I got off the bus tonight at 10pm and the air was hot, humid and heavy with smells from the chicken slaughter house. There were maybe 20 people sitting on the sidewalk in front of Owl Drugs where I got off. Three or four times as many were hanging around the steps of the Carnegie, and all up and down Main and Hastings there were more people. Not a single one of them in the boat. I passed a 40 year old prostitute on the sidewalk with one breast falling out, walking in bare feet and holding her pink stilettos. The sidewalks down Hastings are two and a half times the width of a lane of traffic, and I watched a man ricochet from bumper to cliff trying to stay upright. A moment later a small group of people passed by. After a long string of profanities one woman asked another who had joined company at the corner, "How you doin' ...?"
"Fucking pissed off," she snapped.
"How come?"
"Because he had a fucking gun!"