Carnegie "Kangaroo" Election

Most Carnegie members didn't know their was an election last evening. And that was no accident.

The notice on the bulletin board was small enough that members could be counted on to miss it. "I had to take off my glasses and put my face right up to it to read it", said one member. He said the notice announced, "CCA AGM", letters that wouldn't catch the attention of most members. The election wasn't mentioned until the end of the notice, in fine print. I recall seeing this small notice myself but it was so small, I didn't stop to read it.

They should have announced the election in large print, said one member. "They hang banners over the steps out front all the time" when they want the poor to turn out for their povertarian projects and marches, but when there is an election, they produce only a teeny weeny poster.

Members of the Carnegie establishment such as paid anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson have worked to disenfranchise the poor ever since the poor's choice of Board members -- William Simpson, Rachel Davis -- didn't match their own. They stack elections with their friends and political allies. One member described last evening's election and the prior well-attended nomination meeting this way. "A bunch of strangers showed up, and they voted in their yes-people." He said the result is that longtime members who use Carnegie on an almost daily basis are finding decisions made by people they barely recognize, and at times don't recognize.

Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, the City's representative at the meeting, left early, saying she was "busy". Very little Whitty says is believed by members, many of whom are aware of her well-documented record of lying. "Maybe she didn't want to be put on the spot and have to answer any questions," said one man. A woman said she saw Whitty leaving the building after the meeting in the theater had ended, supporting skeptics' view that she hadn't or shouldn't have been too busy to sit through the Carnegie AGM.

One member later sitting at a patio table at Waves coffee shop in the warm evening breeze, summed up the Carnegie election this way. "They pulled a fast one on us again".

Man Threatening to Jump from Rooftop Shuts Down Hastings

Hastings St. was blocked off by police for a couple of hours tonight, from Main to Carroll St.  A man standing on the roof of the New Lux appeared to want to jump.  The New Lux is government funded housing for the hard to house, near the United We Can Bottle Depot. 

The man was sitting on the roof and would occasionally stand up, teetering back and forth and hollering.  He appeared to be playing to the crowd of about 75 people watching from behind yellow police tape.  

One spectator quipped, "He's mad Pittsburgh lost the hockey game."  

Carnegie Staff Battered and Broken

Carnegie staff have more injuries than playoff hockey.

Skip Everall, head of Security has a bandaged hand.  Catriona Moore who oversees the kitchen has her arm in a sling.  

And Ethel Whitty reportedly broke her wrist and is in pretty bad shape.  Members say it's more relaxed now that she's away.  Call it harm reduction.  

Michael Ignatieff: Your Choice for a Bi-Polar Prime Minister

Radio host Roy Green said this morning that he didn't believe Harper's so-called "attack ads" on Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff were attacking enough.  So he made his own attack ad.  And instead of the 30 seconds the others had, he made his 60 seconds long.

Green's attack ad opens with the music of Springsteen, "Born in the U.S.A. I was born in the U.S.A."

Then there's a clip of Ignatieff telling an audience, 

"You have to decide, 'What kind of America do you want', right?  You have to decide.  It's your country just as much as it is mine."

Then we hear "Born in the U.S.A." again.

And again Ignatieff:

"You have to decide, 'What kind of America do you want', right?  You have to decide.  It's your country just as much as it is mine."

Then there is another song with lyrics that I didn't fully hear, something about "the colour of my life". 

Then there was an Arnold Schwartzenegger clip,

"I'll be back."

The "I'll be back" joke is a bit threadbare but the rest of the attack ad got me laughing.  And I enjoyed how unapologetic Green was for putting this ad together. 

Making Waves at Waves

Photo:  Waves coffee shop at Main & Cordova 

I wonder if the Waves coffee shop that just opened at Main & Cordova will make a go of it. The coffee shop, which has replaced Vic's restaurant, doesn't draw much of a crowd at night. It's not as welcoming an environment as the Waves on Hastings St. at Richards. And on Sunday and Tuesday nights, if you sit on a stool in the window sipping your tall latte, you're faced with the long line-up at the Sally Ann soup truck which parks across the street to feed the penniless.

Photo:  Line-up for Sally Ann soup truck

I was listening to a CKNW radio interview recently with a guy who said he owned three Waves coffee shops on the Downtown Eastside -- one at Main & Pender which closes at 10 p.m., one at Hastings & Richards which is open 24 hrs., and one that just opened at Main & Cordova which closes at midnight. He was emphasizing what a fabulous relationship his staff have with the Downtown Eastside community.

