Random random stuff

[JAS_Photo]

Something I found on flickr quite by accident:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/airnfoto/3974627343/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/streetfusion/195526429/

[JAS_Photo]

I guess it should be things that make you go hmmmm....

In the first image we see a homeless man with a sign that says he has hiv and is hungry but clean and sober. We see a well dresssed man absorbed in his iPod apparently not even aware of the homeless man. We see a well dressed woman walking away. They seem oblivious to the plight of the beggar and the well dressed man in particular seems disconnected from society by his electronics. But what is the real story here?

Click on the second link and you see the same homeless man looking about the same as in picture one but this was taken four years earlier. So you begin to think just how much are we responsible to help others and how much should they be helping themselves? Four years to be begging is a long time. Perhaps it is lucrative enough to support him better than turning to agencies that are out there to help people in his situation or easier then being tied to a real job?

[airnfoto]

Hey you found my photo. :)

Yes, it is very sad to see the same people on the street for so many years, with not much change going on other than what's in their collection plates.

I've seen many of the same faces on the curbs of downtown Vancouver for 10 years now. It's interesting to see some of them ageing very well -- and others having a tough time. Some of them just disappear from the street completely.

Sometimes they even approach me with their stories and expectations. The locals become numb to them because we know their stories and have heard all the (excuse the bluntness, but) BS imaginable.

There's one individual whom puts on an English accent and claims his wife is stranded...and then 2 years later he's got no accent and has just been abandoned and hasn't any money to get back to the East Coast.

When you meet enough story-tellers, you start to ignore the rest of them. It's sad, but it's true.

I pity the animals that they drag around the most, because these animals surely suffer by not being taken care of when they have health issues.

Anyway, thanks for the comment and the link to my photo. I hope people realize that living on the street is difficult, but if you really make an effort (and if you really want to), you can change your life for the better.

Or just sit on Robson for a lifetime and wait for the cruise ships to roll in.

[JAS_Photo]

Well said. I live just off 17th Avenue in Calgary which would be our not quite so hoity toity version of Robson Street. Since I walk to work I encounter many, many characters with many stories as well. Sometimes I give them a few coins. Sometimes I just say sorry not today. But yeah, you see the same characters over and over and of course there is a reason they ended up there to begin with whether it was from drug and alcohol abuse or just having fallen through the cracks.

[Greg_Nuspel]

I have really pissed some of them off, for example:

Fellow asked for money to take transit home, I bought him a ticket.
Asked for money to buy a coffee, offered to buy him one.
Fellow had one of those signs saying how he was out of work and need money to eat, offered to take him to the shop and we'd give him work for the day.

I all these cases I was turned down and they were put off that I wouldn't give them cash. Except the fellow that wanted money for the transit as we pulled out of the station he was trying to sell his ticket.

In Calgary never buy a parking ticket off one of the street people, they are valid tickets, but purchased with a stolen credit card.

[Marko]

I Love shot 1 as it has a powerful message and tells a compelling story. Very nice find!

The man does not look clean and sober in either shot.

[1putts]

Hey you found my photo. :)

WTH!? They'll let anybody in here. This place is really going downhill now!! ;)

[JAS_Photo]

Ha! Ha! Obviously a few of you Vancouverites know each other.

[kurtdriver]

Ha! Ha! Obviously a few of you Vancouverites know each other.

Twenty years in this city and you'd be amazed how many Vancouverites I know here.:)

Edit: I do know Airn.