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Two articles from the National Post, re: one of our favourite topics around here...the Yuppie Protester. Only in these articles, they have apparently be prostesting the Average Joe, trying to revitalize the downtown Eastside in Vancouver.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/01/11/rex-murphy-the-callousness-of-protest-on-display-in-vancouver-with-a-happy-ending/
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/01/11/rex-murphy-the-callousness-of-protest-on-display-in-vancouver-with-a-happy-ending/
Rex Murphy: The callousness of protest on display in Vancouver (with a happy ending)
Republish ReprintRepublish OnlineRepublish OfflineReprintRex Murphy | January 11, 2014 | Last Updated: Jan 10 2:51 PM ET
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Ben Nelms/National PostWhen angry activists with placards target a single citizen trying to do good in a bad area, using his own money, something is seriously wrong..
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.After this frigid and bleak December, with its ice-storms and power failures, perils in the Antarctic and gloom in Newfoundland, it was refreshing to receive a newspaper clipping from The Province in Vancouver about a story that, for me anyway, provided a second Christmas of warmth and uplift.
Over the past year, readers of the National Post may have caught fragments of a bizarre B.C. tale that centred on a young(ish) man’s dream of starting a restaurant, and his courage and social-mindedness in opening it not on any one of Cinderella City’s glittering strips, but rather in Vancouver’s most squalid and threatening area, the Downtown East Side (DTES).
Starting a restaurant is said to be the quickest way to financial ruin and personal breakdown known to humankind. It takes great courage and a sense of hope to imagine that your restaurant will be one of the few that survives its first year in business.
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.Brandon Grossutti, for such is the name of the heroic restauranteur in question, knew all that. He also knew that picking the Vancouver DTES as his location was unlikely to do much to propitiate Pomona, the goddess of fruitful abundance (as well as appetizers, five-star reviews and large tips). However, against all odds and the lesser gods, he charged ahead. His restaurant is called PiDGiN, and has been serving Asian fusion cuisine since 2012.
His decision can very correctly be seen as a real and daring vote of confidence in a neighbourhood that has long been infamously troubled by drug addicts, homelessness and violence. Whole crime-themed televisions series have been set in DTES. (“Top Chef”? Not so much.) He was acting primarily as a businessman (rent in the DTES is low), but he also was acting as a citizen.
What he was not aware of (and which no sane person could have anticipated) was that from the very beginning of his project, he’d became the chosen dartboard for a knot of social activists who saw his fancy restaurant as a cancer in their neighbourhood. They picketed, they bellowed, they intimidated.
I quote from a CBC Vancouver story of last February: “Co-owner Brandon Grossutti says protesters have vandalized the building and antagonized customers, videotaping and photographing patrons, sometimes yelling ‘shame’ or other insults.” This was major harassment. According to the “activists,” his restaurant was “destroying the neighbourhood.” He was — Gasp! — committing the sin of “gentrification.”
I guess most Vancouverites would agree that it would take more than a couple of cinnamon streusel mascarpones and vadouvan spiced lamb bellies to shake the down-and-out character of the DTES. They’d also agree that “gentrification” — a term that connotes throwing long-term residents out of bedroom communities to make room for Starbucks and Pottery Barn — is not really an applicable term to cover one man’s honest effort to place a new restaurant (and the jobs that go with it) in a bad area.
I truly believe that the act of protest has, in many contexts, become something of a moral disease
.One of the main protestors quoted in the clipping that was sent to me this week, Wendy Petersen, had this to say: “We could have picked any high-end restaurant … He [Mr. Grossutti] is just a symbol — it’s really not about him.”
There’s a streak of callousness on display here. Try to ruin a man’s business, have him lose his time, energy and money, hope for his restaurant to fail, the staff to be laid off … and then have the nerve or ignorance to say “It’s not about him.”
Who the hell is it about then?
I truly believe that the act of protest has, in many contexts, become something of a moral disease. Not all contexts, of course. But when angry activists with placards target a single citizen trying to do good in a bad area, using his own money, something is seriously wrong.
And yet this story has a happy ending. At year’s end, my clipping informed me, Vancouver’s PiDGiN restaurant went from “pickets to top-5 pick.” It not only endured the ludicrous protests, it drew customers of good taste and some fortitude who defied the social activist bullies and got a good meal to boot.
It’s a Christmas tale for our time.
National Post
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