The line from my house to the café is roughly three blocks long, an “L” shape that has me travelling east for one-half block and south for two-and-a-bit.

This morning’s conversation ranged from the recent report on our city’s 2011 hockey riot to what some suggest will be a much larger riot south of the border during the next U.S. Presidential election. My own feeling about the hockey riot is that the youth who came into downtown from Delta, Kerrisdale, Ladner, PoCo, Richmond, Surrey and West Vancouver have little respect for the downtown culture. They resent the money they pay to shops that sell phones and clothes, and they resent those living the cosmopolitan lifestyle. Had they felt otherwise, they might have behaved differently.

Predictions of an upcoming U.S. Presidential election riot took me by surprise, though the more that was said on the topic, the more I was reminded of my time in the southern states, where a range of people, from hotel bellhops to university academics, from those of European descent to those who identify as African-American, spoke with passion and intelligence about the myth of Reconstruction, how the old wounds still bleed. From there, the conversation returned to those who came into downtown Vancouver and rioted.

My return line from the café is longer. Usually I walk west down the lane behind the 1200-block Kingsway, north at Inverness, then east for that same half-block. Sometimes I walk to the café that way, but when I do, I always take the other route home.