Start From Beginning
We are driving through downtown and Dre is being our tourguide.
"See that guy wandering across the street in front of us? The Native guy with a rag in his mouth?"
We see a dazed-looking man with a red rag hanging out of his mouth, staggering across the busy street as though oblivious to oncoming traffic.
"He's a huffer. That rag is soaked with gasoline. The two big problem drugs around here are gasoline and crack."
The neighborhood surrounding most of the Fringe Festival venues is known for being sort of a First Nations ghetto (the politically correct terms here for what we in the states refer to as Native Americans are variously First Nations, which refers to certain tribes with recognized treaties with the Canadian government, and more generally Aboriginal People.) At any hour of the day or night there exists a large population of transients living on the sidewalks and vacant lots in this neighborhood of boarded-up storefronts and abandoned warehouses. During our stay here, we will witness several more people huffing from rags out in the street, be asked for spare change more or less continually, and witness one vehicle breaking-and-entering happening right across the street from us. The piles of broken glass that litter the streets makes it clear that this sort of crime is a way of life in this neighborhood.
The festival makes for an interesting mix on the streets; basically a group of mostly white, mostly middle class artistic types from Canada, Britain and the United States dropped in the middle of an impoverished neighborhood, putting on shows for locals who mostly wouldn't be caught dead in this vicinity at any other time. Local attendance at the festival runs into the hundreds of thousands, but one gets the sense that when the festival is over these streets will be returned to the real residents. (Although how anybody could live without a home in the winter around here is a mystery to me.)
Alcohol, pot and privilege, meet gasoline, crack and poverty. Play nice, everyone!
Posted by flamingbanjo at August 5, 2004 12:28 PM