Why the UN calls this neighbourhood a blight

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CARL ROOMS EVICTION RALLY

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I just took a break from the daily grind of NowPublicking to go over and grab a coffee at my favourite neighbourhood coffee joint, Blake's. Now, Blake's a very laidback, hip spot in that Vancouver netherworld between the Downtown Eastside and downtown itself--Gastown.

Gastown epitomizes what's right and wrong about Vancouver. It's pretty and gentrified, and sits with its back up against Hastings and the drug culture of the DTES. Gastown tries to understand--and even change--the drug culture. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it fails. Sometimes, however, it can seem that Gastown is just shutting its eyes tight and trying to will the drug culture and the poor out of existence.

Blake's sits right in the centre of that. It's a nice place straddling two very different parts of humanity. All the folks that work at Blake's are cool people, mostly hip younger kids. They want the neighbourhood to work. They remember your order and your face, and they ask about your day.

This afternoon at NP headquarters we heard some sirens outside, so we looked out  and saw cops running into Blake's. Then another squad car showed up. Then a paddy wagon. Then an ambulance.

NowPublic staffers conferred at the window, distressed, looking down at the scen. What was going on? We wondered. Were they all okay?

But none of us went down. We went back to our computers.

A few hours later, on my coffee break, I asked what happened. Here's what one of the girls told me.

"There was a junkie shooting up in the bathroom, so we called security. He didn't want to leave, so he fought the security guard, and one of our employees accidentally got  scratched--possibly by a needle. He's gone to the hospital."

"Scary," I said. She shrugged.

"It was going to happen eventually," she offered flatly. I nodded in agreement. She looked a bit more shaken than her tone suggested. Trying to make it okay. I ordered my coffee, and paid.

He was trying to shoot up, to get through the day. They were trying to work, to get through the day. They came up against one another, as people do, when their mutual ends had different means. 

The guy making my coffee said, "How's your day?" as he usually does. I said fine. "How's yours?"

"I've had better." A muted look on his face.

"I bet," I said. I got my coffee and left.

And tomorrow we'll all three of us wake up and come back down here, hoping for the best. Expecting the worst? Waiting for what?