We step aside from my regular humorous and uplifting journal entries for a brief bitch session. 
Im a fairly liberal person when it comes to humanity. Pretty forgiving actually. Immediately trusting, and the thesaurus fails to come up with another word for empathetic, so again theres that empathy word. Compassionate maybe? Sorta mostly.
My old circle of friends were all over the map on that one. Specifically when it came to a discussion of street people: from Quebecois street kids to buskers to half (or fully) insane old men panhandling, to crackheads and sketched out junkies sleeping in the back alley.
There was a big political issue that was going through Vancouver about 5 years ago regarding the street person epidemic that had broken out. This city, as far as Canadian cities are concerned, is bloody paradise if you are going to be living on the street in the dark months of winter. Anywhere else in this country and you are likely going to wake up to an image of yourself slowly floating up and away from your own frozen corpse, looking much like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
Not here, Sure it gets cold, but its not Winnipeg, its not Toronto. Were lucky to see snow for more than a full week out of the entire winter. It rarely drops below the freezing mark. This means we are a target location. It used to be incredibly easy to get welfare here as a new resident as well, and people came in droves.
Yeah, it was a problem. Davie street in 1998 was strewn with litter, and there was at least one pocket of 4 or 5 people camped out with sleeping bags and backpacks and bongo drums on every block.
At that time, we used to live above a shop right on the corner of Davie and Thurlow, across the street from a 24 hour drug store. One summer in particular, there was this one group of kids that pretty much lived out there on that corner and I have to say my own patience was starting to wear thin with their 3:00 AM jam sessions on their bongo drums. I WAS very patient with it at first, and I even went out there one night all friendly and smiling like and said
hey, see that window right up there? Thats my living room. Can you guys not play your bongos in the middle of the night?
(more flies with honey than vinegar)
Thatd work for a day or two, and then theyd start up again. R started to call the police on them everytime theyd make the slightest noise. The cops would come, itd be silent for an hour or so, and theyd start up again.
Yeah, I got angry, but some of my friends got downright fascist about it. round em up and send them home Re-angle the water jets on the street cleaners so they spray the sidewalks, flushing them and all their stuff out. One friend of mine was definitely the worst of them all, hed recently graduated with his MBA and was fresh into a job as an investment loan adviser at the bank down in the skid row area of town.
scum of the fucking earth, Im busting my ass and paying taxes so these lazy fucks can live the highlife on my back. Sometimes I just want to grab that fucker by his greasy hair.
And hed go off with this violent display of how much force he would put into the repetitive swinging of his knee up into their faces, pulling both hands full of greasy dreads in a downward motion to meet that knee coming up. It was kinda funny to listen to him go off about this, kinda funny to watch his animated demonstration of his solution, but only because I thought he was mostly kidding. The rolling eyes and silence of his wife, however, pointed out that he was probably quite serious about it.
(Only in the last couple of years of our 20 year friendship did I finally learn enough about his rather disturbing personal habits (that I will NEVER tell anybody about...) and the subsequent way he dealt with the experience of my breakup to finally really get to know him for who he really was. Ahhhh, the MBA. Churning out sociopath after sociopath... but I digress....)
Then the city brought in some new laws in an attempt to deal with the problem. The anti panhandling law for example. Also anti-loitering laws, which forbade people from being able to hang around near bank machines and business entrances for example. Not a very bad idea in my opinion, but one of my other friends who was probably the most active in the whole social libertarian side of things pointed out a valid problem with this particular solution:
How do you enforce it?
His major beef with this solution was this:
Every major business district had a collective of business owners which would form a group called a business improvement association. They would represent the stores, restaurants and other capitalistic ventures in the neighborhood. These groups would actually hire private security companies to patrol their districts, and the enforcement of this bylaw would be put off onto the shoulders of the security guards.
The only problem here, was that legally, the security guards had absolutely no authority to enforce a city by-law.
Mostly, the concerns of the stores revolved around the perceived eye-sore the street kids were to the tourists. You take a neighborhood like Gastown, our local tourist trap: Walking down Water st., past all the shops selling miniature Totem poles, sweatshirts with eagles, Canadian flags and killer whales on them, the cobblestone road, the lanterns, restaurants. Its all quite quaint.
Unless you walk one block too far in almost any direction.
