I had never seen anything like it anywhere in my life. At least its concentrated in that area whereas in other cities it's scattered all around. Man, I stayed in gastown which I thought would be ok not knowing how close I was to the zombies. First day there, just as you noticed I saw people hitting their crack pipes in broad day light and people scattered all along every alleyway huddled around shooting up.
Needless to say I moved to burnaby shortly after that.
The whole mainland is insane now. I'm brown, jacked, and rock a man purse (yes, a murse) and damn near everyone thinks I'm a gangster when I go there. Heaven forbid I wear a Gucci or Armani t-shirt, people will walk way out of their way to go around me. Feels bad that young brown dudes get stereotyped like that, but I guess our demographic did it to ourselves. They all work 24/7. Drug market never closes. It's sad.
You should follow Kim Bolan's blog, The Real Scoop, as she covers all the G news from the mainland. She's covering that crazy Surrey Six trial where a couple of low level G's killed 6 people in a brutal and unimaginable fashion. They told some kid to pay a $100k tax for slinging in their area and he didn't pay up. So they were get him to visit them at the Balmoral and shoot him. But instead they ran into some snags and ended up grabbing innocent people and shot 6 in total including a tenant of the building and a dude fixing fucking fireplaces.
They didn't get out-of-town hitters, did it during broad daylight, kid drove his own fucking car to the scene, tons of witnesses, no escape plan, shot them all in their drug house (runners would pick up from the apartment and a couple cooks cooked crack), etc.... the stupidest and most brash hit I can think of. Usually they just pistol whip and rob each other. And the only time innocents get caught in crossfire are when big time G's are targeted in a hit but this was more senseless than ever.
I think the trial resumes on Tuesday. It's been really interesting shit. A lot of my Asian friends moved there and to Alberta to sell drugs and half of them are dead or wearing bulletproof vests. Any time they come ask me to party in Van I tell them "fuck no". Bunch of stupid wannabe gangsters. By the time they make it, they've got a hit on their head and the clock starts ticking. A couple days ago my old neighbor just ended up in the news paper. He was shot execution style in his backyard. I wonder if he still feels like a G now...