Snow is Cold

The other day I was walking to the library (which is pretty much on the opposite side of downtown) and happened to look down an alleyway I was passing to see a big pile of empty drinking bottles on the floor. As I looked, a bottle suddenly flew out of one of the dumpsters into the pile, shortly followed by another..

Comical as this was, if I were a newcomer to the city (well, newer than I am) I probably would have been wondering wtf? However I have learned since being here (through reading a lengthy article in one of the local rags and by observation) that there is a large micro-community (surely a contradiction in terms? Oh well) of homeless people who make a living from “binning”. These binners’ daily routine involves collecting as many recyclables as they can to redeem for cash at one of the recycling centres in the city (there’s a huge facility called “United We Can” on Hastings Street). You see, Canada has a rather different recycling approach to the UK – on every product you buy in a recyclable container (especially alcohol) you are almost invariably charged a form of deposit which is added to the asking price, but which you can get back by presenting the empty container to a suitable recycling centre.

So far I’ve made it twice to recycle some empty beer cans/bottles, but we have a pretty large stack of empty juice cartons (which you get 20¢ back on, compared with 10¢ for beer cans and bottles and 5¢ for soft drink cans and bottles) to take to the depot too. Actually it’s quite cool to get some money back for stuff you’ve already paid for, although we missed out on about $60 (omg I only just worked that out) worth of beer can deposits in Whistler cuz we ran out of time to take them to the liquor store (often you can only present 24 at a time). We’d constructed a sculpture out of empty beercans that flanked both sides of the fireplace and was about 5 cans high 15 across and 8 deep…. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh. Ah well I expect our landlord’s made off with that by now.

I’m actually quite a fan of the Canadian system, because not only does it encourage people to recycle more but it also presents an opportunity to homeless/jobless people to provide a useful service to the city. The homeless problem is pretty bad here, a lot more noticable than any English city. Many people are suffering from drug or alcohol addiction (there is also a huge problem with drugs here – everything is pretty much readily available and comparitively cheap, maybe around half the price of England), or some form of dementia.

I read a story before written by a reporter who had, in 10 minutes, passed one homeless guy jacking off in a doorway, and another defecating in the middle of the road. In the middle of the day. Nice. I’ve run into a couple of characters, apart from the guy we got to climb the tree in this post, there’s a woman who goes round asking for phone change, which seems normal enough for a while and she dresses presentably, but then she goes psycho and starts screaming abuse. Also there’s another guy who’s always wearing shorts with a similar tactic of begging nicely then going mental, throwing his head back and screaming to the heavens. I dunno, maybe they both got torrets or something :)

There is an area called skidrow on the edge of downtown running from the edge of Chinatown up main street, and I gather into the suburbs beyond. Cynthia was telling me that where she used to live there were dealers selling crack outside her house. Not the best environment for raising her (now 6 year old) daughter. Having said that I guess this is common in a lot of places – St. Pauls in Bristol and Moss Side (sp?) in Manchester must be pretty similar, not to mention LA, New York… Just I haven’t noticed so many crackheads wandering round a city centre before.

The area I was talking about has a decidedly sinister atmosphere about it, which is very out of keeping with the rest of downtown. It’s bizarre how fast the scenery can change in downtown Vancouver, for example you can walk one or two blocks South from Gastown (very touristy) and hit industrial decay and unsavoury characters (although I haven’t encountered any hassle from anybody, in contrast to the punks you find hanging out outside the newsagents in England). Similarly, you can walk a couple of blocks South off Robson street – a buzzing commercial centre of boutiques and restaurants – and hit quiet, leafy suburbia. It’s so strange. Anyway it’s not like I’ve seen people being mugged in the street or anything so it can’t be that bad, there were just LOADS of homeless people hanging around outside what I figured was some kind of shelter.

In fact now I think of it I was caught unawares one time whilst throwing some rubbish out at the back of our building because a guy was walking down the alley then suddenly comes up to me and says, “do you mind if I take a look through your bin?”, lol.

Right that’s enough essay for now, hope you’ve found it interesting!