A Vancouver business owner who has gone to great lengths to help people in the city’s impoverished Downtown Eastside claims he’s been targeted by anarchist protesting gentrification.
Staff at Save On Meats, a diner and butcher shop founded in 1957, are turning to the public after its sandwich board was stolen.
The diner's owner clams it was taken by an anarchist group against development on the Downtown Eastside.
“These anarchists stole our sign,” owner Mark Brand posted on his Instagram account, eastvanbrand.
“They won’t stop until the capitalists leave the neighbourhood. . . . They will be embarking on a mission to close Save On Meats.”
The update included a photo of a masked person flashing peace signs behind the sign, which is usually on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant.
Brand revitalized the aging space on West Hastings Street in 2011, spending more than a million dollars of his own money to updating and preserving the building, while offering up dozens of jobs to people living in the area.
Between 65 and 70 per cent of the 90 Save On Meats employees are people living in the Downtown Eastside. The establishment has focused on keeping prices low and affordable, with the most expensive menu item coming in at $12.
Brand established a Sandwich Token program that lets patrons purchase a meal for someone in need. For $2.25, the tokens can be given out to people directly or staff will give them to one of its community partners. The tokens can be redeemed for a hot breakfast sandwich.
Some poverty activists have challenged Brand’s vision, saying people like him are gentrifying the neighbourhood, spurring development they don’t want.
Protestors against gentrification have kept an active presence in the neighbourhood recently, protesting outside an upscale restaurant that opened in Pigeon Park.
And a Commercial Drive pizzeria has recently had its windows smashed three times, allegedly by an anti development group.
