Seasonal homelessness in Nelson reaches new heights.
Always the new faces - 6 eyes, a "girl" (??) who was in the restaurant - wearing 2 pairs of sunglasses, one upon the other, dressed in layers of rainbow burlap, a spirit hoody on her head. Sat on the patio a couple of hours, then couldn't pay her bill, debit declined, she left some "ID" behind - expired, address in Queen's Bay (as well probably expired). JR took it in stride, I saw her a few days later walking down Baker, leading her best addled life.
Then there's the Pigeon Master - whos' been around as long as I remember, usually sat in the runoff or overflow behind the public toilet. He takes the free bread from the Salvation Army and uses it to feed the pigeons. Maybe in his 50's, hard to tell, the street ages people, he rarely talks to anyone, just a cup out, head down, passed out. In the evening he moves locations, finds the sheltered doorways to set up camp, you can see the fluids running down the street from wherever he perches, he's no longer fussed to find amenities or an alley, just attends nature wherever he's sat. The city crews find his perches and hose them down every morning. They must budget an hour a day just for him.
And there's a new one - only been seeing him around town this past year or so, tall, young, maybe 6'2", mid 20's, close cropped hair with a model's startling good looks, dressed always well - for a homeless person, and roaming the streets from sunup to sundown, talking to himself, staring into the distance, laughing or grimacing, he's working his way through a blotter of acid, or schizophrenic, locked in his head, the images and people without of no consequence, it's what's going on in his head, daily, skipping, tripping, or finding him passed out on a bench in the rec center - a shame, young, this good looking, relatively well kept, and yet gone, gone, gone...
There was Panda - spirit hoody, junkie, forever a fixture but he's disappeared, moved on - perhaps to Kelowna but quite possibly OD'd - street people don't get obituaries.
Then there's the camp on Government, and down by the railway. This city tolerates the homeless, but they push it to extremes. The encampment on government, it's on the way out of town, set in some big boulders and trees, beneath the highway, an idyllic location for a campsite, not too far from downtown, but no sooner do they set up camp then you see the shopping carts and rubbish begin to pile up, in no time at all it's a dump of abandoned tents, televisions, stereos, old tires and bikes, scattered, strewn, the city once installed a porta-loo but it was soon tipped over, so the city cleans them up, but the area is soon squatted again...
As is the railway, a tent hidden in a thicket soon festooned with toilet paper and all manner of garbage, another graveyard of shopping carts, soiled sleeping bags, it disappears, then - as suddenly - reappears as if it'd never been removed.
Now, these are problems, no trifles, and not easy to deal with but that's another post...