#8 Fraser: field notes

Corodova.
Hastings, Pender.
I see a guy who looks like Lyle, but it can't be Lyle. Lyle's dead.
Vanessa's dead.
Jeff's dead. Theresa, Danny, Gregory.
All of them. I see them all every day.
Keefer Street. All the discount factory outlet stores are shutting down.
New Condos.
Each new building a hundred yuppies and 75 dogs, all them smaller than the last.
Russian nesting lap dogs, they swallow each other.
And the bus is full.
This is a page and another book.
Talent travels, you don’t gotta look at TV to know.
Now it’s the Viaduct, then the train station, dive bars and gastropubs locked in the same death spiral as the city consumes itself.
Empty storefronts because who would
C I T Y G A T E?
Summer Wheel/Main Street
I wouldn’t. It’s Phibbs Exchange on a different level.
It’s just a bus stop.
But soon, people. The Condos are here. The Condos are coming.
This used to be a R[unintelligible] thing. This used to be a parking lot. This used to be an ice cream stand.
This used to be a semi-industrial wasteland. Now it’s someone’s front step. A million dollar view of the Shell station. Not even the most famous Shell station in the Lower Mainland.
This was, not my neighbourhood, but maybe stomping grounds. The neighbourhood next to my neighbourhood.
A waste of space that the mind deleted from memory as soon as you walked through it so that you always though the walk up to Main Street Proper was much shorter than it really is.
I remember when all this junk was brand new.
They burned down Main Street. Make way for the Walmart. Make way for Tim Hortons.

No Walk Offs, the parking lot says. We laugh at the city. We laugh at ourselves. We want to be liked. We want to be held in high regard.But we are all new here. We’re all watching one another and trying to fit in.
Teamsters Building is massive.
St. George - how long does it take?
I’d check on the time but that would only add to my anxiety.
Broadway and Fraser has a hipster butcher shop. It’s all over.
This guy out the window. Well-dressed and hip with gelled hair and leather jacket. Holding two dripping garbage bags. He’s just going to the alley. Allez, alley, Ali.
East 12th. I’m headed to E. 33rd.