This fabulous relationship does not include hiring Downtown Eastsiders. None of his staff have that lived-in look of Downtown Eastsiders. His taste runs to recent Russian immigrant women in their late teens or early twenties. I would say the Richards St. location is exclusively staffed with young Russian women. A couple of young Russia men have also managed to get hired there on the all-night shift. I don't hang out in the Pender St. (Chinatown) location near Carnegie Center; it seems less Russian.  I've seen a Chinese woman working there. A woman who regularly works evenings at the Cordova St. location seems Russian to me, although a man at Carnegie has since told me he believes she's German).

Regardless of where this young, heavy-set woman with a blond ponytail came from, she comes across like a school marm who would love to swat a Downtown Eastsider across the ear with a ruler.

There was a group of regulars in there on Friday night recently -- they used to show up at the Cordova St. Waves a little after 10 p.m. and when that location closed, they would sometimes head up to the Richards St. Waves -- and this staffer caught one of them eating a stick of stuffed celery as she chatted with friends staring at their laptop screens. The staffer walked over to the customer and scolded her, "You can't eat your own food in here." The customer said, "Ok". But the staffer returned for a second go-round, snapping at the customer about how the next time she had her own food, "I will ask you to go outside."

"What did she say?", a regular male customer, a t-shirt artist with a studio up the street, asked. "She wants us to eat those terrible sandwiches they sell," a man who buys lattes there on a regular basis called out.

You'd think the staffer would be grateful to have a group of regulars in an almost empty restaurant on a Friday night, I thought.

Then the staffer did the unthinkable. She switched off the internet without telling customers. It was not yet midnight and one man had just bought a coffee and was pissed off that he couldn't surf the net while he sipped it. He politely asked her -- she was by then mopping the floor around his table with Lysol -- if she had turned it off. She said she had, "You're always here late and we're closing. We have to go home." He pointed out that usually they lock the door to new customers at midnight but let people already inside finish their coffee. "We'll take our business elsewhere," he announced to his friends. "We'll tell Bill to get a blogger to write her up", he said laughing.

He then held up his paper cup of coffee saying, "This cup is leaking." The staffer nonchalantly replied, "Some of our cups are leaking tonight," as she continued to mop around him. "Some?", he said. Familiarity breeds contempt. I know that's a cliche but it seems to be exactly what was happening here. The staffer slipped a second paper cup over his leaky one.

As he was leaving, he announced that there was too much water on the floor from the mopping. "That will ruin the floor," he said. Outside the door, he stood on the corner yelling, "Leaky cups! No internet! What next?! If you have leaky cups, you don't serve them, you tell your supplier!" Another regular guy interjected, "Maybe she had no other cups. She was nice to me,"he said, "She said goodnight. Stay on good terms with them. It's good to have wifi in the neighborhood."

They turned to walk up Cordova, taking their business elsewhere. To Waves on Richards, owned by the same man.

That was two weeks ago and when I've since walked past Waves on Cordova at night, I've looked in the window to see if the regulars were there. They weren't.  So I asked the guy who got the leaky cup and he confirmed, "We don't go there anymore."

2608 filled with Hate

 There is a cop with white blond hair, in his early twenties, who is often standing around outside Carnegie. Mark my words.  He's trouble.  I made a point of getting his number: 2608.  

He's got an attitude problem.  He talks to people with a "You're shit" tone.  When he could be neutral in the way he speaks to somebody, he power trips.  He's never bothered me when I walk by that corner but I notice him all the time, because he's such a power tripping peacock.  Ask me who else is policing outside Carnegie and I couldn't tell you, I couldn't even describe them, because they don't stand out like this guy with the white blond hair and the major attitude. 

Here's an example:  A young native guy was standing in front of Carnegie near the cross walk and this cop goes up to him and sticks his nose just inches from the native guy's nose and asks in an aggressive "Fcuk you" tone, "What are you doing here!!?".  He fired a battery of questions at the native, all with a fcuk you tone, but the native guy persisently acted deferential.  The cop didn't seem to have anything on the native guy; he and his fellow partner didn't search him.  The blond cop eventually walked away and the young native guy kept standing there.  The native guy was no doubt into something if he was standing outside Carnegie but the cops have all the power, they don't have to treat him in a way that could get a rise out of him.   Nathan, who used to run a Philosopher's Cafe at Carnegie, once said that when you're fcuking with somebody, it's best to be polite.   Then he laughed.

Sooner or later, #2608  is going to become an embarrassment to the VPD.