Thursday, September 12, 2013

Lotus Eaters?

This is a scene I captured through a bus window in Vancouver, one of my favourite things to do.
It looks like a pretty bleak bus stop with all the barbed wire on the fence behind...almost gives the feeling of being outside a prison.
 
 The ad is for a Canadian clothing company, Bench, but someone has stuck an announcement on it with a warning about a certain type of drug: "Are you taking a Benzodiazepine sleeping pill,tranquilizer or z-drug? Learn the devastating truth. Go to Benzo.Org.UK." The site warns of easy addiction to the drug and over-prescription by doctors. The kids in the poster looked pretty zonked out, which is what perhaps prompted the posting of the warning at this particular place, although the Benzo UK web page mostly describes middle-aged and elderly people as being addicted to sleeping pills.

 Sounds a bit of a nightmare.

8 comments:

  1. What is the background behind the wire? It doesn't look very urban. More like the land of Locust eaters. That would have been a challenge for Tennyson.

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    1. I admit to being surprised when I found this picture in my Lotus Land file. It must have been taken on Powell Street. I might have thought it was in the rough part of Hastings except for what appears to be a grassy expanse just behind the parking area in front of the white building, which I guess is some sort of small factory. Aint no grass, other than the smoking kind, to be found on Hastings.

      Locust Eaters? Perhaps a challenge for Tennyson but maybe Nathaniel West would have been up for it.

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  2. Not a bus stop I would like to wait at for a while! But eerily disturbing images for sure!

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    1. I was happy to be on the bus at this stop rather than waiting for it, myself! There are some very rough patches where the down and outs call home out in Lotus Land.

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  3. Very moody shot, Lynne. Good catch and even better capture.

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    1. Thanks, Hilary. It's not all tea and crumpets, milk and honey, out in Lotus Land. There's a disturbing underbelly to the city, exposed for all to see if one walks east rather than west from the downtown core.I had to ride through it on the bus on my way to and from North Van and I did catch quite a few disturbing images, in fact.

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  4. I often wonder how far humans need to go, to get a reaction of some kind.

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    1. With the "shock value" becoming ever harder to attain, it's frightening to think just how far that could be. I wonder if the pendulum of propriety will ever swing back in the other direction, which could be almost as shocking in its own way.

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