OTHER CITIES: 
Zombies on Skytrain
- Posted by
- Filed in City
- March 14, 2006
I'm sure that you've all seen them downtown, or lurking around Skytrain stations. With their easy, pasted-on smiles, they stand in the middle of the onrushing crowds, apparently oblivious. They thrust their tracts that promise to provide The Truth in small, easy doses. Don't believe it; these things are as empty as the souls of those that are handing them out would appear to be.
The News Zombies, standing in the way at Waterfront Station, or daring the crowds to take their tracts out in Burnaby, or challenging pedestrians to avoid knocking them down. Some days I'm more tempted to plow them down than others, and it would seem that I'm not alone.
I was lucky to witness a confrontation between one blind news vendor (how much of a movie cliche is that?), still wearing his green Metro smock and one construction worker on his way to work. I assume that he was a construction worker, as he was wearing boots and a yellow hard hat, but he could have been one of the Crazies for all I know.
I board the train at Waterfront every weekday, and I've seen all sorts of crazy on the Skytrain, so when something surprises me, I pay attention. As usual, there are a bunch of people waiting at the Granville Skytrain station. As the train's doors open, I see the two grown men above try to occupy the same space, and rush onto the train. The train is mostly empty, so it's not a matter of vying for limited seating or anything of the sort; one of these two people is an asshole, and I'm not yet sure who it is... maybe both.
I'm fully willing to bet that our Metro peddlar is the jackass, partly due to the green vest he's still wearing, but partly becuase I saw him push hard hat guy first. Oh, sure, there might have been more leading up to that, but all I could tell the Skytrain people when they arrived at Stadium was what I saw; a half crazed Metro vendor pushing his way past someone to enter an empty train and fight for an empty seat. He didn't even show off his cane until the blue coated Skytrain people showed up...
It's something like how I summed up the excellent film Murder Ball when I first saw it; it's a film about two assholes who happen to be disabled. Losing the use of your eyes or legs doesn't make you a nice person, automatically worthy of carte blanche... Wearing your employer's uniform while you're being a jerk reflects badly on your corporate overlords, even more so than the trash that you contribute to on transit.
Photo by Sarah Naegels, licensed under the Creative Commons
Comments (31)
Recommend This
More...
Join the BeyondRobson Flickr group
Join the BeyondRobson YouTube Group
Suggest a Link
This is quite a spectacular piece of sophmoric journalism, wobbly logic and cynical indie kid posturing. Of all the people in this city you could have unleashed your embarrassing invective and tortured syntax on, you chose the vendors of free daily newspapers, many of whom (as you so callously pointed out) are street kids, disabled, or welfare recipients.There is an elderly man who hands out 24 a block from where I catch my bus everyday.He is unfailingly polite, whether it's raining, snowing or blowing. Most of his customers know him by name and recently when one the language schools nearby had a class of kids graduating they all came out and had their picture taken with him as they had come to consider him a good friend. For you to tell me his soul is empty makes me want to punch you in the mouth. If I were to employ your spurious logic that because of your encounter with '...a have(sic)crazed Metro vendor...' all vendors are soulless would lead me to conclude that because you are a horrible cunt that all Beyond Robsoners are and I know that this is not true.
It's just you.