by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

"Got some weed?" demands a high-pitched voice approaching the city's most celebrated corner. Three white preteen boys, the leader brandishing his best streetwise scowl, are trying to score at Peel and Ste-Catherine. Their question is directed to a stylish-looking African. The African loudly and laughingly repeats the tots' request.

A few minutes later, the two parties are talking. Discussing something.

It's one of a million daily scenes that play out every day at the city's most fabled crossroads. The soul and centre of the city sits in the shadow of the Dominion Square building, which I can never look at without thinking about its former owner, whose son busted out of drug rehab about 15 times. The corner may look stately but a lurid world lurks beneath.

Across the street, at the spot where they mysteriously knocked down a building only to put one up that looks exactly like it, sits the Roots clothing store. A clerk used to tell me all about how a scowling, self-important Enrique Iglesias came in with a big posse of bodyguards - nobody knew who the hell he was - and how Vanessa Williams once showed up with a splotchy complexion. Managers would spring out the freebies for the famous. That always maddened me.

The northwest corner has been long claimed by a gimpy woman kneeling or slumped like a Calcutta beggar on the sidewalk, repeatedly playing an atrocious version of "Yellow Submarine" on a recorder. There was talk of deporting her but somehow I suspect she'll outlive us all.

Downstairs is the Peel Pub, a spot that was always empty until the jock crowd realized it wasn't actually a gay hangout as rumoured. It's a madhouse, also probably the best place to drink beer for breakfast.

Peel and Ste-Catherine is the gateway to adventure, it's everything to all people, but to me it's remarkable as home to a secret world of hustle. I have enough amateur streetsmarts to spot the gym-bag-toting strippers strolling to one of many nearby clubs, but it takes a trained eye - and this I don't have - to spot the true hustlers.

One friend recently parked at the famous corner. He tapped bumpers with the vehicle behind and soon an impeccably polite young man tapped him on the shoulder. "Sir," he said humbly, "I think when you bumped my car it caused a little damage." The two went over and inspected the old bumper. Sure enough there was a tiny hairline fracture evident on the bumper. The apparent transgressor offered the kid 20 bucks to compensate for the damage. The polite kid thanked him before walking away with a smirk. "I realize now," says my friend, "that it wasn't even his car."

In the booze shop, I stoop to study rum labels as three black guys converse with another acquaintance whose feverish rap alternately taunts and befriends the trio. "Yeah, you come out, we'll line up some pool and I'll beat you bad, but I won't play for less than 90 bucks a game, and I gotta go now, be seeing you around, and happy birthday to your friend there." He's gone in a whoosh, leaving the trio to dissect his speech.

The new downtown hustlers are perpetuating a long local tradition that has thrived at least since 1920, when Kid Oblay and Jockey Fleming started a five-decade competition to be "Mayor of Peel and Ste-Catherine." The duo - scalpers, philosophers, fast-cracking comedians - became rivals apparently at age 10. Jockey borrowed money from Kid and invested in dark sunglasses and pencils and promptly started posing as a blind child begging for cash. The Kid allegedly never forgave him for neglecting to repay the startup loan.

The two must be dead by now. Fleming told writer Don Bell that he wanted to be buried in an Irish cemetery. "That's the last place the devil will look for a Jew. I'll be selling hockey tickets, $35 a pair." The two fast-talking characters are gone but the lively hustle at Peel and Ste-Catherine lives on.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca