Dia de los Muertos (2008) Cuchillo Restaurant (2013)
Artists: Shepard Fairey & Ernesto Yerena Facebook image
Obey Giant Studio
Part One of this article profiled landowner Steven Lippman and his history of gentrification and displacement in the DTES. We now present Part Two, a look at the cultural and racial appropriation at work in Cuchillo’s marketing strategy. Together the two-part series reveals that restaurants like Cuchillo are up against a community of resistance, defined by its long history of political struggles against racism, colonialism and urban displacement.
Food without soul
“Chili con carne, now plain ol’ chili, was a harbinger of things to come for Mexican food. It was a Mexican dish, made by Mexicans for Mexicans, but it was whites who made the dish a national sensation, who pushed it far beyond its ancestral lands, who adapted it to their tastes, who created companies for large-scale production, and who ultimately became its largest consumer to the point that the only thing Mexican about it was the mongrelized Spanish in its name.”
–Gustavo Arellano, Taco, USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America
Cuchillo hawks a modernized “Anglophone” amalgamation of assimilated “pan-Latin” cuisine, cocktails, art and architecture, created for the palates of Vancouver’s most privileged. Those who can afford it are invited to experience an exoticized dining experience, and to revel in a gentrifying lifestyle in the “dangerous” underbelly of the Downtown Eastside. It’s a tiki bar for the 21st century.
But Cuchillo is much more than just another edgy dining spot: it marks a new bourgeois cultural and socio-spatial shift in the Oppenheimer district. “We’re here and we’re taking over,” is the entitled refrain from the new colonizers, like Big Lou’s butcher shop next door. Vigorously denying their complicity in displacement, these wealthy new arrivals instead proclaim themselves saviours, parroting claims by the likes of Lippman: “We rehabilitate, we re-energize, we reinvigorate, we re-use, we recycle.” Overseen by police yet safe from being stopped, frisked, or ticketed for jaywalking, just across the street from the courthouse, restaurant patrons can “stomp and spend” as if Vancouver’s last low-income neighbourhood existed solely to be their playground.
Restaurants as agents of gentrification are, unfortunately, not new to the DTES. Industry veterans Sean Heather and Mark Brand have been at it for years. But with the arrival of PiDGiN a new breed of restaurant was born, one that mixes luxury dining with open disdain towards the neighborhood that hosts it. Cuchillo is a monstrous sequel to PiDGiN, built on the ground floor ruins of one of Vancouver’s oldest immigrant neighbourhoods. In a six-block radius of Cuchillo, some of the city’s highest social and medical service demands exist — demands that are scarcely met by the proximity of nonprofit providers and government income and disability offices. Food insecurity is pervasive, causing severe nutritional deficiencies that contribute to higher rates of morbidity and mortality among residents. Remember that above Cuchillo the rooms have no kitchens — an irony that presses down hard on the conscience.
For the institutional supporters of restaurants like Cuchillo, restaurant operators are perceived as mindful mediators of the inherent social stressors and conflicts underlying the geography of the DTES. These generous benefactors have courageously decided to “set up shop” in the midst of this troubled community and do big business there. The assumption is that these urban pioneers are well-intentioned, heavily indebted, and yet deeply committed to advancing these locally-owned ventures in Vancouver’s most challenging and distressed community. This crude articulation of good intentions is akin to the white saviour complex that characterizes many of Canada’s so-called “humanitarian” international expeditions. This same mindset also insists that Cuchillo’s owners have no displacement agenda, wholeheartedly embrace the multiculturalism of the DTES, and don’t harbor any prejudices toward impoverished residents.
On the contrary, Cuchillo’s racial, class, and gender-framed aesthetic spins a crooked game of contempt, seduction and manipulation on many fronts, luring customers to consume a counterfeit experience. Like Canadian cell phone company Koodo Mobile’s racist advertising in their “El Tabador” campaign, where a four-inch-tall animated blue mask-wearing, Mexican-wrestler-slash-Latin-lover-caricature speaks crude English in an exaggerated Spanish accent to offer up cheap data plans — Cuchillo’s bizarre mix of pan-Latin food concepts, designer skulls, Mexican blown glass pendants, grey brick walls, natural skylighting, and wrestling pop art, shamelessly targets a young, white, upwardly mobile, and English-speaking demographic.
Anti-Gentrification Rally on Tuesday, June 11
Photo credit: Murray Bush, Flux Photos
Cell phones aren’t sold at Cuchillo but “cultural vulturism” is well on display, preying on patrons’ pocketbooks while playing party to the neo-colonial displacement dynamic happening in the DTES. Hollywood blaxploitation director Quentin Tarantino, of Django Unchained and Pulp Fiction fame, would feel at home charging his credit card at Cuchillo. And perhaps Mexican-American actor Danny Trejo, of Machete and Predators film acclaim (in the latter Trejo played the character “Cuchillo”) would be typecast as the thuggish, racialized head waiter if Cuchillo Restaurant were a cable T.V. series.
A few notes to these excited new owners: “Tapas” aren’t traditional Latino cuisine, and are generally frowned on as “nuevo” Spanish-Mexican fusion. Spain’s “tapas” appetizers date back to Spanish Crown colonizer Hernan Cortes and his conquest of Indigenous Mexico in the sixteenth century. Cortes Island, the exclusive, expensive and overwhelmingly white community that Steven Lippman sought to buy into, is named after the same Spanish colonizer. Even Cuchillo’s “cocktail creations” owe their origin to indigenous ethnobotany and cultivation techniques of the agave plant, which is distilled into pulque, mezcal and tequila drinks. Indigenous Latin American gastronomy, the basis of this pan-Latino cuisine, is largely derived from a people’s history of Mexico, Central and South America, Africa and the Caribbean.
An ongoing resistance ignored, replaced with racist caricature
“If Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy can remake themselves, so can Canada.”
–Andrea Mandel-Campbell, journalist and author of Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson: Rescuing Canadian Business From The Suds Of Global Obscurity
Life-sized Lucha Libre film and wrestling posters are torn and rumpled at the edges and pasted on top of each other like worn-out back alley ad postings. These are the images featured on a display wall as you walk into the restaurant, designed by Erin Sinclair. As Cuchillo’s art consultant, Sinclair riffs on a layered “street mural look” — dark, tough tones suffused in bronze lighting — projecting a subconscious fear of Mexican-masked menaces common to a white middle-class psyche. (Sinclair is a Vancouver-based film and documentary director who touts her non-profit, grassroots “cred” in socially-conscious photography; she is the co-author of “This is East Van.” For an example of a truly progressive, racially diverse, and community-based photography project, check out the Sixth Street Photography Workshop in San Francisco, California.)
This restaurant’s overarching theme of violence reproduces the mass media images of “brutal beheadings” and “drug cartel wars” that imagines contemporary Mexico as violent, racialized, and hypermasculine. This decor is self-consciously coded as exploitative entertainment, determined to deny the meaningful and respected figures of Mexico’s revolutionary history: Las Soldaderas (Mexican revolutionary women fighters), Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos, and Mariano Abarca Roblero, an anti-mining activist who was murdered in front of his restaurant in 2009 for organizing Indigenous opposition to the Calgary-based Blackfire Exploration firm in Chicomuselo, Chiapas.
