I am grateful for porta potties, especially when they just seem to appear when I'm really needing to pee. I have mentioned many times on these pages, Gentle Reader, how I enjoy walking through our wealthy, leafy, beautifully treed and landscaped neighbourhoods. There is of course in such rarefied climes, shall we say, a frightful lack of amenities? The local wealthy home-owners and house flippers don't really want the hoi poloi wandering and oohing and awing in their exclusive neighbourhood, and I'm sure that if they'd could legally get away with it, they would turn these into gated communities with armed guards to keep myself and the rest of the great unwashed as far away from there lovely ostentatious refuge as possible. I try to cut back on my consumption of coffee and other liquids on my Shaughnessy walking days, and this is a little bit counterintuitive, given that walking a lot necessitates water and hydration. This is where I am particularly grateful for the porta potties. There is a lot of new construction going on in this neighbourhood as beautiful heritage homes are bulldozed to make way for hulking monster houses. All those construction workers are, naturally, going to need a place to go. Enter the porta potties.
I generally will not use one of the plastic toilets if the work crew happens to be on duty that day. Sometimes they're not. And they're never padlocked. What could be more convenient?
I saw two flying shithouses just this morning. The Tate condo tower going up a block away from my place, which I love complaining about sometimes, occasionally treats us to this vision. There they were, two ascending plastic shithouses, being hauled up to the roof some twenty floors up. One was blue, the other was pink. One for the boys, one for the girls. Can it get any cuter, Gentle Reader?
The Tate tower is an ongoing nuisance. Very typical of Mayor Moonbeam's and critically endangered premier Christy the Clown Clark's vision for Vancouver. As well as the many incredibly stupid people who inhabit this city, such as someone who replied when I complained one day about living next door to construction racket, "People have to live somewhere." I didn't bother to dignify her dumb remark with a reply because fighting with a stupid person is like wrestling with a pig: you both get dirty, and besides, the pig enjoys it. I probably shouldn't even be judging this person as stupid, perhaps uniformed, or ignorant, or simply unaware of issues that matter to some people. And I have also seen this person be very warm and kind to people, other than me, of course. Still, not necessarily an excuse for being terminally dumb.
But really, they don't build these monstrosities to provide housing but investment material to (mostly) offshore shadow flippers who just help drive up the cost of housing, and their unbridled kind of greed makes this city, Vancouver, yet less affordable.
Survival guilt be damned, I am grateful that I can still live here. That I have a safe and pleasant apartment in a decent and secure building that is affordable. I am grateful for double glazing, making it possible to block out the worst of the racket by simply closing the window. I am grateful for my electric fan that cools my apartment when I have to do this. And I am grateful for my earplugs that have never failed me yet.
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