It's Burgundy! - and a special thanks to the City

"Am I goin' to hell?" Jeremy called to me, more than half joking. He flapped the reddish blanket he had draped over his shoulders. "I'm wearin' the devil's cape!"

I shook my head, "I'd call that a purple robe," I said, trying to give it a more Christ-like interpretation.

Jeremy -- minus the Burgundy/red/purple robe -- photo bombs my
promo for "In His Image, Too ..."

Jeremy looked at the blanket and said, "it's Burgundy," and shambled off towards the others in Pigeon Park.

We were outside The Lord's Rain Saturday morning, and I was talking with Ron and Lance when Jeremy had come along. "Burgundy!" said Lance. "He's right."

Ron shook his head. "There's so many smart people around here," he said. "When I first came down here [over a decade ago], I just assumed everyone down here was stupid -- a bunch of losers. But I'm amazed: there are doctors, professors ... guys who just kinda flipped out."

"Look at Len," I put in, referring to a fellow with a professional engineering designation who now cannot put a coherent sentence together -- not coherent to us, at any rate*.

Lance added, "you're right: there are some really educated people here."

It just reinforces what we've been saying for years: any stereotyped image you might have considered for the "typical" Downtown Eastsider gets blown out of the water by one fairly simple means: talking to one.

I wouldn't call Jeremy "educated", but there's no question that he's a very smart young man. In fact, he's quite well-equipped, physically and intellectually -- except that he has anger issues (others have reported seeing him take out another person with a single punch) and, being Native, has come to the plate with at least one strike against him. He sleeps rough. Take your pick of the reasons: (a) no shelter would want to take him, (b) he's afraid for his own safety in a shelter (from people he's punched-out before), (c) he's on the incredibly long waiting list for a place through BC Housing, or (d) all of the above. But his toughness is a facade, and behind it, I see an incredibly vulnerable and lost young man  It appears he's given up trying to move ahead -- or even trying to stay in the same spot.

Jeremy comes into The Lord's Rain most mornings to have a shower; but a lot of the time, too, he'll just come in and fall asleep on one of our benches. I've also picked him up off the floor when he's collapsed, shivering and near-paralyzed, from fatigue and cold. And I wrote last summer of a time when he picked up a Bible and asked me to read him something. Psalm 91 ("He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty.") came to mind: the message of comfort and protection when we put our trust in the Lord. He seemed to be encouraged by it. It's one of the great hope-filled passages, and hope is probably the commodity most in demand -- and least in supply -- on the Downtown East Side.

===

Ron is an enigma. I have a lot of time for him: ever since I've known him, he's come to our services and spent much of the time reading. At first, I thought he wasn't paying attention, but early on, he would come up to me afterwards with an observation based on what my message had been, which indicated that he was a lot more "into" it than one would think.

Unable to work due to disability, he receives disability "benefits" (don't you love that euphemism?) and a shelter allowance, so he has his own digs, and works the back alleys as a binner for the remainder of his income. How he pushes his wiry, arthritic body through the streets in all weather, shoving a cart ahead of him, is beyond me, but somehow he does; and I've rarely heard him complain about being sick. But sick, he is: I've watched him deteriorate, physically, over the years. A couple of years ago, he nearly lost an arm. He was reaching into a dumpster and cut himself on something. He didn't think much of it and went on about his routine, but the cut was quickly infected (not a difficult thing in those alleys) and before he knew it, he was in hospital with one arm considerably larger than the other. Doctors literally had to open his arm to drain the poison out of it and the scar is very visible when he wears a sleeveless shirt in the summer.

Yet he keeps on, never losing his humor. Any time I start to complain about the sniffles, I give my head a shake.

===

One of the ongoing bêtes noires we've faced over recent years has been the Downtown East Side Street Market. Every Sunday, the 300 block Carrall Street is closed and dozens of people -- mostly binners -- set up shop to sell stuff. It's mostly second- or third-hand goods: not exactly St Lawrence Market in Toronto or The Rocks in Sydney, Australia, but people buy and sell.

The reason it's been problematic for us at Gospel Mission is that the 300 block Carrall Street is right outside our door and the market takes place right when our services are happening. The market has proven to be a deterrent to a lot of people coming to these services, and Barry spent a fair bit of time, trying to keep the pathway clear and pestering City Hall to install portable toilets and get the Market organizers to prevent any selling in front of the Mission.

There's been some success in that, although Anthony, Barry's son, can tell you he's been greeted with verbal -- and sometimes physical -- abuse when he's asked people to respect that "no-sell zone". In the past year or so, though, the Market has put up a fence and posted a security person outside our door. 

A week ago Sunday, though, we were greeted with a handbill, stuck in the door, to wit:

WARNING

SUNDAY January 18th, 2015

We regret to inform you that the City of Vancouver has failed to provide necessary operating funds for the regular Sunday market that has existed at Pigeon Park for almost five years. Starting today, market organizers will be forced to reduce staff to accommodate this new budget reality.  We regret any inconvenience that this may cause. 

If you have any complaints, please call 311 or e-mail dtesstreetmarket@gmail.com to have these complaints forwarded to the City of Vancouver.

There was no logo on the flyer and it wasn't signed, but we noted quickly that the fence was not there and there were only a few security staff, roaming about the market with no one actually posted outside our door.

Someone said to Ian, "You guys will be in trouble, now!"

A fight broke out underneath the office window: one of the sellers apparently believed someone was trying to steal some of his merchandise. No staff stepped in to help out: another seller broke up the fight.

The next day, I fired an email off to the Mayor and each individual Council member. Four of them -- Andrea Reimer, Kerry Jang, Tim Stevenson and Raymond Louie -- got back to me within an hour, saying they'd look into it. Ms Reimer said that, rather than a cut in funding, the Market was actually about to get a funding increase and they'd be receiving the cheque that coming Thursday. The source of the information in the flyer was unclear.

Then I heard from the head of Community Services, assuring us that there was no funding cut. She had had several calls since Sunday morning from people complaining that the City wasn't supporting the Market.

This past Sunday (the 25th), a security person was back at the door and the fence was back up.

Was this a clumsy attempt to bully City Hall? Hard to say, and we have no way of knowing what was said to the organizers of the Market on Thursday. But a big thank-you! to those City Councillors for getting on the stick as quickly as they did!

===

A new volunteer has stepped up to become a server rather than a servee. Joe has been coming into The Lord's Rain pretty much since it opened, working on the Bottle Depot's street-and-alley-cleaning crew. He was always very friendly towards me, but for some reason, he and Danilo rubbed each other the wrong way. They nearly came to blows a few times, usually when Danilo would deny him an extra bun. Danilo has been learning about customer service (like, how to tell someone they can't have another bun without implying they're being greedy pigs for wanting one) and has been getting better, mainly under Ken Franklin's tutelage. But Ken is no longer with us. And that brings us to Joe.

I walked into The Lord's Rain on Saturday to find Joe serving coffee, setting up the styrofoam cups on the counter so they would be ready. Danilo was upstairs, preparing the buns. "I need to do this because of Kenny," Joe said. "He was like a father to me [Ken was maybe 10 years older than Joe], so I'm carrying on what he started."

Danilo came downstairs, set the tray of buns on the counter and went behind the desk. That was a scene I never thought I'd see: Danilo and Joe, working side by side. A sense of humility and grace on the two of them. Sometimes, we wonder about legacies, and that would be one of Ken's.