The antithesis of Koodo’s racist “El Tabador” and Cuchillo’s macho motif is a compassionate, complex — and real — action hero that lives outside of Mexico’s wrestling ring. He’s known as Superbarrio Gomez. Superbarrio Gomez (aka Marco Rascon Cordova) is a long time Mexican social justice organizer who dons red tights, a cape and a red and yellow “luchador” mask to attend hundreds of political rallies and neighbourhood assemblies in Mexico City to support the struggles of oppressed people. Cordova is a performance artist, using the popularity of Lucha Libre among working-class Mexicans to inspire them to join social movements. “Superbarrio’s wrestling ring is a place of possibilities where corrupt landlords and politicians are unmasked.
As long as Superbarrio keeps his mask, we all win”, commented an observant writer for the Hemispheric Institute on Performance and Politics. By confronting gentrification head-on, Superbarrio shatters the gross commercial novelty that Cuchillo’s wrestling obsession strives to produce.
“Superbarrio Gomez” confronts riot police in Mexico City
Contemporary murals by Mexican artists that rightly condemn the deportations of undocumented immigrant Latino workers went unsolicited by the owners or the restaurant. This artwork could have thoughtfully drawn attention to those who were recently captured by the Canadian Border Service Agency on Vancouver’s Victoria Drive, and subsequently spectacularized by the Border Security reality television show. These works could fill Cuchillo’s long, dark corridor, but in so doing they would also explode its mythic brand of Mexican “imagineering.” Instead the venue is determined to eschew any vestige of protest art like that of Saenz, who unveiled an anti-corporate mining mural on January 28, 2013 in Oaxaca City, in solidarity with Idle No More’s J28 global day of action. Instead they co-opted a radical work of art, “La Calavera de Don Quijote”, by legendary Mexican printer and Dia de los Muertos international icon Jose Guadalupe Posada, to use uncredited as the background for a twitter account.
The mockery continues with indigenous artifacts supplanted by six mosaic studded, black-and-white wrestler’s skull masks. The sunken black eye sockets, severed noses, fangled teeth, and protruding cheek and jaw bones give the white-coloured base skulls a demonic, deathly grotesqueness. Cuchillo’s mask prototypes are reminiscent of Aztec mosaic death masks used in religious burials. (The Aztecs preserved skulls to honour the deceased, believing that life does not end but is on a continuum). But here Cuchillo misappropriates, sacrilegiously, and sets the skulls to a black-and-white tiled background on the restaurant’s open kitchen pass. And a lively neon-lit “calavera” (skull) has also been crudely repurposed as Cuchillo’s website trademark.
Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is an event widely celebrated in Latin America, a day with cultural roots that trace back to time immemorial in Indigenous Mexico. It continues as a celebration and affirmation of life and death, honouring the memories of dead ancestors and children with processions, with gift offerings of bread (“pan de muerto”), orange marigold flowers, sugar skulls (“calaveras de azucar”), decorative perforated paper (“papel picado”), and with photographs at cemeteries and at home made altars to awaken the spirits of loved ones lost. Cuchillo irreverently manipulates the symbols of Dia de los Muertos, converting them into a cheap Halloweenish encounter of the “macabre” or of the “exotic other.” Posada is turning over in his grave. Cuchillo guts this sacred tradition of its deeper spiritual meaning and distastefully exploits it as exotic tourism for foodies. All of this is done on a miniscule scale, nonetheless, compared to Disney, which recently sought to trademark Day of the Dead to sell merchandise.
Cuchillo’s location in the York Rooms should further trouble the conscience. Upstairs from the restaurant’s bohemian entrance, single-room-occupancy hotel tenants live on meager incomes, struggle with food insecurity, have no kitchens to cook with, share communal toilets, and definitely can’t afford to dine downstairs. Cuchillo’s high-end business presence puts most of the low-income tenants “under the knife” — and we don’t mean cosmetic surgery. According to several York Hotel tenants monthly rental rates have escalated and reached $550 per month. (The Ministry of Social Development’s monthly shelter allowance for welfare and disabled recipients is $375.) To meet the rent shortfall, many tenants are cutting back on food purchasing. An uptick in evictions has begun to increase — two current York tenants were already evicted just last weekend. Most residents’ long-term tenancy, given the forces of gentrification in the DTES and Lippman’s serial eviction history, is absolutely endangered — all so Steven Lippman can add to his already enormous fortune.
Despite evictions and displacements, the struggle for housing justice continues. For many here, much like PiDGiN Restaurant that came before, Cuchillo is a surgical strike by real estate developers against the community, with only one purpose: to displace the people living in the historic heart of Vancouver. Japantown is now the target of the same City Hall-driven displacement which destroyed Hogan’s Alley in 1970. And even now the City plots to dismantle the viaducts and develop a shiny new urban enclave it may even mockingly rename Hogan’s Alley. The violence of the original viaduct development should be recalled, not recreated.. Coupled with the imminent passage of the DEOD local area plan in November, gentrifiers have begun to sharpen their knives, ready to devour new investment opportunities. The new normal of “revitalization with despair” will cannibalize the remaining affordable housing stock, small family-run businesses, and the lives of low-income people in the DTES. And for the poorest of the poor — homeless people, IV drug users, unemployed immigrants, disabled residents, sex workers and residential hotel tenants — this despair can be lethal.
Class warfare, one plate at a time
“This idea of fusion, it’s confusion. Yes, I’m a purist. Yes.”
–Chef Carmen “Titita” Ramirez, El Bajio Restaurants in Mexico City. Mija Chronicles, “Mexican food the old-fashion way at El Bajio.” June 1, 2010 interview
Located directly across from the Georgia viaduct freeway, the Main Street off-ramps, and up the block from the Jimi Hendrix shrine, is where the Hogan’s Alley black community, black businesses, and the only black church of Vancouver once stood. Now, ironically, on these demolished ruins sits the “Hogan’s Alley Cafe”. Newly purchased by Daniel Gomez Gonzalez and Patricia Becerril Vidrio, Mexican immigrants from Mexico City and Guadaljara in 2012 to Vancouver. Gonzalez and Vidrio, the parents of two young girls, mind the shop seven days a week. Behind the cafe’s front counter menu items are chalked on an enlarged blackboard and several handwritten signs are taped to the front windows, promoting the daily specials.
Chilaquiles, a Mexican staple breakfast of eggs and salsa served on a bed of melted cheese, beans and strips of corn tortillas, is a house favorite; and of course, huevos rancheros at $7.50 and the $8.50 chicken mole enchiladas never go unordered. But business isn’t booming and times have certainly toughened in the last six months for this immigrant family. Hogan’s Alley Cafe, unlike the Cuchillo restaurant, doesn’t cater to the city’s pretentious gentry and doesn’t have a pipeline of political connections or online foodie magazine contacts to help promote its vitality.
