Wednesday 25 March 2009

Class

In my experience, Canada is pretty much an example of a classless society. I remember our Current Events teacher in the sixth form telling us how we were moving towards a classless society. We were so not.

Oh, they talk about people being 'middle class' or 'lower class' here, but it's got nothing to do with class, it's about money. So, strange. Huh.

Last night, we went to the opening night of a play our friend Steve had a lead role in. But it was in the grim part of town, so not the West End then. We decided not to park there, we chose instead to park near a Skytrain station and walk from another. Suddenly, as we crossed East Hastings, I realised we were surrounded by the in-your-face down-at-heel, sellers of flesh and drugs, I don't think I'd ever been so close to so much street trade. And yet it was also like an island that your ship passes. It didn't rush up and try to interfere with our ship, it was just there. An underclass.

Our friend was brilliant, I love to see my friends engaged in their work, and so good at it.
A class act.

3 comments:

Sleepy said...

Nice one Steve!

Anonymous said...

Was this at the Firehall Theatre?
Oddly, I've had my car broken into twice, neither time was on the Downtown Eastside.
I tend to get a lot of bird poop on my car on the Downtown Eastside but nothing else.
The cops will round up the street people and stick them in jail during the Olympics, just as they did during the G8 summit and Expo 86.
- Karen

Schneewittchen said...

Sleepy - he was great, wish you could've been there.

Karen - It was indeed at the Firehall. I thought it weird that all the atreet action was going on almost opposite the Nick, but Kevin thought that was quite a normal state of affairs. And actually, I too had my car slightly damaged from a passing cyclist/pushchair/supermarket trolley, god knows what, not on the East side, but in fact over on the west side.