Welcome to the Downtown Eastside. The lowest income bracket in all of Canada, the highest rate of HIV infections, heroin addicts and lowbuck $5.00 hookers. Its skid row, our social shrapnel, and the problem with these people is that they dont know when to stay put. Theyll stray, and theyll end up among the tourists, sometimes they even ask for money.
Yeah, it can be a problem if the person is all whacked out and aggressive, I recognize that. But I had to agree that there was also a problem sending in poorly trained meatheads in cop-like security guard uniforms to illegally enforce a law they had no right enforcing.
My old friend went as far as trying to set up an hidden camera sting using his little brother as a bait decoy. They tried to get the security guards to give him a ticket, so that it could be challenged in court. He didnt get a ticket, and sadly he wasnt taken into the back alley and beaten either. That apparently happens sometimes. I dont doubt it.
Anyways, Im straying here. Theres a point to this.
I cant know everybodys story. Maybe that 16 year old chick in my parkade was being raped by her step father, maybe that 19 year kid all sketched out on junk that just broke into my truck witnessed his mother being killed by an alcoholic father when he was 11, and just never got the help to hit the right road outta there? I dunno. Id like to hear their story, Id like to actually hang out over a coffee that Id buy them, Id like to see them get their feet on the ground and maybe in a couple of years theyd be in a better place, maybe helping other kids.
Sure, theres a chance that some of them are just lazy fucks that simply dont give a shit about anybody but themselves, and couldnt care less about the society they are so ostracized from, I cant know their story but I am always going to err on the side of compassion.
Until you fuck with animals.
Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than when I see a group of 4 or 5 loudmouth punks curled up against the wall with a spare change for marijuana research sign and a 3 or 4 month old puppy with a yellow nylon rope around its neck.
There is no fucking way they can afford to give that dog the food and shelter it requires and deserves.
If its an older dog, like 5 or 6 years old or whatever, well maybe they had the dog when they were at home, and maybe their dad was going to take ol shep out into the back 40, put him in a cardboard box and empty a couple of 12 guage shells into it, Maybe. Maybe they rescued it. No way to tell.
Puppys though?
My god, R and I must have put a full year of thought into the decision to get Morgan. We thought it over again and again, can we afford the vet bills, the food, do we have the time to give to walking and spending time with him, is he the right breed for our lifestyle, how are we going to socialize him, train him, etc etc etc. Getting a puppy is by no means something you do on a whim, and being a responsible dog owner is expensive. Its a huge decision and a huger responsibility. If there was a bylaw in place that forced people to have to be tested and licenced in order to own a pet, I would be totally behind that. Street kids should not have puppys.
So anyways, Im walking Morgan down the back alley a couple of days ago coming back from a walk. Im about half way down towards the rear entrance of my building when I hear this low growl coming from off to my right. I look up and theres 4 kids hunkered down in the concrete cover of a parking garage, clothing and sleeping bags strewn all over, a shopping cart with an old computer monitor and a stereo piled into it, and a Rottwieller dragging a chain from around its neck. Head down, eyes locked on Morgan and walking a slow and straight line towards us.
Nobody is holding on to the other end of the chain.
"Aw, shit." I'm thinking.
Morgan, of course, had already clued into this before my slow human brain had caught onto the danger sense, and hes stiff legged, head straight up, ears fully erect and a Mohawk of hackles from his shoulders to his tail. It's like he's somehow inflated himself into some beast he isn't, and you'd never know how much of a goofy hound he really is.
I can feel the rumble of an inaudible growl vibrating into my hand through the taut leather of his leash. I swear his growl must be below 20Hz, because you can only feel it, not hear it.
None of the kids seem to be aware of what the fuck is going on here, and the rottie is now in the back alley, about 20 feet away and walking slowly closer.
I know this dance, Ive seen it enough times. It starts out like this, all slow motion like, but that audio track from the first JAWS movie is actually playing because in a split second this slow stand off is going to explode into something really fucking violent.
Nobody is getting up from their sleeping bags, and I am slowly positioning my hands around morgans choke chain. I dont want to make any sudden moves with him, because I know that could trigger him to launch first. I need these people to get the fuck up and grab that dog, and I cant chance the loss of the time required for them to do that. I get my fingers in under the chain on the other side of the choke.
- I learned a long time ago that I dont want to be trying to pull him back using the leash in a situation like this because all I end up doing is disabling his own capable defences by frantically yanking back on his neck.