Hogan’s Alley Cafe owners, Daniel Gomez Gonzalez and Patricia Becerril Vidrio
Daniel and Patricia’s cafe can’t approach Cuchillo’s inflated pricepoints, where “lamb bondiga mole tacos” are $14 and “wild Mexican sea prawns tapas” sells for $21. Their $5 quesadilla is definitely no match for the sophistication of what Cuchillo chef and business partner Stu Irving described in a January, 2013 Scout Magazine interview as “honest comfort food, nothing fancy.”
When asked if their struggling small business can survive this gentrifying nexus of high commercial rents in Chinatown, Strathcona and the DTES neighbourhoods, Daniel observed: “We have no choice. Our life savings are in here. Neither myself or Patricia had our studies validated when we obtained residency in Canada. I’m an accountant and my wife is a physical therapist specializing in indigenous healing methods. But that was back home, I guess. With two little girls to feed and clothe, we have to make it. This place isn’t fancy but it’s good and affordable Mexican food. Please come back to eat, and get the word out. Our livelihood depends on it.”
DTES residents and allies will host a media conference outside of Cuchillo Restaurant at 261 Powell Street this Friday, July 5th at 6pm.
Standing Water
July 4, 2013 at 5:12 pm
I like how you slid a restaurant review in at the end. Are you kids gunning to become the next Georgia Straight?
Emilia
July 4, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Yesterday I read part I of this article with an open mind, willing to hear through the arguments the authors put forth in their opposition to Cuchillo restaurant (I posted my response on FB, and just requested to repost it in this site). Today it is harder to read with an open mind. As someone with a lot of support for the work of this magazine does, I am sad to see Part II continue the path commenced in Part I from article to opinion piece, degrading into over-simplification, non sequitur and vitriol, veiled as a cultural studies critique of the establishment’s décor choices. More disturbing is the essentialist linking made between race, food, class and purity, particularly the implicit argument that only visibly identifiable racialized subjects (in this case, the trope of the “hard-working little Mexican”) are permitted to make their tightly assigned ethnic cuisine, as is use of the quote to suggest that fusion/hybridity is somehow “confused” or bad. That’s purity politics that sounds a bit too close to an anti-miscegenation argument for my comfort.
hermanos
July 4, 2013 at 6:53 pm
Lot’s of big words used to describe the “rich” in this article. The writer here clearly has know idea about how everyone has been affected by things like economics and inflation. The prices on the menu for this new restaurant are on the low end of average these days, not for fine dining, but for dining in general. But if all you know is garbage food served up by the likes of mcdonalds, and never been to a grocery store to understand the costs of food in todays economy it’s no wonder. These restaurants don’t cater to the “rich” they cater to the majority, most of whom are deeply in debt, slaves themselves.
I love these so called activists, who complain, and bitch that gentrification is destroying the community in the DTES, but offer no realistic alternatives. We all want a magic potion to be rained down to make poverty and hunger disappear, but with governments running massively in the red where is the money for this potion to come from? It seems the situation of desperate poverty has existed in the DTES for decades now, and community has done nothing to solve the problem for themselves. It seems like people like Ivan Drury, and Formerly homeless Dave are fine pointing fingers at the new enterprise opening in the area, but are not okay pointing it at the poverty pimps themselves, like those running the portland society, they have no problem with the status quo, they’re all getting six figure salaries to “manage” the problem, not to solve it. The pubs in the area are no better, and contribute nothing to the community but continued substance abuse. Yeah lets not point fingers at them when they too are part of the systemic problem. These people are amongst the rich.
So too are the drug dealers, profiting from people’s misery, the bikers, and the gangs. Do they care about where the homeless lay there heads at night, do they care how many the soup kitchens can feed? Of course not. So why not write about them? Nicolas and Richard want the easy pay day. They don’t actually want to ruffle feathers, they don’t want to point the fingers at the people who pay them for this kind of misleading rhetoric, they don’t want to point fingers at those who scare them. So then it leaves me to question, do they really care about the people they write about?
It seems to me there have been people in the DTES who have benefited from Jobs from these new businesses. Were the jobs there before? No, but they are now. The only way things are going to get better for the DTES is for a business to work with the residents. Especially when the businesses are the only ones offering up a plan for change. The activist groups just want everything done for them, they don’t even offer alternatives. Just housing, with no suggestions as to where the housing is going to come from or who is going to pay for it. Guess they forgot to check but our government is broke.
So lets blame restauranteurs. Not because they represent the rich, because they don’t, these places don’t charge 40 a plate or more like they do at Gotham, or Cioppinos. They don’t cater to the rich, they cater to the middle class at most. Of course the rhetoric isn’t as strong when you use the middle class, the vitriol and venom don’t run so thick as when it’s directed at the masses.
Nicholas Ellan
July 4, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful criticisms, Emilia. I don’t think our attempt to move past racist caricatures presented for commercial consumption to a deeper historical analysis constitutes “essentialism” or an “anti-miscegenation argument.” Your underlying accusation, that we are implying that only visibly racialized subjects are authorities on food, is a view that I definitely do not hold. The antithesis of that belief, one that I grew up with, is the multiculturalism “melting pot” popularized in the previous century. This I also reject, as the end result of a cultural “levelling” such as that is a might-makes-right situation where the historically dominant (usually white) culture, possessed of a legacy of money, land and privilege, can continue to dominate or assimilate marginalzed groups and do basically whatever they like, and the rest are caught in their wake.
I don’t believe either approach is appropriate. The legacy of racism is still with us, and if we pretend to be blind to it we will be slaves to it. As a member of the dominant culture, with a great deal of white settler privilege, I wouldn’t think it appropriate for me to, as a grotesque example, start selling bannock and smoked salmon at farmers’ markets. And if I did it in racist indigenous redface, well, I hope we would all find that totally unacceptable.
What’s different here? Mexican history and politics are a blind spot for Vancouver, apparently. That doesn’t make it OK.
Standing Water
July 5, 2013 at 2:02 am
“As a member of the dominant culture, with a great deal of white settler privilege, I wouldn’t think it appropriate for me to, as a grotesque example, start selling bannock and smoked salmon at farmers’ markets.”
Uh, really? Wow, you sound like some sort of brainwashed slave—bannock is just fried bread, which is not an aboriginal invention, same with smoked salmon. These things constitute part of our _human_ endowment. The psychological warfare conducted against you is sad, Ellis, but I think you should realize you’re a propaganda victim and get some freedom—why be a slave to stupid ideas about who is pure blooded enough to sell fish and bread? For serious?
hermanos
July 5, 2013 at 12:41 pm
So what your saying is only mexicans can cook mexican food? So I guess all white people can do from north america is open burger joints? Because thats the only authentic food most of us have access to. Strange I find your comments even more racist than what you’re trying to defend. Would you be making the same comment if it was an asian who was opening a mexican restaurant? Or is the segregation you argue for blind to all racial boundaries? If you’re going to bring race into the notion of cuisine and ownership are you also going to blast all the pizza joints in this town owned by chinese and korean and vietnamse people? Then it should also not be allowed for a mexican to open a burger joint in mexico city.
