It is Vancouver’s East Hastings street.
I left Salmon Arm, over a month ago, and arrived here, in rags and tatters.
How can I describe Skid Row? Take an average man, get him drunk and high, and then smash in his face, again and again until he’s on the ground.
East Hastings is mental. But it feels like my own home to me, which is the rez. Just so much more people is all, and they’re all packed together.
It’s the gutter drain for all of Western Canada. Everything that is broken and helpless ends up there.
I drifted there, in a kind of daze, but didn’t feel out of place at all.
I witnessed the Vancouver riot on TV, but thought the buildings downtown afterward still looked a billion times better than the slums on East Hastings.
There’s billions of people worse off than the residents of East Hastings, of course, but honestly, none of those places are so closely connected to the downtown of Vancouver.
