DTES

Exploring the DTES – Main Street Barber Shop

by Eve Lazarus on May 3, 2014

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get in on a tour exploring several DTES buildings with Judy Graves, Tom Carter and John Atkin. Judy spent decades advocating for the homeless, and this is her stamping ground. Tom lives and paints from his downtown loft, and John lives in Strathcona, so I’m the only one from the ‘burbs (and with a driver’s licence as it turns out.)

Originally the Carnegie Library built in 1901 — Carnegie Community Centre at Main and East Hastings

We started at the Carnegie Community Centre, which is an amazing place that I’ve driven past thousands of times, but never ventured inside. I fell in love with Ken Clarke’s sculptures that are on display there. Ken is one of the artists that works out of the Hungry Thumbs Studio, housed at 233 Main Street, between a couple of rooming houses with reputations as former brothels and crack joints. The building has 10 of Ken’s gargoyle-like heads lined up above the door.

Jeff Burnette, a glass blower, gave us a tour of the studio. Jeff has a huge collection of toy ray guns, which makes sense when you see his art—dozens and dozens of brightly coloured glass ray guns. There are artists working in neon, in clay, cement and plaster. Downstairs are the incredible mosaics and stained glass works of Bruce Walther.

But what was really fascinating was the building’s history.

233 Main Street — Barber shop mirror still intact 70-odd years after the last haircut

Number 233 Main first appears in the city directories in 1913, the offices of A.M. Asancheyev, real estate agent. Most of the store operators along Main (which changed its name from Westminster Avenue in 1910) were Japanese, and the downstairs was occupied by a series of barbers over the years.

Long before it housed mosaics and signage, the space was a barber shop and bath house. Although about seven decades have gone by since it was used for that purpose, the white tiled floors are still intact, the barber shop mirror is still there and remnants of the bath house remain.

For more on the DTES

The Regent Hotel

The Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret

Tags 233 Main Street, Bruce Walther, Carnegie Community Centre, DTES, Hungry Thumbs Studio, Jeff Burnette, John Atkin, Judy Graves, Ken Clarke, Tom Carter

Repurposing Vancouver’s Icons–The Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret

by Eve Lazarus on April 19, 2014

You would think that if a couple of young entrepreneurs wanted to bring business to the Downtown east side, one that offered a safe haven from the streets, served healthy, affordable food, and breathed life back into an old icon, the City and the myriad of agencies that have made an industry out of the poor and troubled would be there to help.

Well no, they’re not.

109 East Hastings Street — John Atkin and Malcolm Hassin outside the former Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret

Andrew Turner, 33, and Malcolm Hassin, 30, opened SBC Restaurant last December on East Hastings, near Main Street. They tell me it’s the only indoor skateboard park in Vancouver.

The building has great vibes. As the Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret, the outside of the building used to have an 800-pound neon sign featuring a Buddha with a jiggling belly. The plan, says Malcolm is to get the restaurant back up and running, and grow fruit and vegetables on the roof of the building. They want to bring live music back to the venue.

The Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret was an integral part of Vancouver’s music scene from 1952 until the early 1990s.

The Vancouver Heritage Foundation named the building one of Vancouver’s 125 places that matter last year, and according to the heritage plaque, in the ‘50s it was the Smilin’ Buddha Dine & Dance. In the ‘60s it was part of the touring soul and rock music circuit, and in the late ‘70s it became part of the punk and alternative music scene.

Jimi Hendrix played there, so did Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, DOA and Jefferson Airplane. 54-40 named their 1994 release after the place, bought the sign and restored it.

The building has sat derelict for the last 20-odd years, another blight on the DTES. It’s still no beauty queen, but give the current business owners a break and that will also change.

When I was there on Thursday there was a steady stream of mainly young male customers. Malcolm says that customers range from eight to 56, and there’s a bunch of “older skater dudes” in their 50s that come once a week, plus a lot of people from the film industry.

Like everything in the building, the skateboard ramp is completely salvaged and repurposed. The ramp is part Expo 86, part donation from skateboarding rock star Kevin Harris, and partly built from several ramps scavenged from various eastside backyards.

BC Hydro wants $30,000 from the guys for an immediate upgrade.

The City is jerking them around about a business licence and stopped them serving food. It’s bureaucracy at its stupidest and I bet the Buddha’s smilin’.

Vancouver’s Early Red Light District and the Heritage House Tour

by Eve Lazarus on May 11, 2013

There are some beautiful homes on the Vancouver Heritage House Tour this year—a couple of old Shaughnessy manors, a quirky turreted terra cotta and stone house in Mount Pleasant, and a colorful Edwardian on Kitchener Street, but the one I am most interested in is a tenement building in the DTES.

