The Vancouver Police must not have much to do, every day this week they’ve been out at Ontario and Broadway busting the guys who wait there for stray employment. Ontario street has always been the place to go if you need work under the table.
One step below Labour Ready on the Blue Collar Hierarchy, people go there to hire someone to move some boxes, or load their car, or any other basic labor job, negotiated on the spot, usually for very cheap.
Naturally many of the guys waiting there are immigrants who cannot work legally in Canada but so the fuck what. Do we really need to spend the city resources necessary to have a large troop of cops rush in, harass, arrest and process the Ontario Street guys in order to deny them the $12 they would maybe make that day? Does this really make any fucking sense? And should we really deny people, any people legal or not, the right to catch a few odd jobs? I suppose they always have the option of turning to crime but in my mind it is far better to have them load Grandma Smith’s old newspapers into her van for her. But if our city’s strategy is to force people into burglary and drug dealing who am I to question.
Maybe its all part of the Tory’s recent crackdown on illegal immigrants, I mean with Vancouver’s long standing labour shortage we wouldn’t want labourers coming into our city. So way to go everyone, we really showed those poor and disenfranchised whose boss!
This summer the Rio Cinema at Broadway and Commercial is working with Black Dog Video and doing some Midnight horror screening. The first on Friday the 13th showed Friday The 13th with Reanimator. The theatre almost full, the crowd was raucous and a good time was had by all, with only some good natured heckling as the projectionist struggled to turn the subtitles off on the DVD projector. Its a midnight show, its expected.
The opening act, which could have been a good idea, was to initiate viewers ‘virgin’ to Dawn of The Dead.’ After missing her cue and making a lackluster entrance Gory sat on stage like a lump in platform shoes and a big hat as Watermelon handled most of the hostessing, working the crowd and moving things along. Seven virgins went up on stage and were christened with zombie blood, again with an utter lack of showmanship by Gory, who’s mocking and rude attitude made for some dreadful banter. Calling your audience losers for having not seen an old cult movie is not entertaining or endering.
