If you live in the Lower Mainland, you will understand this next bit. If you live in England, you might be confused. Anywhere else, and you probably just won't know what I'm talking about.
A university classmate of mine and fellow rock musician once wrote these words to a song:
Surrey's a great place
If you're unemployed.
Surrey's a great place
If you like Pink Floyd.Hah hah ...
Well, we had the terrible misfortune of having to go out to Surrey (aka: Sewery) the other night, and let me tell you: It was absolutely dreadful.
I used to live in Surrey. I thought I knew how bad it could be, but it must have descended even further into the depths of hell since I lived there. First off, we rode the SkyTrain into Surrey, and outside the windows at the first stop, there were six police officers writing tickets to three people (one of them a middle-aged East-Indian woman in full-blown ... er ... regalia). At that and the next stop, there were dozens of signs warning would-be car thieves that the RCMP are laying out bait cars everywhere. Just a gentle reminder of what kind of place Surrey is when it comes to property crimes.
Anyhow, we got off the SkyTrain and walked down the street to the bus stop (I know, I have a car, but there are reasons for not bringing it into Surrey). The few people we saw were on the far side of normal, but nothing unusual for the location. The thing is, the cars were moving quickly and dangerously. As pedestrians, we had to be careful. We waited at the bus stop looking at discount furniture stores and Tim Whore-tons outlets for a while until the bus came. We got on, among dirty, strange, stupid-looking (or possibly drug-overdosed/brain-damaged) people while the bus driver did his absolute best to send us to the floor with his as-rapid-as-possible braking and slam-the-gas-pedal acceleration. All the while, people were rubbing against us as they got on and off the bus. God help me, I cannot bear to see another lumberjack shirt or jean jacket. I mean, we used to wear those when we were in junior high school! Apparently, they still do in Surrey. Stuck in the 1970s ... hmm ...
So we found our destination in one the 3,000 strip malls, behind a McGaggles, next to a gas station, and across the street from a humungous shopping mall. This was the heart and soul of Surrey, after all. And once we were finished we immediately made our way back home.
Standing at the first bus stop, we were soon joined by a young teen girl and her young teen boyfriend. Both dirty, smelly, unkempt, and at least the girl was well on her way to drug addiction. Her teeth were already starting to rot. As she and her boyfriend stood there sharing a cigarette, an unshaven, dirty, and ultra-thin man in his forties rode by on a bicycle and shouted out:
"Keep it up, missy, and you'll be facing charges soon enough!"
She turned and scowled at him (that's how I could see her teeth in early stages of total decay) and the boy, rather charmingly defended "his woman" by muttering (but not calling out, I noticed):
"Fucking fag. Loser, what an asshole ... " etc.
Well, the girl said something unintelligible to me, and I claimed complete ignorance and non-involvement, wherupon she volunteered that this man was her mother's boyfriend. Oh, well that explains everything. And darned if we suddenly didn't want to get out of there and walk on down to another bus stop. Which we did. Thankfully.
But things were getting worse in this particular ring of hell, because it was getting dark. Soon the night-crawlers would be out, and we just wanted to get the hell out of there and back home. As night fell, the drivers got faster and more dangerous, and even standing on the sidewalk was not enough safety anymore. The sound of roaring tuned mufflers (or just rusted out mufflers) as cars accelerate out of corners after squealing all four tires as they come around ... that was what we had to dodge all the way down to the next bus stop. The darker it was, the more insane the driving. When we got to the other bus stop, we waited while a man in the parking lot behind us drilled out the steering column of some car. He never got the car started, though, so maybe he was just practicing how to steal a car--not actually stealing one. We never saw the end of that drama, though, because the bus came.
And we got on the bus at one stop, and three drunk men got on at the next stop. It's not as though there weren't enough animals to make a good-sized human zoo on the bus already, what with the three at the front who were able to have a conversation consisting almost entirely of the word "fuck" (though cleverly used in different parts-of-speech) and the word "yeah," that generic catch-all phrase that no self-respecting cave-dweller could live without. But the three subhumans that got on the bus sat behind us, and one in particular (too disorganized, stupid, and shattered to be properly called the Alpha Male) discovered the delicate abstract sophistication of shouting out stupid and meaningless things in public on the bus, including profanities and obscenities. It was like the TV show Trailer Park Boys without any of the humour.
Well, we survived that ordeal and even got to the SkyTrain station more-or-less unscathed. It was just a "simple" matter of stepping around the pools of human urine on the stairs up to the platform, standing at the platform's edge while creepy unshaved men with personal hygiene issues stood (or sat in their heavy-drinking-necessitated wheelchairs) and milled and lurched about.
I think it's time to blow up the Port Mann, Patullo, and Alex Fraser bridges. Seal that hole off.