One of 12 homes featured on the Vancouver Heritage Tour — 313 Alexander Street

The house at 313 Alexander Street first appears in the city directories in 1907 built for Yonekichi Aoki, and listed as a Japanese boarding house. Aoki was a contractor for the CPR, and this area near Powell Street was part of a bustling Japan town district.

By 1912 the area was changing as madams were chased out of Dupont Street (East Pender), bounced through Shanghai and Canton Alley, and evicted from Shore Street (100 block East Georgia). Alexander Street—especially the 500 and 600 blocks—became Vancouver’s flashy new red light district.

I wrote about the Alexander Street brothels in Sensational Vancouver.

Mugshot of a prostitute arrested in Victoria in 1912

Brothels went up at a rapid pace, either bought or built by madams such as Dolly Darlington (500 Alexander), Lucille Gray (504 Alexander) and Alice Bernard (514 Alexander). Marie Gomez even had her name spelled out in mosaic tile inside the door at 598 Alexander, unfortunately now a vacant lot. The brothels were luxuriously decorated and furnished, the prostitutes beautifully dressed, and the work earned the “inmates” a liveable income, something almost impossible to achieve as domestics, seamstresses or florists—a few of the only jobs open to women.

A police crackdown on the brothels in 1914 gave the madams—who were mostly American—the choice between six months in prison or a return to the States—and prostitution quickly disappeared from the area.

The boarding house at 313 Alexander stayed in the Aoki family until WW2 when the Japanese were interned and their properties confiscated.

Charles Haynes, a West Vancouver architect, bought the building in 2006 and proceeded to renovate 24 rooms into Single Room Accommodation as a tribute to his son Ross, 19, who died from a drug overdose in 2000. The original fir floors, tongue & groove panelling still remain, as well as the ghost lines of several doors that led from a room now used as a kitchen, leading to speculation that it may have been part of the red light district.

The 11^th Annual Heritage House Tour is on Sunday June 2 from 10 am to 5 pm. Tickets are $40 and available through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation.

Tags 313 Alexander Street, 500 Alexander, 504 Alexander, 514 Alexander, 598 Alexander, Alice Bernard, Dolly Darlington, DTES, Lucille Gray, Marie Gomez, Yonekichi Aoki

Save on Meats creates food currency for the DTES

by Eve Lazarus on December 15, 2012

Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is a warehouse for the desperate: filled with crackheads, hookers, chronic alcoholics and the mentally unhinged. Drive down Hastings and it looks like a Dostoevsky novel. There are drug addicts shooting up in the alleys, pawn shops, scuzzy hotels and a myriad of agencies trying to unravel the mess.

This sketchy area—one of the poorest in the country—is getting a makeover, but not everybody thinks that’s a good thing.

The Pantages Theatre, a once beautiful building that told the story of early vaudeville in Vancouver, was ripped down last year. Five years ago the Woodwards Department Store was replaced with condos, and for a while it looked like Save on Meats—an institution since 1957—would suffer the same fate. But the owner refused to sell to developers and Mark Brand bought the business.

Save on Meats opened in 1957 at 43 W. Hastings

Brand, has sunk a ton of money into the building, kept the neon sign, a butcher shop, bakery and diner. He’s also employing the unemployable, installed a roof top garden to grow produce, and created a type of currency to feed the homeless.

The “currency” is a token that can only be exchanged for food at his diner. He kicked off the program at the end of November thinking he might sell a thousand. He sold 5,000 in the first 10 days. His reasoning is that give money or bus passes or gift cards and 90% of the time it’s turned into drugs, booze or cigarettes. It’s a big reason that people won’t give handouts.

“All it is, is giving somebody a sandwich, it’s really black and white,” he told me. “What’s really important to me is being able to create the conversation between the affluent and the people who are struggling. The token has to be handed to someone. You are not doing a random donation you have to look somebody in the face and give it to them.”

Brand is not without his critics. They say he’s part of the problem—he’s making the area trendy again and increasing rents and prices for the poor. He’s also accused of making money off the tokens—many which will never be redeemed.

Personally I don’t have a problem with this, he should be making money. He’s not going to fix the systemic problems of the DTES, but he’s not going to hurt them either, and he’s offering a way for people to do something to help those in the area.

He’s also attracting like minded souls.

Village&Co office, 231 Union Street

Justin Young and Nora Ahern were making big bucks at an ad agency on the right side of town, before leaving to form Village&Co, a small social media shop on the edge of Chinatown. They like Brand’s vision and wanted to help so they devised a campaign. Whenever someone clicks on #shareameal the agency puts a token on the office Christmas tree. On December 31, the tokens will be donated to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre and transformed into food at a time when it’s needed the most.

Tags Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, DTES, Justin Young, Mark Brand, neon sign, Nora Ahern, Pantages Theatre, Save on Meats, Village&Co, Woodwards Department Store

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