Lemon: My Daily Drive Through Parkdale Paradise
Every morning I drive the stretch of Parkdale from Dufferin to the Queensway.
When I'm not avoiding streetcars and dodging cyclists who are dodging potholes, I notce the city in which I live.
I take note of the dollar stores, leftist Councillor Gord Perk's constitutency office (located in a community centre of all places), and the people.
On every street corner there are generally a few panhandlers, about the same number of people living in socio-economic fall out and one prostitute.
It disturbs me greatly to see the human devastation that exists not far from my home; it is horrid that with the quarter billion dollars our city spends on housing, homeless and poverty that somehow so many of our residents don't fall through the cracks, but into crack.
The addicted women, reducing their human existence to the lowest possible level, offering their intimacy and dignity for a few dollars, make me wonder about our society.
Their physical and emotional condition cannot be attractive to anyone. I wondered this morning, what type of man would have sexual relations with these women?
I suspect only those that are not looking for a sensation or satisfaction but are looking to dominate and degrade another human being. Criminals acting out sociopathically.
Stress?? We know nothing about stress.
3 comments:
ok, what the heck is the deal here?
I said this before. That's my old neighborhood. In fact my address was a Queen west one for years, right before you hit roncesvailles. Man, it was rough there in 94. My next door neighbor was a 20 dollar hooker that ripped off johns from the front and used our common back alley as an escape. Sometimes the johns would get wise and start smashing down doors. I've never called 911 so many times before.
Need I go on? The dollar stores were there a long time ago. When times were rough, antique stores were closing up, the only thing to take their place were dollar stores. But hey, that's happening in my area right now! I believe that may be a sign an area could be in transition.
Anyway, the reason that area is my 'old' area, is that by the time my business was doing well enough that I could afford a house, I wanted one in that area. Well house prices there soared right out of my range, and it was one of the hottest areas to buy a house.
So what is with the sensationalism in that area? There is no question attention to areas in Toronto is needed, but jesus christ where was it in 94 when I saw pools of blood on the streets on my way to work?? Anyone who lived there then would know very well what I'm talking about. Most of the people I know who have lived there since I was there and are still there, all unanimously agree the area has gone leaps and bounds from where it was, and the hot real estate market there has helped change things in a big way.
But, I suppose when you know nothing about the area, and you're digging, anything will do.
My experience goes back to the later 70s to mid 80s and I worked and played in the area from Dufferin to Lansdowne. We didn't have any "street crime", hookers and johns hadn't migrated from the downtown haunts. People walked the streets at all hours in comparative safety and the drug of the day was heroin but it was not sold in alleys and doorways and the group I hung with figured users were losers.
I referred to '94 because to me that was when things seemed to me, the worst.
I too was there in the 80s. And to say Heroin was the drug du jour then is to not know anything. Cocaine and crack were being sold in the alleyways quite heavily in the 80s, and when I lived near Landsdowne in the 80s, someone was murdered in the neighboring backyard. I don't recall it being safe at all in many spots in the area in the 80s at all.
I can't comment on the 70s though, I wasn't there.
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