I guess your white guilt led you down a blind path, assuming that the skull being used by the restaurant was ripped off from the Dia de los Muertos image by shepard fairey, when in fact this is not a political symbol but a religious one. One that relates to not only the traditional beliefs and practices of those indigenous to mexico, but combines them with the european all saints, and all souls day.
You along with so many others who have begun to protest the restaurants in the DTES have distracted from the real issues at hand, affordable living space, and that has nothing to do with these restaurants, (most of which are operating on the tightest of margins and in fact you make more people want to go to see what the fuss is about) but has everything to do with the developers lobbying city hall to change zoning laws and affordable housing quotas. True scum of the earth people who don’t care about those living on the streets. Call these restauranteurs what you will, gentrifiers, but they’ve given more jobs to people on the streets in the last few years than have the balmoral and the low rent dive bars in the area, nor the social justice champions of the PHS too busy to protect their 200k a year jobs to really care.
Fight on my friend the poverty pimps need a voice too, the status quo must be protected at all costs, while the poor and helpless get caught in the middle. Lets not do anything to make their lives better, with sustainable jobs, because I’m sure they love the unsustainable government handouts they’re getting now.
Sally Whitehead
July 5, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Fantastic satire. The Onion could use your talents!
Adam
July 5, 2013 at 4:40 pm
The typography on the mobile version of your site needs work
Melissa
July 5, 2013 at 6:04 pm
Thank you so much, you completely made my day. The most hilarious thing I have read in ages! Ostentatious use of quotation marks, check. Wild hyperbole, check. Random name dropping, check. Quotable quotes that will make their way into my lexicon, check check check! “It’s a tiki bar for the 21st century.” “stomp and spend” “monstrous sequel” Dying! Mindblowingly funny!
Nathalie Carriere
July 5, 2013 at 8:00 pm
bravo :)
Cam
July 5, 2013 at 8:58 pm
I have a few questions for you:
1. What kind of roles would you like Danny Trejo to pursue in the future?
2. Do you think they should sell cellphones at Cuchillo? If so which provider do you think would best suit the neighbourhood?
3. If you had been the interior designer for Cuchillo what direction would you have taken?
4. Do you ever make chili at home? And if so do you have a consultant of Mexican descent on hand to ensure it’s authenticity?
5. Can you name a food more horrifyingly racist and confused than the infamous chili dog?
6. Did you know there is a place in Chinatown selling German Fusion Food that is run by White Canadians? If not did your brain just explode?
7. What is the difference between tapas and pintxos? And which is more offensive to you?
8. Do you think Spike Lee would eat at Cuchillo? Side note he is remaking the Korean film Old Boy…it this Koreploitation?
9. If someone were to serve a Taco with Kimchi on it to Quentin Taratino and Spike Lee who would be more offended? Sub question which song would each pick to express the horror of said situation on film?
10. Which item on the menu at Cuchillo would you like the try the least?
Thanks for the informative read…
Paulie Walnuts
July 5, 2013 at 11:38 pm
I think Paulie from The Sopranos said it best
http://youtu.be/u4t3s87tTWw
queenofzenk
July 5, 2013 at 11:53 pm
you are my hero, you said everything and more that I was thinking about this article but was not articulate enough to say.
Anta Gonize
July 6, 2013 at 4:30 pm
luckily the commenters above who support gentrification talk a lot but do little. of course, they don’t have to do much, since the cops and the city do it all for them. they just sit back and enjoy their meals in the circumstances that have been prepared for them. we will make your meals harder to enjoy. bon appetit, pigs.
meh
July 6, 2013 at 8:10 pm
double bravo :)
Standing Water
July 6, 2013 at 9:00 pm
Hi, Anta! In Adult Land, where people work co-operatively to, you know, do stuff, not just to whine and beg Papa Government to do stuff for them, people have this funny thing called “division of labor”, where they pay entities like police officers (by way of cities, typically) to do things for them! I know that the protesters may be unaccustomed to having money to pay people to do things for them, but I assure you, it is quite common.
Obstruction of quiet enjoyment of a meal is a breach of the peace. If I were in a restaurant and people outside were breaching my peace inside, I would demand that they be taken to the hooosegow for a timeout with all of the other inbred mongrels who cannot master the art of behaving nicely.
Linda Mix
July 6, 2013 at 11:17 pm
REALLY? The space Cuchillo is in was vacant for 30 years..what should become of the space… a crack shack?. The people that work in these restaurants are renters and hard workers.. neighbourhoods change..Wendy, if you really wanted to do anything good for this neighbourhood, you’d be working to get rid of the drug dealers, these predators who take advantage of the vulnerable you apparently “represent” I dare you to put the energy to move them out that you have put into this stupid publicity stunt you’re working on..
Give Us A Break
July 7, 2013 at 12:03 am
This could be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read. Harassment of small business masquerading as political action, intellectually bankrupt leadership/authorship and a glaring misunderstanding of what real poverty looks like in this world. Mr. Ellan appears to come from great privilege, lending even less credibility to his diatribe. I consider myself an instinctually left-leaning Canadian, but this kind of bile really makes me re-evaluate what side of the fence I want to be on.
Give Us A Break
July 7, 2013 at 12:16 am
Ellan’s review (Oct 2011) of documentary about El Bulli. For those that don’t know, El Bulli was considered one of the finest restaurants in the world…and charged about 250 euro per person. Not very socialist.
“I was lucky enough to catch this movie at VIFF this week; I guess it’s just come out and is trickling through the festival scene before a real release. (Searches turned up no posts… hope I didn’t fail.) The movie itself is a beautiful experience, but definitely aimed towards the hardcore foodie, those who have some understanding of how a restaurant works and what Adrià is up to, before entering the theatre. It is a true documentary, not some Hollywood bio-pic: it is explicitly interested in the systematic process of producing the food of El Bulli, chronicling the grueling labour required by the research and experimentation necessary to achieve the fantastic. There is basically zero narrative intervention; the film stands on its own merits as a well edited and beautifully shot compilation of how a season of El Bulli is put together, start to finish. If you were lucky enough to dine there, or never did and want to see what all the fuss is about, it’s not to be missed. The glimpse into the “laboratory” phase between seasons, as well as the incredible energy of the brainstorming sessions between Adrià and his head chefs, are worth the price of admission alone. These are masters at work, yet delightfully human. Ferran Adrià is also hilariously animated at times, provoking many explosions of laughter in the theatre with the raise of an eyebrow or an unexpected grimace.”
http://forums.egullet.org/topic/140655-el-bulli-cooking-in-progress/
I.F. Youseekay Yew
July 7, 2013 at 1:31 am
“Wow, you sound like some sort of brainwashed slave”
Wow, straight in with an ad hominem attack unless of course you can give evidence of what a brain washed slave sounds like so that we might compare.
Then a demonstration of historical as well as culinary ignorance.
“bannock is just fried bread, which is not an aboriginal invention”,
“In Canada, there is a long and ancient tradition associated with Bannock. Before Europeans settled North America, the First Nations peoples made two types of Bannock; the first was unleveled dough from ground nut and seed flower which was wrapped around green branches and cooked over an open flame alongside freshly caught fish. The second being a mash made from the dried bulb of the small Cammas plant or Indian Hyacinth. The Indian Hyacinth grew abundantly in the western plains of North America from BC, Northern California and east into Montana. Cammas Bannock was a major food source for western tribes including the Cree, Blackfoot and Coast Salish.”
http://www.centennialcollege.ca/chi/bannock
Try to get the facts before sounding off in public, it make you seem incapable.
