Hardcore 2015

All day last Saturday I was in the BCNDP convention. Accidentally voted negative on John Horgan's leadership. Me and 23 other people in the 500+ assembled. Hope Horgan does not find out. His family and mine are from the same Irish county. We do not take fucking kindly to the unloyal there.

I was sharing a room with a couple gentlemen who do not like to get stinko as much as I do and as I needed time both away from politics and to collect my thoughts I left the unionized luxury of the Bayshore and headed out onto the mean streets on my own.

Dope City, if you keep away from the river, is a highly walkable place and it was not long before I found myself on Puke Street. Puke Street had traffic banned from it decades ago and now, having choked the place with bars, it likes to think of itself as George Street West. Dope City likes to think it is a lot of things it is not. It is just a bunch of fucking loser Canuck fans who still have not figured out how to handle their liquor.

There were buskers of course. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd as usual. Dope City likes to think itself modern but it still acts like people who had not heard the Velvet Underground, Stooges, Patti Smith or the Ramones by the mid '70s or if they did they hated them.

The tables of the bar I prefer down there were full but there were a few bars stools unoccupied so I draped my black leather over one and sat down. Pretty barkeep poured me a Guinness. Life is good, motherfuckers.

As that pint neared the end of its life a Canuck fan a few stools down in his Favourite Jersey who had been beer-goggling me since I walked in tried speaking to me. "I'll buy you a fucking beer," he slurred in a way that suggested he would soon be painting a flame down the side of taxi. I declined. My greatest fear is having the bad fucking luck of the Canucks rub off on me.

The bar was down to one empty stool now, right beside me, and it was taken by a hockey player sized young man who soon returned politics to the conversation. "Fucking politicians piss me off so much," he fumed, "that I ran to be mayor of the Buttfuck town I'm from a couple times. Once for MLA too."

The only thing people hate about politics is they think they should be doing the pork chopping - not some other motherfucker who thinks they are the ones who know what the fuck they are doing.

Nice guy. Told the barkeep to put another fruit beer he was drinking in front of him once I had paid up and left. That, my friends, is how you buy a man a beer. Do not ask him if he wants one - put one in front of him.

It was time to make my way to the Rickshaw. I had to think of the safest way to do that. Down through Gastown and its teeming yuppies choking on their own vomit. Down Alexander Street's dark night of the cheaply sold soul to Main Street.

Stopped to take a piss and have a flask fortified hot chocolate at a coffee shop 2 blocks from Ground Zero. The Talking Head's "Psycho Killer" was playing on the stereo. A man behind me in line thought this remarkable.

"The Talking Heads must have already known something about the 21st Century when they wrote that song."

I turned to have a look at my music critic fellow hot chocolate fiend. Had one tooth remaining in his face. Methamphetamine had not got to that one yet. He was about my age and I may well have known him in my pecker-wood days.

As I turned my one toothed fellow Talking Head fan eyed my football scarf.

"Millwall! No one likes the Millwall. Canaries man myself."

"Good on you for not being a supporter of one of the Big Clubs. Takes a real man to go around telling people he is a Canaries man. Now get the fuck away from me before that last tooth of yours is sparkling from the floor instead of your face."

He let me be. Come on strong or do not come on at all in the East End.

Got to see 4 bands. Wett Stillettos, as good or better than the notices they are gathering (that's their singer above); Boids, who played "Get A Job" so well it made me feel proud to be an old punk rock motherfucker: good enough I bought both the cds they were selling; Gob, much better than I expected: their old radio hits sounded great and the rest of their set was pretty decent besides; and DOA whose current line-up is on par with any their old school incarnations. Their new record, which I bought while I was there, is a good one too. Lots of Joe's political bullshit and a cover of San Quentin that will make your spine tingle.

Cabbed it back to the hotel. Did not vomit once.