Welcome to 2016. After a break for the holidays, I’m back at it. I hadn’t expected to do much street photography in January, but, apart from one day, the weather has been extraordinarily accommodating.
At the beginning of December, I took some shots of a guy named Scott who was working the door to the Tim Horton’s on the Ryerson campus (Bond St. north of Dundas). I’d promised to give him a print so I went looking for him. A different guy was working the door. I showed him the photo. He knew Scott and suggested I go over to the Timmies at Jarvis and Dundas.
In the meantime, I had a camera slung around my neck and a willing subject standing in front of me, so we got talking, and I did what I do. This is Adam:
I showed him some of the shots and he was pleased. I think he was worried about how he’d look because he’s missing some of his top front teeth and the bottom ones aren’t anything to write home about. I wanted to send him a copy of this shot but he couldn’t think of how that would work. In the last month, he’s had two cell phones stolen, plus he can’t use his email account anymore. His ex-girlfriend is a computer programmer and, like, psycho. She’s hacked all his passwords. He’s got to figure out something else for email.
I’m not sure how we got around to it — maybe something to do with work troubles — but his health hasn’t been great. A guy stabbed him in September. Maybe I heard about it in the news? He was in the Leslieville Value Village and this guy attacked him with a steak knife. He told me to look it up, so I did. The blade broke off and was lodged in his abdomen. They rushed him to the hospital. Major surgery. It was more than a month before he was on his feet again.
I had no reason to disbelieve him, but maybe there was something Thomasish in my expression. He lifted his jacket and shirt and showed me the scars, a small one from the steak knife, and a large one from the surgery. After things healed, he got a tattoo to cover the entry wound: a Jason character with a hockey mask and a big knife.