“The psychological warfare conducted against you is sad”
Please expand on this? Who is the party conducting the warfare? Can you provide evidence of you allegation?
“but I think you should realize you’re a propaganda victim and get some freedom”
Again where is the proof? And exactly what do you mean by freedom? Freedom from what exactly? Freedom to do what exactly?
This discourse of yours is so full of holes as to be virtually meaningless, while at the same time very reminiscent of the nonsensical libertarian piffle put forth by the Koch brothers and others of the sort.
I.F. Youseekay Yew
July 7, 2013 at 1:56 am
Another one!
Look if your going to make statements provide proof.
“but they’ve given more jobs to people on the streets in the last few years than have the balmoral and the low rent dive bars in the area,”
Cite your sources! How do you know this to be a fact? Where do these statistics come from? I can say I am a magical pink unicorn, but without evidence I can not expect to be taken seriously, neither can you.
” the social justice champions of the PHS too busy to protect their 200k a year jobs”
Again provide evidence!!! Facts matter, if you are going top make allegations provide proof! How many 200K jobs are there? With what organizations? How do you know about these jobs? Can you prove their existence? An how the hell do I apply for one?
“Fight on my friend the poverty pimps need a voice too, the status quo must be protected at all costs, while the poor and helpless get caught in the middle. Lets not do anything to make their lives better, with sustainable jobs, because I’m sure they love the unsustainable government handouts they’re getting now.”
Define Poverty Pimp? Prove their existence. Are they in league with Freemasons, or shape-shifting lizards? Is this the first rung on the NWO?
“Lets not do anything to make their lives better,”
What exactly are you yourself doing to make their lives better? How often do you do it? How successful have your efforts been?
“with sustainable jobs”,
What sustainable jobs do you suggest for for dual diagnosis people with no job skills and no housing? Are these jobs immune from the neo-liberal practice of exporting all possible work to high repression low wage areas? Please tell me what jobs you are talking about and how you plan to provide training. Take as much space as you need I am sure your response will be facinating?
“because I’m sure they love the unsustainable government handouts they’re getting now.”
And you know this because of the lengthy dialogues you have had with the people while you have spent many hours unselfishly giving of yourself to make their lives better?
Right.
I.F. Youseekay Yew
July 7, 2013 at 2:42 am
Yikes here we go again.
Lets start with the first paragraph where the writer having taken issue with “Big Words” then proceeds demonstrate that the author of the original piece
“clearly has know idea about how everyone has been affected by things like economics and inflation”,
without,… wait for it…. Providing any proof.
OK, elucidate us with your clearly superior knowledge of “things like economics and inflation”, or better yet explain the relevance to your overall point?
“The prices on the menu for this new restaurant are on the low end of average these days, not for fine dining, but for dining in general.”
Maybe, maybe not, cite sources…provide some comparisons….
“But if all you know is garbage food served up by the likes of mcdonalds (sic), and never been to a grocery store to understand the costs of food in todays (sic) economy it’s no wonder”.
What has this line got to do with anything? Are you trying to insult the authors dietary habits, or culinary taste? Is this some Veiled ad-hominum thing? It’s really just awkward and slightly silly, you should have omitted it.
“These restaurants don’t cater to the “rich” they cater to the majority, most of whom are deeply in debt, slaves themselves.”
Please provide your conception of “rich”, what would a yearly income be? Please do the same for “majority”
“most of whom are deeply in debt, slaves themselves.”
And you know this because of your superior knowledge of “things like economics and inflation”? Where did you study? Truly we are lucky to have so learned a one in our midst to instruct us in our folly!
“I love these so called activists, who complain, and bitch that gentrification is destroying the community in the DTES, but offer no realistic alternatives.”
Thank god we have you with you voluminous educational credentials to help us! Please, please what should we do? Right now, shoot from the hip and tell us what would you do?
And by the way what do you mean by “realistic alternatives”? Alternative to what? To having gentrification destroy low income housing and displace the most vulnerable in society?
“We all want a magic potion to be rained down to make poverty and hunger disappear, but with governments running massively in the red where is the money for this potion to come from?”
Well funny you should ask. In America during the depression the government instituted something called The New Deal… In one word keynesianism.
“It seems the situation of desperate poverty has existed in the DTES for decades now, and community has done nothing to solve the problem for themselves.”
For anybody reading this, I have to thank you, but I can not stomach anymore of this drivel.
There is a great book called A Thousand Dreams by former Mayor Larry Campbell, Neil Boyd & Lori Culbert.
The book gives a detailed history of the DTES, how it got that way, the various things that have been done to solve the problems, I recommend it.
This post of hermanos is just too pointless to continue critiquing.
I.F. Youseekay Yew
July 7, 2013 at 2:51 am
I have a few questions for you:
1. Have you always felt the need to write pointless things?
2. Do you giggle at car accidents
3.What about someone freezing to death in the winter is interesting to you?
4. Are your parents equally vapid
5. When did you discover you had no talent for humor
6. Does the pain of animals excite you, or do you only like to see vulnerable people suffer?
I.F. Youseekay Yew
July 7, 2013 at 3:38 am
Hi Standing Water!
“In Adult Land, where people work co-operatively to, you know, do stuff, not just to whine and beg Papa Government to do stuff for them, people have this funny thing called “division of labor”, where they pay entities like police officers (by way of cities, typically) to do things for them!”
First you have a real gift for writing condescending nonsense with a libertarian slant. Think about applying to Fox, or perhaps as a Teabagger speech writer. I am sure you can get a green card if you try.
“Papa Government”? (aka The Fatherland?…a little foreshadowing?…nice touch)
This may be a surprise, but government is the result of people working co-cooperatively together for the benefit of society as a whole, not just developers and corporations. That “whine” you hear, well that’s part of the democratic process.
But, holy doodles, your writing is predictable, dull and authoritarian. It’s almost perfect!
You give us some inane and pointless civics lesson, a little dig at protesters for not having money, boilerplate stuff, but do try to work in something about how the protesters have cell phones and try to reconcile with hermanos (sic) that some of them are making huge salaries.
Don’t worry about inconsistencies, just the same cliches will do.
“If I were in a restaurant and people outside were breaching my peace inside, I would demand that they be taken to the hooosegow (sic) for a timeout with all of the other inbred mongrels who cannot master the art of behaving nicel (sic)”
OMG, I peed a little! You got me with that last one! Funny, Funny stuff
Is there a book, or course on how to write like a self-important, egotistical blowhard?
” I would demand that they be taken to the hooosegow (sic)”
Ah priceless, of course you would “Daddy” Warbucks, of course you would.
” inbred mongrels”
And for the big finish, you channel Joseph Goebbels, nothing like reducing your targets to subhuman status to end a post on a high note!
