I got on the bus at noon today and sat across from a young man in his early twenties who looked like he hadn't slept. He had a tattoo from his wrist to his elbow of a tall, narrow cabinet with a lot of shelves, and the shelves were filled of objects. I made out a bunch of bananas, a free mason symbol, a heart and waves. Then he picked up his back pack, pulled out a can of Colt 45, opened it and began drinking. Through the window behind him, I saw as we passed a man in handcuffs being talked to by three police officers. He was standing on the curb with his back to the police car and was facing a crowd of ten or fifteen of his peers. They were all seated on a low cement wall, looking on with little interest and talking amongst themselves. None of them looked to be in as good health or were dressed as nicely as the man under arrest. Further down the street we passed a very skinny woman in a mini skirt and pink tank top carrying three dripping ice cream cones and talking to her self. I changed buses at Main and Hastings. There was a large crowd of people there hanging out in the shade of two tall trees that grow out of the fenced in courtyard of the Carnegie Center. Two men seated on the side walk in different parts of the shade were smoking crack, and a woman sitting in the sun on the sidewalk was drinking from a bottle of Wiser's. Another man was knelt over a newspaper anxiously scribbling down numbers and symbols and scratching the sores on his face. When the bus came a man with a giant head of frizzy hair escorted a prostitute on board with him. At the next bus stop about 20 Chinese seniors got on board and a man standing behind me said, "You must feel like a giant eh?" When I turned around to meet him he had barbed wire tattooed around his neck and a red and black Iron Cross tattooed over his adam's apple.

On the way home I passed a short man with black and gray hair wearing a trench coat and large framed glasses with red lenses in them. His face was small and gaunt and he had stuffed in his mouth a rotten upper denture which was twice too big for him and forced his jaw open as it stuck out. Beside him a woman was on her hands and knees poking around in the cracks of the pavement with a stick. She was wearing a jean mini skirt and a sparkled halter top. She looked like she weighed less than 80 pounds. At the bus stop I noticed the old couple next to me were smoking a joint. The woman saw me looking as I stepped onto the bus and said, "You must be craving eh?" and started laughing. At the back of the bus three hardened looking people were talking loudly amongst themselves and teasing a friend who stood by the doors with her back to them. When they all got off the bus together the larger of the two men cornered the woman against a wall as the bus pulled out of sight.