Narc Park

I had a fun little trip down to vernon's seedy underbelly this weekend. On Saturday night Spencer was coming into town to sleep over, we had planned to head out on a hike first thing on Sunday. (I'll write about that once I'm home and can post the pictures.) Anyways, his bus was coming in from Kelowna at 19:30, so I headed into town a little early to run an errand, and found myself at the bus depot 15 minutes early. With nothing else to do, I pulled through the depot parking lot and parked on the street where I would see the bus coming. Then I opened a new toy from Canadian Tire and used the time to familiarize myself with it. I hadn't considered what I had just done from an outside perspective... I had pulled up and parked across from Narc Park, then sat, waiting, in my truck.
It had been less than a minute when I heard from outside my window: "What can I do fer ya, Darlin?" I turned to see a middle-aged, and obviously drunk/stoned Native lady standing next to my truck. Swaying from side to side and looking everywhere but directly at me. "Actually, I'm just waiting for my buddy to come in on the bus." Was my reply. "Oh", she slurs back, "I thought I might hook ya up with sumpin. Listen, If I give ya 5 bucks, can you give me a ride home?" Think fast... "I'm sorry, he's going to be getting in any minute, I don't want to miss him." She stumbles around in a circle for a bit, stops to look at her feet, mumbles something under her breath, then wanders back into the park.
After this I decided to just sit back and watch the activity going on around me. The old Native lady was gone already, possibly hopped into someone else's vehicle. But there was still lots to see... Like the two guys who just walked back and forth between the park and the depot parking lot, often right in front of cars that were forced to slow down or go around them. And the scrawny shirtless guy on an old 10-speed, riding around in circles until someone came walking along the sidewalk. At which point he'd ride up to them and ask casually: "Wanna buy some weed? Hey man, wanna buy some weed?"
It was really quite interesting that all of this could be going on before the sun had even gone down, within 3 blocks of the cop shop. I hadn't realized just how active that park had become. It also explains why the bus depot washrooms require employee-issued tokens to get into now. Ahhh, Vernon. And Christine wonders why I prefer to live outside of town.