Stay classy Standing Water.
jeenyus_05
July 7, 2013 at 12:50 pm
This was an interesting article but the tone, and the degrading without really understanding is sad to see. LIke I said very interesting, and very thought provoking. But to really understand this is more complex then any of us really know and its goes so far up the chain.. Whether, I ( a fairly well off vancouverite, who does not support gentrification ) or Homeless Dave like it its going to happen. We all need to accept it and make the best of it and find a solution which takes on a path to a better future faster. Picketing these restaurants does no good, picketing the city hall might do something.
Next off ( now I speak from Chef/soon to be restaurant owner) this article speaks to a very interesting point of view, in regards to culturally being a part of the community. These restaurants need to take a look around and maybe do some research and take some Canadian history courses, because these spaces are important to the people, the area and the history. Say for example you take an old diner , why would you think a cheesy mexican restaurant would really be successful??? The context of the space within the space within the neighborhood within the province, within the country, within the world is something to not be taken so lightly. This is just as important as displacement of people but the losss of history and culture that we as such a young country need to build and keep alive for many years to come!!!
all in all its not up to the restaurant owners or the protesters, or the displaced. It falls on everyone to start accepting that is going to happen culturally, humanly and every other way we can think. People should accept it move on and choose your battles!!!!
much love Vancouver stay strong!
Anti-Developer
July 7, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Very well said. The kids who write this stuff are just repeating off the shelf slogans the have heard from slightly older kids. They themselves are nice little middle class WASPs themselves. Had any of them actually lived in the DTES, they might have a different opinion.
Erin
July 7, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Such good questions, Cam. I, personally, just had “tacos” my husband and I made from a vegan grilling cookbook written by a wealthy white man–ack! Now I’m not sure whether we need to throw them up, or if acknowledging our mistake and recycling the book immediately is good enough. Hmm.
Mahogany
July 7, 2013 at 2:34 pm
Could the language of this article be any more pedantic? How ridiculous that you’re choosing to vilify small business owners instead of fighting for real solutions such as detox on demand and supported housing run by experienced professionals rather than hipsters with tattoos and power hungry poverty pimps (well said hermanos!). A vibrant neighbourhood is an eclectic neighbourhood, and mid-range restaurants are a wonderful way to enliven any community. As I said, fight for housing and health services to halt gentrification if you really want to make a difference in the DTES. Leave honest, hard working small businesses alone.
Maria
July 7, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Are you suggesting that DTES residents are not hard workers? Cuchillo is threatening to displace hundreds if not thousands of hard working renters living on the streets, in the SRO’s and shelters surrounding the restaurant. The injustice to one hard working business owner versus the injustice to thousands of hard working people. Who is perpetuating injustice? The answer is all too clear.
And of course, it is not a matter of hard work. Everyone should have the right to housing and the right to stay in their communities and homes.
There is A LOT of alternatives between upscale restaurants and “crack shacks”. Cuchillo’s space could for example be a space that was inclusive to the people who live in the neighborhood. An inclusive space could be anything from a residents lounge, community space or a shelter space. It could even be a mexican diner or shop, affordable and inclusive to people living on welfare and less. This means a space where people are not stigmatized and discriminated based on their race, sex, gender, class and ability (including ability to pay). Anything that does not fit the above criteria, will displace people unless higher inclusionary zoning requirements are introduced, along with rent regulation and new resident controlled social housing units are built in the DTES. Until then, Cuchillo contributing to displacement is A FACT.
Ps. It could also be used as a crack shack, an “insite” for crack users is in fact a much needed space in the neighborhood. In fact it might be the best alternative use of the space, good suggestion Linda!
Maria
July 7, 2013 at 8:25 pm
You suggest we should accept the violence of evictions and displacement. Why? Is it a choice for everyone? When should we “choose” to accept? What violence should we accept and what violence should we refuse to accept? Should we only protest violence against ourselves, our family and friends or should we also protest violence against strangers? Is the eviction of thirty people acceptable and the eviction of 100 people unacceptable? Where do we draw the line? Do we have to wait and see how many people get displaced before we protest? How should we measure the number of people evicted and displaced?
It makes no sense to me. People are being displaced. The other day, a woman from a hotel a block away from Cuchillo told my friend that there had been 14 evictions in her building the last months. Why is that ok? Why is Cuchillo’s profit more important than the lives of people?
I met a chef the other day who had found a job elsewhere in the city and quit his job at a gentrifying business. He recognized that gentrification was contributing to displacement and he did not want to be part of it. He made a choice. People who are getting priced out, pushed out and policed out don’t have a choice — they are forced out. Gentrifying businesses can choose their locations and Cuchillo choose to locate in Vancouver’s poorest neighborhood. If the consequence of their choice is that people are protesting against the threat to their homes and communities – it strikes me as a fair and just consequence of a very bad choice.
Patty Bushwaugh
July 7, 2013 at 8:55 pm
Given the support the pickets regularly get from low-income resident passersby on the street, that assertion might be wrong.
Patty Bushwaugh
July 7, 2013 at 9:32 pm
It’s been said elsewhere, but apparently it needs to be endlessly repeated as people emerge blinking from the darkness of their caves: people have been working towards the improvement of the DTES for well over a decade. This work has involved lobbying City Hall, BC Housing, and other institutions that have the power to affect policy changes that would improve the lot of DTES residents. Many of those involved in the pickets have also been involved in this broader-based work.
The city and the province ignores them, but the work continues, because it must. Still, an unsuccessful strategy isn’t worth continuing without modification. Hence the pickets.
Sure, these men have a legal right to set up a morally bankrupt business in the space below a deteriorating SRO, just as the aspirational middle class has a legal right to patronize it, just as residents and their supporters have a legal right to picket it.
Besides, it’s been shown (repeatedly, and in an easily researchable way) that gentrification has serious negative impacts on the health and well-being of the people who face the displacement it causes. Want to improve the health of low-income DTES residents? Stop gentrification.
Standing Water
July 7, 2013 at 9:47 pm
“government is the result of people working co-cooperatively together for the benefit of society as a whole, not just developers and corporations.”
Bullshit. The Government _is_ a Corporation, a Politic Body, and these Politic Bodies are constituted by Developers and other Illuminated Individuals whose Messianic duty is to wield the swords of material and spiritual justice o’er the land—FOR GREAT JUSTICE! The franchises that the poor enjoy are at most a necessary evil, given them in order to bind them by their representatives to the statutes that are created for their benefit. I mean, let’s face it, it’s not like these protesters could write statutes. Do any of them even have JDs?
You know, that’s another thing. These kids should go write the LSAT, get into Law School, get a JD, get to work. I have heard it from a lawyer who did lots of work at Guantanamo Bay, for the captives, that people who are not lawyers are basically useless morons who’re lucky the lawyers put up with them. But, then, I am not a lawyer, so I might not have understood her. Anyway, if you really care about fighting the good fight, get a JD. If you can’t get a JD, you’re probably too stupid to be very effective, anyway.
“But, holy doodles, your writing is predictable, dull and authoritarian. It’s almost perfect!”
