Calgary is becoming more SKETCHY every day.
Every Saturday we play basketball on a school yard court near 19th Ave and 2nd St SW. This week I arrived, and there was this van idling in the corner of the parking lot. It seemed strange, and I thought it was probably drug dealers. A little later two women arrived on bikes, presumably crack-whores. Later, a black guy in a green track suit got out of the van, got on one of the bikes and rode off with one of the girls. The other girl got in the van. We kept shooting baskets while this was all going on.
All of a sudden, we hear a screech, and the van is peeling out of the parking lot, just missing my car. A guy jumps out of the moving van, pulling up his shorts, and comes running at us with no shoes - "you got to help me, these guys are going to kill me". The van sped away, and we directed the man to a security guard we saw outside a pub crawl at the Hotel Arts. He was really scared, and it was a strange site to see him running down the alley in nothing but his socks.
We are thinking of finding another place to play. These incidents are becoming more common-place. This is a school yard with a nice playground, and nuns across the street. I guess we were lucky we weren't caught in a cross-fire.
|