Cheapness in Gastown

In the interests of being cheap, I am staying at the dodgiest hostel in Vancouver. It's located in Gastown, which is Vancouver's joint upscale tourist/homeless district. Exactly how and why it can fulfil both these roles is still a bit of a mystery, but it's impossible to avoid either being asked for change or seeing man-sized bipedal mooses dressed as mounties in the entrances to tourist shops at any time of the day or night you should venture out.

Despite the cobbles, Gastown is within easy wheeley-suitcase dragging distance of Waterfront Station where the SkyTrains terminate.

My room was the cheapest I could find on hostelbookers.com back in Bromley. It's at the top of the stairs in an old building next to the Hotel Europe, and has no external windows, just a big hole into the building's main staircase which is partially covered from the other side by a tasteful wall hanging. The staircase somehow channels all the sound from everything that is happening in the building into my room.

I suspect this room was a broom closet in a not-too distant life.

Also, I can only get wi-fi on my laptop if I sit either in the laundry or halfway out a window at the end of the corridor. Whenever I do either of these things, the man who is in charge of the hostel likes to come and talk at me about his 'forks', which seem to be some sort of internet investment scheme. This conversation is both incomprehensible and impossible to escape, as whenever I try to leave he sees it as a cue to start on a new and entirely unrelated topic. So far these have involved the government's secret conspiracy to grow algae in Lake Ontario in order to reduce global warming.

I am scared.