Descriptive Writing Homeless

The second my family and I stepped out of our car, I could sense that something was not right. The repulsive scent of urine had replaced the fresh sea breeze from a few miles away. To my right stood a rundown building covered with graffiti, the entrance barred like a jail cell. Inside, a man moaned and stared off into space, oblivious to his surroundings. On my other side my dad examined the parking meter next to our car while my mom nervously glanced at the man behind the bars. The meter required change, and since we had no Canadian coins my mom and I ventured to the shabby looking bar across the street. As we stepped into the building we were not greeted by the loud music and voices typical to a bar, but instead were surrounded

In the distance, we saw a large crowd and thought that it must be the Gastown shops that a local had suggested we should visit. The GPS must have been a few blocks off when it took us to the street with the man in the storefront prison. We parked the car and stepped onto the sidewalk paved with grimy red bricks. As we walked toward the crowd, we passed countless homeless people lined up along the sidewalk. They were jerking around and staring into space. A ragged looking elderly man passed us by, mumbling to himself and twitching, apparently distraught. As we reached an intersection we heard a yell and saw the man from earlier, who was moaning against the bar clad storefront, run at a man riding a bike. What he was saying was indistinguishable, but he was clearly furious at the biker. When the biker ignored him, the man reached towards his pocket. My heart skipped a few beats, fearing that he was reaching for a gun, but he instead ran off and out of

I crossed the road and his eyes followed me. As I approached him, he pointed the opening of the juice box at me and squeezed it. I jumped as I felt the cold yellow liquid splash on my legs. The man laughed and continued to glare at me through glazed eyes as I passed by. My family continued through the crowd, but by this point my legs were shaking so badly that it was a challenge to walk. We passed a large domed building another block down and although it was run down it appeared to have, at one point, been quite grand. The steps were cluttered with more of the odd twitching people who inhabited this strange place, all gazing blankly around. The sign at the street corner read East Hastings Street, and we followed it back to our car and out of this horrid