Unfortunately, if this thing is "on", I simply have to allow him to take care of things until the other people can get a hold of their dog. That sucks, but its the way it is.
HEY! Could you get your dog!!!?
The one girl looks up from where shes sitting, its ok, shes friendly
A French accent.
Yeah? Well hes not! I say, get your fucking dog!
(I'm lying. He's totally friendly. Unless he's being defensive, like now)
Friendly? Dont give me that shit about this rottie being friendly, this is full-on, textbook aggressive behavior and thank god Morgan is as big as he is.
Finally the boyfriend or whatever of the girl who still hasnt gotten up stands and starts walking up towards the rottie who is now only about 10 feet in front of us. Shes locked onto Morgan and still walking with super slow deliberate steps, growling.
Just as the dude gets a hold of her leash, it triggers her and she launches. Loud and with jaws snapping, she pulls against the chain hard and the skinny little shit on the other end of it has trouble holding her back. He stumbles forward a few steps. Morgan launches at the same time, but I have him and he just goes airborne with his front end. I swear he sounds like a brown bear when he makes that bellow, and I wonder if sometimes that sound is enough to assert his dominance.
Up until now, this was completely slow motion, I wasnt angry, scared, worried or even aware it seems. I was just there. But now, the adrenaline was making its way through my system, and I felt my hands begin that tremble, my heart racing.
Morgan is just way too old and fragile these days for shit like that. Ive never been the type to be proud of the way he can handle himself, but its always been a source of comfort in a way knowing that he wouldnt get too hurt because hes always been able to deal with it. Im not so sure now that he could, His back end is weak, and one tussle like that could be the end of him.
As non-aggressive as I am towards people, if you fuck with my dog in any way, you are going to see a side of me that most people save for a very very few have ever seen.
You FUCKING IDIOTS!!! I yelled.
Next time, you better be a bit faster on the draw!
Surprisingly, they didnt respond. At all.
By the time I got inside here, my hands were totally shaking, it took me a while to calm down after that.
Morgan, however, didn't seem too concerned.
Im a fairly liberal person when it comes to humanity. Pretty forgiving actually. Immediately trusting, and the thesaurus fails to come up with another word for empathetic, so again theres that empathy word. Compassionate maybe? Sorta mostly.
My old circle of friends were all over the map on that one. Specifically when it came to a discussion of street people: from Quebecois street kids to buskers to half (or fully) insane old men panhandling, to crackheads and sketched out junkies sleeping in the back alley.
There was a big political issue that was going through Vancouver about 5 years ago regarding the street person epidemic that had broken out. This city, as far as Canadian cities are concerned, is bloody paradise if you are going to be living on the street in the dark months of winter. Anywhere else in this country and you are likely going to wake up to an image of yourself slowly floating up and away from your own frozen corpse, looking much like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
Not here, Sure it gets cold, but its not Winnipeg, its not Toronto. Were lucky to see snow for more than a full week out of the entire winter. It rarely drops below the freezing mark. This means we are a target location. It used to be incredibly easy to get welfare here as a new resident as well, and people came in droves.
Yeah, it was a problem. Davie street in 1998 was strewn with litter, and there was at least one pocket of 4 or 5 people camped out with sleeping bags and backpacks and bongo drums on every block.
At that time, we used to live above a shop right on the corner of Davie and Thurlow, across the street from a 24 hour drug store. One summer in particular, there was this one group of kids that pretty much lived out there on that corner and I have to say my own patience was starting to wear thin with their 3:00 AM jam sessions on their bongo drums. I WAS very patient with it at first, and I even went out there one night all friendly and smiling like and said
hey, see that window right up there? Thats my living room. Can you guys not play your bongos in the middle of the night?
(more flies with honey than vinegar)
Thatd work for a day or two, and then theyd start up again. R started to call the police on them everytime theyd make the slightest noise. The cops would come, itd be silent for an hour or so, and theyd start up again.
Yeah, I got angry, but some of my friends got downright fascist about it. round em up and send them home Re-angle the water jets on the street cleaners so they spray the sidewalks, flushing them and all their stuff out. One friend of mine was definitely the worst of them all, hed recently graduated with his MBA and was fresh into a job as an investment loan adviser at the bank down in the skid row area of town.
scum of the fucking earth, Im busting my ass and paying taxes so these lazy fucks can live the highlife on my back. Sometimes I just want to grab that fucker by his greasy hair.