“—De gustibus non est disputandum;—that is, there is no disputing against Hobby-Horses” (Sterne)
IMO you’ve hit the nutty core of leftwing politics, which is typically rooted in a normative conception of aesthetics, like there are “right” and “wrong” hobby-horses.
“Every author has a way of his own in bringing his points to bear;—for my own part, as I hate chaffering and higgling for a few guineas in a dark entry” (Sterne)
You may enjoy chaffering and higgling—de gustibus &c., old boy! But it is ridiculous to get all schoolmarmish as you are with me and everyone else you’ve replied to, as though they have some obligation to live up to your norms. Freedom means never having to obey you, “I.F. Youseekay Yew”
You tip your whole hand with your use of “sic.” If only the entire world were a master-slave clusterfuck primary school with you as teacher, eh?
Standing Water
July 7, 2013 at 9:55 pm
“The other day, a woman from a hotel a block away from Cuchillo told my friend that there had been 14 evictions in her building the last months. Why is that ok?”
Because the fee-holder is not the slave of his tenants. Why do you believe in enslaving landholders? Slavery is wrong.
Nicholas Ellan
July 7, 2013 at 10:31 pm
Yes, world-class dining is possible without displacing a single person. I do wish Vancouver would follow Spain’s example.
Cam
July 8, 2013 at 8:31 am
1. Yes…when inspired by pointless articles.
2. No.
3. Real solutions to this problem interest me rather than blaming small business owner.
4. No but they do like tacos so…maybe?
5. You have enlightened me.
6. No, and human suffering does not excite me either.
Standing Water
July 8, 2013 at 9:03 am
“Shallow and pedantic.”
–Peter Griffin
Stunned Mullet
July 8, 2013 at 10:40 am
“Are you suggesting that DTES residents are not hard workers? Cuchillo is threatening to displace hundreds if not thousands of hard working renters living on the streets, in the SRO’s and shelters surrounding the restaurant.”
I am suggesting if you rely on SRO’s and pay $400 a month on rent , you aren’t working hard enough. Further more , how can you rent a suite , yet still be “living on the streets”. That would mean , you don’t work at all.You are either in your SRO or on the streets , not working. Aside from that why is anyone entitled to stay in their communities and homes ? Last I checked if I don’t pay rent , I don’t get to stay in my home. Also if I quit my job and take on lesser hours , I’d be priced out of my community. Are you saying you’d pay for me to stay where I prefer in a suite I can’t afford because I have been there before and don’t want to move ? As for displacement. How is moving from the DTES to say Burnaby , the worst thing ever ? Entitlement is ridiculous. None of us are entitled to anything.
Terry Yauk
July 8, 2013 at 1:51 pm
like a good serving of chili this article will pass and exit from the appropriate passage
Dave Rouleau
July 8, 2013 at 6:19 pm
Written on facebook from the building managers at 259 Powell Street:
I haven’t said to much about this new project Dave Rouleau and I have taken on but the more time I spend in Vancouver, particularly the DTES – the more I realize how corrupt our “system” has become. Within the last few months I have gone to community meetings, hosted public events and observed the drug culture with inquisitive on unbiased eyes. Our building is in the midst of being transformed from a drug dealing induced operation to affordable SRO units for the working poor, students, artists, persons with disabilities, and anyone who is looking for a clean and safe place to live in the DTES. People like you and me who are just trying to make it in this world and don’t want to worry about stepping on a fucking used needle that our tax dollars are paying for – tax dollars that enable drug use and dealing rather than going towards the rehabilitation and detox centres for people with addiction….money that could go towards proper care, integration, and localization…
Last Friday I finished my shift and walked over to our new home and was greeted by 60 protestors who were screaming out inaccurate information and targeting the new restaurant on the main floor of our building. Yes, these are the same people that you have seen in front of the Pidgin on various media outlets – the same people that trespassed into our building – the ones who get a stipend to protest buildings that were once decrepit, unliveable, and boarded up which have been remodelled by people who have worked hard to make a living for their families – buildings where people who come to live here from war torn countries have to reside with drug dealers, prostitution rings and an incredible amount of illegal activity.
The best part was when one of our residents stormed down and screamed “You don’t give a shit about the people who live in this community – I have to suck cock in ten minutes to make money, get back in you cars and drive home to Kistilano”.
I want to invite these protestors to spend a night at 259 and watch the line of people neatly filed in the back alley in a line-up longer than I have seen at any night club to pick up their fix for the night and stay in the morning to help clean up the needles we find each morning in the bathrooms, hallways, and every nook and cranny…….come to one of our events where we sit with people who live on the streets and in other SRO’s – people who we know by name, story, and treat as human beings rather commodities or problems or pretend to fight for our own financial benefits…
If you want to protest something go stand in front of a fucking McDonalds or Walmart – demand nutrition for the poor and building community values through interaction, localization and uncovering the truth and reality of the situation…. Monika Benkovich
Mahogany
July 9, 2013 at 6:22 pm
So are you saying that just because the gentrification of the DTES has not yet been completely halted by decades of hard work by people (I’m assuming) like yourself, and myself– I have lived and worked in the DTES for many years– that we should now try a different tactic? Harassing and protesting small businesses? If modification of your tactics includes shifting your focus from creating safe housing to closing down restaurants, I think you and those that are picketing have made a poor choice. Let’s say you succeed in shutting this restaurant down. What then? It stays vacant for another ten years? Congratulations! The neighborhood stays exactly the same as it was before. Is this really a step in the right direction?
The opening of a small local business does not necessarily equal loss of community, homes, or gentrification.What’s interesting is that if you take the time to talk to people who live in the area, and the building in question, they really couldn’t give a rats ass that this or any other restaurant has opened within a ten block radius, except if maybe it was a Cactus Club or big box corporate eatery. The ‘deteriorating’ SRO you mention is actually being converted to safe affordable housing. No one is being evicted. This, coupled with the small restaurant on the ground floor, is an example diversification not gentrification. I hope you and the protesters can start to understand the difference and turn you attention to the larger issue at hand: preserving affordable housing, healthcare and community support for those who really need it.
No_ones_slave
July 9, 2013 at 6:31 pm
And as they were evicted, instead of protesting the evictions people were protesting a freakin’ restaurant. Stay focused people! Residents are not being displaced because this restaurant is opening. They are being evicted because our government doesn’t give a shit about affordable housing. Protest Town Hall, or at the buildings where people are actually being evicted!
Elle
July 10, 2013 at 8:12 am
Have your voice and fill your boots. If folks care enough to be involved they would make time to go to the City’s DTES Planning open house :
http://vancouver.ca/news-calendar/downtown-eastside-local-area-plan-open-house—july-18.aspx
Ron Sackler
July 14, 2013 at 3:37 am
Why don’t we put our collective energy into more important issues like the upcoming Public Transit referendum that the premier has imposed on the province because she knows it can’t win and thus transit funding will be gone. That to me is something that is worth fighting for.
Charles
July 14, 2013 at 10:50 am
I wonder if this guy realizes that his ridiculous, nonsensical post will actually incite more people to try Cuchillo’s and, unfortunately, for no reason other than this bigoted post, I will probably never enter Hogan’s Alley.
