I gave my card to one of the Vancouverites, and received an e-mail days later telling me that they ended up going to another club, but not with the table of revellers from The Alibi Room. When they came out of the club they witnessed a man get murdered three feet in front of them. She said it was the worst thing she had ever seen in her life. His throat was slit open and he died right there.
How horrific is that??? My younger brother saw someone get shot in front of the restaurant he was working at in Burnaby (I think he was proud to get on one of those reality cop shows, though), but I've never seen anything like that before. Which is a bit surprising because I've found myself straying far too many times into sites of urban decay, from which I was usually a little too slow in exiting. I slept on a park bench one time in urban Melbourne after getting locked out of the house. I had just gone clubbing and was wearing a dress that used to be long but I'd shortened probably far too much. I thought of what homeless people do and figured I'd stay warmer by covering myself with newspapers (the south of Australia can get pretty chilly)... it worked, but it's not something I want to try again. Another incident in Melbourne was towards the end of a three month stint there, and having to find a hotel one time after a mix-up with meeting a friend whose house I was supposed to stay at. I couldn't find him (until the next day), so I searched for the cheapest hotel, trying to find a room that didn't have either what looked like to be bloodstains on the floor or lightbulbs that were broken. Or both. I knew it was dodgy when the proprietor conducted the entire transaction through a little hole in the door. But I was 19 at the time and wasn't travelling with a credit card or my parents' money or approval. I shake my head sometimes when I think of how lucky I was in those days.
**When my friend Sergio used to live in Seattle, I would visit him there and steal toilet paper from The Alibi Room. This sounds a bit weird until you see that in the ladies' they have toilet paper lined up along shelves in a brick-layer fashion. It's like an invitation to help yourself. This time when I was there, there was a long queue for the ladies' so I used the mens' room. When I was in the stall, this guy came in and I thought hmmm... I should wait until he leaves so I don't startle him... (the washrooms are pretty cramped) so I just looked at his shoes because the stall wall was disconcertingly low (and I'm short). Then he took off without washing his hands! Yuk! I wanted to go upstairs afterwards and try to find those shoes again to tell him off!
