idea for a one-cent deposit on cigarette butts, think again.
There is already a recognition that the area is a magnet for a diverse range of people marginalized, and challenged at every turn -- economically, physically, legally, and chemically. These men and women, from across Canada are, by degrees, emotionally-wounded, often almost traumatized by their past experiences, distracted, and not all so law-abiding. This area is now very much about supporting, treating, and healing this influx of walking-wounded. This is a kind of Emergency ward; cars just get in the way.
The Downtown Eastside. Jewel in Vancouver's crown, or pain in the arse?[/caption]I'd like to suggest we, the City of Vancouver, seriously consider making the Downtown Eastside a car-free zone. If you think this is a wacky a proposal, like Dr. Stu's idea for a one-cent deposit on cigarette butts, think again.
There is already a recognition that the area is a magnet for a diverse range of people marginalized, and challenged at every turn -- economically, physically, legally, and chemically. These men and women, from across Canada are, by degrees, emotionally-wounded, often almost traumatized by their past experiences, distracted, and not all so law-abiding. This area is now very much about supporting, treating, and healing this influx of walking-wounded. This is a kind of Emergency ward; cars just get in the way.
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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!
Fresh from the Downtown Eastside, Here's Jimmy in Fairview. He has an appointment to meet someone. Quick story:
Some years back, Jimmy and I were at the Ridge Centre, at 16th and Arbutus, the the day before Jimmy was to get his disability cheque. He needed $5. He promised to meet me at such-and-such a time, the next day, back at the Ridge. I lent him the money, with little expectation of getting it back so easily.
The next day everything -- cashing in my bottles, going to my locker -- whatever. It all took too long. I wasn't going to make our scheduled rendezvous, but I tried. I was booting it West up Broadway a few blocks before the turn South onto Arbutus, when I saw Jimmy, on his bike coming towards me in the East-bound lane of Broadway. He was coming to find me to pay me back.
That's Jimmy. He keeps his word, and, apparently, his appointments. Click the images to enlarge.
Jimmy's bicycle lock
Here we see Jimmy's using some bicycle chain and a good padlock, He says, he made the loop at the end of the chain, by tying the chain to itself using brake cable, and covering the handiwork with duct tape -- helping to illustrate a rule about bike locks -- locks are at least as strong as thieves think they are. In fact, Jimmy insists this is quite strong, the chain being hardened steel and tough to cut with a hacksaw. It's a great example of a smart cheap-and-cheerful solution. Click the images to enlarge.
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Stix on West Broadway showing off the keys to his new life, which is like his old life, minus the parkade. Click picture to enlarge.[/caption]
After a fair bit of waiting and tooing-and-froing, particularly on the part of his advocate at the MPA centre at 7th and Fir, Stix has a bed-sit room to call his own in the Downtown Eastside. He's happy to have a place, but he's happy to get out of the Downtown Eastside every day to get back to the corners in neighbourhoods like Fairview, where he pan-handles all day, just like always. So he's still on the street, he's just not sleeping there, which is fine by him. See the joke he inspired.
Stix on West Broadway showing off the keys to his new life, which is like his old life, minus the parkade. Click picture to enlarge.[/caption]After a fair bit of waiting and tooing-and-froing, particularly on the part of his advocate at the MPA centre at 7th and Fir, Stix has a bed-sit room to call his own in the Downtown Eastside. He's happy to have a place, but he's happy to get out of the Downtown Eastside every day to get back to the corners in neighbourhoods like Fairview, where he pan-handles all day, just like always. So he's still on the street, he's just not sleeping there, which is fine by him. See the joke he inspired.
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