Let me tell you something about my neighbourhood. I live in an old pile of bricks on Alberta Street, just north of Broadway. It is two blocks east of the edge of the almost-fashionable condo developments of Fairview. It is three blocks north of the older heritage homes of Mount Pleasant. And it is right in the middle of a sprawl of light industrial factories and small businesses.
At night, urban noises float on the air. Against the drone of the ventilation at the factory, there’s the rhythmic tink, tink, tink of hammers on metal. At irregular intervals, cars swish past, too quickly, on their way to somewhere else . From time to time, this ensemble is interrupted by the steel clatter of a grocery cart on crumbling, irregular pavement, the rattle grows louder as it passes under the bedroom window, only feet away, and trundles on down the alley.
Arguments break out between men, and their angry voices echo between the endless backs of brick businesses. Their shouts carry the rhythm of sparring: an attack, and now a defense, then a misdirection and returned attack. And in time the music of hate wears itself into silence.
The homes — slums, all slums. Even those houses renovated and painted are slums-in-denial, because this is the last stop before oblivion for these homes. They’re being eaten alive by businesses that are always encroaching, encircling, always killing, then feasting on the carcasses. When I look from my front windows, I see only the empty shell of a dead house — there was a fire, several months ago. Arson, they say. In some neighbourhoods, a burnt house would be taken care of: renovated, repaired, or replaced. Here, the burnt-out shell is left abandoned and no one cares. If it’s torn down, no house will ever stand in that spot again.
In the wee hours of the morning, the delivery trucks — tractor trailers, most of them — vie with the garbage trucks for clear passage through the alleys, all under my window, and only a meter or two from me. In my home. In my bed. Listening to the sounds of the dying neighbourhood. Just beyond the edge of the almost-fashionable part of the city.