And hed go off with this violent display of how much force he would put into the repetitive swinging of his knee up into their faces, pulling both hands full of greasy dreads in a downward motion to meet that knee coming up. It was kinda funny to listen to him go off about this, kinda funny to watch his animated demonstration of his solution, but only because I thought he was mostly kidding. The rolling eyes and silence of his wife, however, pointed out that he was probably quite serious about it.
(Only in the last couple of years of our 20 year friendship did I finally learn enough about his rather disturbing personal habits (that I will NEVER tell anybody about...) and the subsequent way he dealt with the experience of my breakup to finally really get to know him for who he really was. Ahhhh, the MBA. Churning out sociopath after sociopath... but I digress....)
Then the city brought in some new laws in an attempt to deal with the problem. The anti panhandling law for example. Also anti-loitering laws, which forbade people from being able to hang around near bank machines and business entrances for example. Not a very bad idea in my opinion, but one of my other friends who was probably the most active in the whole social libertarian side of things pointed out a valid problem with this particular solution:
How do you enforce it?
His major beef with this solution was this:
Every major business district had a collective of business owners which would form a group called a business improvement association. They would represent the stores, restaurants and other capitalistic ventures in the neighborhood. These groups would actually hire private security companies to patrol their districts, and the enforcement of this bylaw would be put off onto the shoulders of the security guards.
The only problem here, was that legally, the security guards had absolutely no authority to enforce a city by-law.
Mostly, the concerns of the stores revolved around the perceived eye-sore the street kids were to the tourists. You take a neighborhood like Gastown, our local tourist trap: Walking down Water st., past all the shops selling miniature Totem poles, sweatshirts with eagles, Canadian flags and killer whales on them, the cobblestone road, the lanterns, restaurants. Its all quite quaint.
Unless you walk one block too far in almost any direction.
Welcome to the Downtown Eastside. The lowest income bracket in all of Canada, the highest rate of HIV infections, heroin addicts and lowbuck $5.00 hookers. Its skid row, our social shrapnel, and the problem with these people is that they dont know when to stay put. Theyll stray, and theyll end up among the tourists, sometimes they even ask for money.
Yeah, it can be a problem if the person is all whacked out and aggressive, I recognize that. But I had to agree that there was also a problem sending in poorly trained meatheads in cop-like security guard uniforms to illegally enforce a law they had no right enforcing.
My old friend went as far as trying to set up an hidden camera sting using his little brother as a bait decoy. They tried to get the security guards to give him a ticket, so that it could be challenged in court. He didnt get a ticket, and sadly he wasnt taken into the back alley and beaten either. That apparently happens sometimes. I dont doubt it.
Anyways, Im straying here. Theres a point to this.
I cant know everybodys story. Maybe that 16 year old chick in my parkade was being raped by her step father, maybe that 19 year kid all sketched out on junk that just broke into my truck witnessed his mother being killed by an alcoholic father when he was 11, and just never got the help to hit the right road outta there? I dunno. Id like to hear their story, Id like to actually hang out over a coffee that Id buy them, Id like to see them get their feet on the ground and maybe in a couple of years theyd be in a better place, maybe helping other kids.
Sure, theres a chance that some of them are just lazy fucks that simply dont give a shit about anybody but themselves, and couldnt care less about the society they are so ostracized from, I cant know their story but I am always going to err on the side of compassion.
Until you fuck with animals.
Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than when I see a group of 4 or 5 loudmouth punks curled up against the wall with a spare change for marijuana research sign and a 3 or 4 month old puppy with a yellow nylon rope around its neck.
There is no fucking way they can afford to give that dog the food and shelter it requires and deserves.
If its an older dog, like 5 or 6 years old or whatever, well maybe they had the dog when they were at home, and maybe their dad was going to take ol shep out into the back 40, put him in a cardboard box and empty a couple of 12 guage shells into it, Maybe. Maybe they rescued it. No way to tell.
Puppys though?
My god, R and I must have put a full year of thought into the decision to get Morgan. We thought it over again and again, can we afford the vet bills, the food, do we have the time to give to walking and spending time with him, is he the right breed for our lifestyle, how are we going to socialize him, train him, etc etc etc. Getting a puppy is by no means something you do on a whim, and being a responsible dog owner is expensive. Its a huge decision and a huger responsibility. If there was a bylaw in place that forced people to have to be tested and licenced in order to own a pet, I would be totally behind that. Street kids should not have puppys.
