Smells like winter's coming...

It was a brisk night, the kind that warns that winter isn't too far off. As I was walking to my bus stop, I smelled the familiar cold-weather scent of a fire and thought how nice it must be to have a fireplace on a night like tonight. And then I saw that it wasn't the kind of romantic fire that two lovers might snuggle in a sheepskin in front of.

No, this was the type of fire that a crowd of hungry homeless guys with fingerless gloves would hover around. Yep, a garbage can fire.



It was just sitting on the corner of a very busy intersection flaming away like RuPaul at a beauty pageant. Fortunately, one of the traffic cops called for help. Kind of. He called a city street sanitation officer who drove up in his SUV to confirm that yes, there was a fire burning in a trash can. The two of them talked for a couple of minutes, probably just to get the other's confirmation that there was a fire. Finally, the street janitor (who are we kidding with the sanitation officer moniker?) then called the fire department. With that kind of efficiency, I'm sure we have nothing to worry about in case of real city emergency.

In fact, the city bus actually made it to my stop before the fire department so I wasn't able to witness what was surely some sort of ridiculous traffic congesting shitstorm to put out what one homeless guy's urine could have easily doused.