I have only vis­ited Van­cou­ver once, and I recall it as one does a night­mar­ish dream. Two years ago to the day, I had set out to attend a con­fer­ence on the declin­ing state of the national dairy coun­cil, hosted in the beau­ti­ful town of Prince­ton, BC. How­ever, due to an unfore­seen cler­i­cal error, my trans­porta­tion from the ferry was way­laid, and I had to spend a night in Van­cou­ver. Skep­ti­cal of the city’s woe­ful stan­dard of accom­mo­da­tion, I decided it would be bet­ter to take to the streets and “club it,” as it is known in the local par­lance. As a result, I was afforded the oppor­tu­nity to see Van­cou­verites in their native habi­tat: pale-skinned delin­quents leer­ing at me from dark alley­ways, mus­ta­chioed hip­sters wear­ing vin­tage sports­wear, ine­bri­ated teenagers vom­it­ing against shopfronts to the glee­ful cheers of drunken hordes. They moved in packs, spit­tle fleck­ing their lips as they jeered at me, screech­ing in an unin­tel­li­gi­ble cacoph­ony from which I could dis­cern lit­tle mean­ing. Nearby, a woman lifted her skirt, expos­ing her but­tocks as a passerby hooted and hollered like a demented orang­utan; two guf­faw­ing twenty?somethings stood snap­ping pic­tures, pre­sum­ably for the pages of a per­verted per­sonal scrapbook.

As dawn extended her rosy fin­gers across the sky, I found myself care­fully step­ping over the syringe strewn streets, strid­ing briskly to the near­est coach sta­tion to escape the stale, ran­cid city air. I boarded the next bus out of town with relief, res­olutely estab­lish­ing to myself that I would never return.

Look out for BurnAfterShooting’s monthly photo series on SADMAG, or fol­low BAS on Insta­gram.