So anyways, Im walking Morgan down the back alley a couple of days ago coming back from a walk. Im about half way down towards the rear entrance of my building when I hear this low growl coming from off to my right. I look up and theres 4 kids hunkered down in the concrete cover of a parking garage, clothing and sleeping bags strewn all over, a shopping cart with an old computer monitor and a stereo piled into it, and a Rottwieller dragging a chain from around its neck. Head down, eyes locked on Morgan and walking a slow and straight line towards us.
Nobody is holding on to the other end of the chain.
"Aw, shit." I'm thinking.
Morgan, of course, had already clued into this before my slow human brain had caught onto the danger sense, and hes stiff legged, head straight up, ears fully erect and a Mohawk of hackles from his shoulders to his tail. It's like he's somehow inflated himself into some beast he isn't, and you'd never know how much of a goofy hound he really is.
I can feel the rumble of an inaudible growl vibrating into my hand through the taut leather of his leash. I swear his growl must be below 20Hz, because you can only feel it, not hear it.
None of the kids seem to be aware of what the fuck is going on here, and the rottie is now in the back alley, about 20 feet away and walking slowly closer.
I know this dance, Ive seen it enough times. It starts out like this, all slow motion like, but that audio track from the first JAWS movie is actually playing because in a split second this slow stand off is going to explode into something really fucking violent.
Nobody is getting up from their sleeping bags, and I am slowly positioning my hands around morgans choke chain. I dont want to make any sudden moves with him, because I know that could trigger him to launch first. I need these people to get the fuck up and grab that dog, and I cant chance the loss of the time required for them to do that. I get my fingers in under the chain on the other side of the choke.
- I learned a long time ago that I dont want to be trying to pull him back using the leash in a situation like this because all I end up doing is disabling his own capable defences by frantically yanking back on his neck.
Unfortunately, if this thing is "on", I simply have to allow him to take care of things until the other people can get a hold of their dog. That sucks, but its the way it is.
HEY! Could you get your dog!!!?
The one girl looks up from where shes sitting, its ok, shes friendly
A French accent.
Yeah? Well hes not! I say, get your fucking dog!
(I'm lying. He's totally friendly. Unless he's being defensive, like now)
Friendly? Dont give me that shit about this rottie being friendly, this is full-on, textbook aggressive behavior and thank god Morgan is as big as he is.
Finally the boyfriend or whatever of the girl who still hasnt gotten up stands and starts walking up towards the rottie who is now only about 10 feet in front of us. Shes locked onto Morgan and still walking with super slow deliberate steps, growling.
Just as the dude gets a hold of her leash, it triggers her and she launches. Loud and with jaws snapping, she pulls against the chain hard and the skinny little shit on the other end of it has trouble holding her back. He stumbles forward a few steps. Morgan launches at the same time, but I have him and he just goes airborne with his front end. I swear he sounds like a brown bear when he makes that bellow, and I wonder if sometimes that sound is enough to assert his dominance.
Up until now, this was completely slow motion, I wasnt angry, scared, worried or even aware it seems. I was just there. But now, the adrenaline was making its way through my system, and I felt my hands begin that tremble, my heart racing.
Morgan is just way too old and fragile these days for shit like that. Ive never been the type to be proud of the way he can handle himself, but its always been a source of comfort in a way knowing that he wouldnt get too hurt because hes always been able to deal with it. Im not so sure now that he could, His back end is weak, and one tussle like that could be the end of him.
As non-aggressive as I am towards people, if you fuck with my dog in any way, you are going to see a side of me that most people save for a very very few have ever seen.
You FUCKING IDIOTS!!! I yelled.
Next time, you better be a bit faster on the draw!
Surprisingly, they didnt respond. At all.
By the time I got inside here, my hands were totally shaking, it took me a while to calm down after that.
Morgan, however, didn't seem too concerned.
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
I dont really know what else to say. Your journal had me on the edge of my seat, cause it really brought back memorys for me. Most people look down and change the topic when it comes to the drifters, the poor and the homeless. Im glad you didnt shine away from the topic. I just wish more people would adress it.
[Edited on May 24, 2005 6:56AM]