Charles
July 14, 2013 at 10:59 am
Ugh. The pro anti-gentrification folks make my brain hurt. Their logic is flawed at best and more commonly asinine.
Charles
July 15, 2013 at 11:29 am
There is affordable housing. It’s in Chilliwack. Move there if you can’t afford Vancouver. I can’t afford Vancouver and I make a good salary. It’s called supply and demand.
Nicholas Ellan
July 15, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Dave and Monika, I would urge you to spend more than a few months before you decide what the communities in the Downtown Eastside “need” – or better yet, listen to them, as there are many community leaders who have been working on improving conditions for residents for quite literally decades.
The approach of “cleaning up” spaces and pushing out drug addicts has never worked. We know, as we’ve been trying it for almost a hundred years. It criminalizes poverty and moves drug users away from services they need, which increases violent crime as well as overdose deaths. I can remember the 90s where overdose deaths were commonplace, sadly. It took so long for the community to win the fight for Insite, which has been a miracle in terms of public health, for everyone, even you and me. Yes drug use is unsightly, and yes addiction can be miserable, but the tools to deal with these are not the tools of law and order, money, and real estate development. Your heart appears to be in the right place but your actions will only make things worse.
Charles
July 15, 2013 at 3:16 pm
Nobody is saying “Deny these people services.” I just want those services to get moved out to Chilliwack.
Nicholas Ellan
July 15, 2013 at 3:20 pm
Right now Vancouver is the only city in Canada providing these kinds of services. It’d be great if people in other municipalities also supported harm reduction, but it looks like the federal government is determined to make that impossible for the time being.
Charles
July 15, 2013 at 3:28 pm
How about a container ship? Just leave them out in the Vancouver harbour and the services can be shuttled out as required.
Lily
July 16, 2013 at 12:03 am
well said maria. developing every inch of the DTES harms the community’s most vulnerable. leaving things as they are continues to harm the community’s most vulnerable. there is another way.
Mike Fox
July 16, 2013 at 3:27 am
It is astounding that some people are hanging on to the shit storm of the DTES as if it is something to be proud of. Vancouver has a great soul–I don’t mean the shiny new money of empty condos and Louis Vitton–but it has nothing to do with that hell hole of the DTES. Boo hoo, some people who work for a living may move in. Boo hoo, some chefs are opening restaurants.
Standing Water
July 16, 2013 at 4:04 am
Yeah, if only every city in the world had a bunch of COPE/NDP Poverty Pimps!
There is very effective treatment for addiction. It involves scopolamine, which is used to interrupt the addiction in an inpatient setting. This was well-documented in the 1930s, but now it is not considered politically correct to even offer addicts the “cold turkey” cure. Instead, it is much better for the pimps to addict them to methadone. And I bet we’d have all sorts of drugs better than scopolamine for interrupting addictions–ibogaine, ayahuasca, mescaline, psilocybin, etc.
But for some reason rather than promoting drug legalization, the pimps focus on “services” for addicts and a treatment model that involves helping the addicts fix, fix, fix instead of getting clean.
Given the idea that “fitness is fascism” displayed elsewhere on this site, I think we have a serious problem in this City with uncaring motherfuckers whose sole aim in life is to collect fat paycheques all the while telling themselves how they’re some sort of savior of humanity.
We do _not_ need to reproduce the failed Vancouver DTES experiment anywhere else. We need real drug treatment, not programs designed by poverty pimps to supply themselves with a captive population of “manageable” methadone-heads.
Standing Water
July 16, 2013 at 4:06 am
I don’t believe they have any idea. They’re used to University/Social service echo chambers where anyone who doesn’t drink the koolaid (not the good kind) is ostracized/failed out. You must understand, these people are _incapable_ of being bigoted—they are simply too intelligent, you know.
kenji
July 19, 2013 at 9:55 am
Not following your logic there.
Re pushing out the addicts not working:
I moved to Mt Pleasant and joined with some neighbours in cleaning up a house and pushing out the drug addicts by getting City Hall to yank the owner’s rental licence. It certainly worked for people who wanted to live in a safe area. I don’t know if it worked for the drug addicts, but because they were a hazard (people coming in and out at all hours, garbage, screaming, and violence).
Re the tools to deal with addiction:
With or without a Cuchillo or Pidgin, the open air drug market, intense stench of urine and alleys behind Caroll, Abbott etc, the general physical condition of the addicts should be telling you that the DTES is full of people who are either not getting or using the services for drug users.
I honestly think that ‘displacing’ addicts into involuntary psychiatric treatment using s.22 of the Mental Health Act is the right thing to do – if it was your kid, you’d insist that they get rehabbed whether they like it or not. It’s one thing to talk about harm reduction if they can manage their highs — the DTES is not an example of a community of people managing their highs.
Once the addicts are in residential care, then it would be legit to refer to the low income community of seniors, students, people on disability as being candidates for supported social housing. If you canvassed them – ie the DTES minus the VANDU network – I wonder how much anger and opposition to gentrification you would really find.
In any case, it is irrelevant to the healthiness of the drug addict if there is a new restaurant that he cannot afford. It was an empty building before, so he could not dine there. Now there is a new restaurant, but because he puts all his money up his arm, he cannot dine there. Same diff.
You want to save lives, futures, human dignity — fight drug addiction.
ad
July 20, 2013 at 3:00 pm
this is a messed up conversation…
i have lots of problems with the attitudes in both the original article and the various responses below.
it’s a shame when, as i think most here can agree, there is general agreement about not wanting to contribute to the various forces that displace and disgrace the people living in the DTES.
but the agreements and disagreements can’t be made productive when we levy extremes against extremes.
insults are not radical and so neither is this conversation.
i hope we have better luck next time…
nic rickard
July 26, 2013 at 6:21 pm
how many dtes residents work at this restaurant?
Maria
July 26, 2013 at 10:08 pm
You are right, it has been really successful in inciting ignorant people from across the city. While picketing I have meet racists, poor bashers, classists, sexists – you name it. Several times I have heard customers advocate for “social darwinism” and social cleansing. Aside from the fact that it is contributing to displacement, it is not the type of people I would want to ear dinner along side.
Maria
July 26, 2013 at 10:08 pm
none
Standing Water
July 27, 2013 at 5:57 am
Only slaves need to “provide proof.” That is a master-slave relation. Sorry, teacher, school’s out for summer.
Charles
July 28, 2013 at 3:35 pm
how many dtes residents work
at this restaurant?FTFY.
jason botterill
July 28, 2013 at 9:39 pm
Spains example??? In case you havent been paying attention.. Spain is in a financial meltdown with over 60 % unemployment. More then half of everyone between the ages of 20 – 30 do not have jobs, or even jobs that are available. The housing market is in collapse, so even if though real estate is at all time low, people still cannot afford to live here without access to work. Theres no displacement per se, but everyone is leaving. I sure hope Vancouver or Canada does not follow suit!.
Nicholas Ellan
August 8, 2013 at 6:55 pm
That’s your opinion but it’s not based on fact; mental health and medical professionals and addiction specialists all agree that addiction can’t be “fought” it needs to be treated, as an illness.