Ambush of Cops in a Coffee Shop could happen in Vancouver

Long before the ambush and execution of four police officers in Tacoma on Sunday, it had crossed my mind that such a thing could happen in Vancouver. I thought of it around Christmas last year when I saw about 8 uniforms sitting in Waves coffee shop on Hastings at Richards. There were so many of them, they pulled two or three tables together.

I don't often see that many cops having coffee together, although I saw about six, including a couple of under-covers, having coffee in Waves at Main & 10th last summer. I remember thinking, if you're "under cover" why would you announce to the public that you're a cop by sitting with a bunch of uniforms on your coffee break. A Downtown Eastsider told me how to recognize under covers wearing their "colours of the day".

Anyway, it occurred to me that there might be an element of risk for a bunch of cops to sit huddled together in Waves coffee shop. The VPD complain to the media that they are put at risk by people who want to commit "suicide by cop", so it wouldn't be much of stretch to think of suicide by cop in a coffee shop. But I guess it's a risk they're willing to take. (The VPD wear bullet-proof vests but so did the Tacoma cops executed in the coffee shop.)

When the four officers were shot in Tacoma, it was pointed out in the news that in many places in the U.S., police are forbidden to sit in groups in coffee shops.

False Advertising at Waves Coffee Shop

A man who regularly drops into Waves internet coffee shop at Main St. & Pender, has been giving the same advice for months: don't buy your coffee until you find out whether the internet is working.

Too often people buy a coffee and sit down to use the internet, only to discover that it's down.

On Saturday, a customer asked for a refund, after buying a coffee and then discovering that the advertised internet service was not available.

Miranda, the young woman who works there, said there are no refunds. She said the internet has actually not been down in months, that Saturday was the first time in a long time. That's not what Downtown Eastsiders say. I went in there on Sunday to test it. It was down.

Waves staff could put a sign on the counter, "Internet temporarily down". But they don't. They would lose coffee sales.

Try before you buy.

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."

Waves of Gentrification

photo: Waves coffee shop at Main St. & Cordova, Mar. 2/09

They say that with gentrification comes dog walkers and specialty coffee shops.

Another Waves coffee shop is opening on the Downtown Eastside, just two blocks from the first one that opened last year at Main & Pender.  The new Waves at Main and Cordova will open on March 16th, in the now renovated space that used to house Vic's Coffee Shop, where you could get good coffee and the occasional bout of e coli.

There were lots of staff in Waves today, all wearing the same dark uniforms.  At first, I thought the place was swarming with cops.  

The new location may prove profitable if the Vancouver Police building across the street once again becomes police headquarters, a move Chief Chu supports.  Chu told the media last month that he would like to move VPD headquarters back to the Downtown Eastside, as the move to Cambie St. allowed the Downtown Eastside to deteriorate.  Even police officers driving to and from work in the neighborhood, Chu said, can deter open crime.

Waves has free internet access which there is never enough of on the Downtown Eastside.  An increasing number of Downtown Eastsiders, frustrated with the unreliable access to Vancouver Public Library computers at the Carnegie Center computer room where Director Ethel Whitty too often allows staff to lock the poor out, are purchasing netbooks now that the prices have come down. But often they don't have internet connections at home.

Tea without a Pee

You would think that a place serving as much liquid as Waves coffee shop would have a washroom. I am with a couple of friends in Waves coffee shop at Hastings & Richards this evening, and there are no washrooms.  None.  

Customers are going out to the back alley to pee.  

Washrooms are a chronic problem at this particular Waves.  Either the men's or the women's is usually out of order.  They have lightweight toilets that appear to have been designed for private homes not for a busy restaurant.  The Waves on Main St. near Hastings has restaurant calibre washrooms.  

If it weren't for the washroom problem, this would be a good internet cafe.

Birthday Gone Bad

A friend emailed me last week inviting me out for dinner on my birthday, Jan. 2. I responded with an email, "That would make for a happy birthday!"

But on my birthday, I emailed this friend and they acted as though they didn't remember it was my birthday. I eventually prompted them, "Wish me a happy birthday!" They wrote back, "Happy birthday, and many happy repeats of same." They didn't mention their invitation to take me out to dinner and seemed to be hoping that I would conveniently forget the invitation. It was awful.

I wished I had known in advance so that I could have made other plans.

Late in the evening, this friend suggested we go to Waves for hot chocolate. At Waves, I tried doing what the Waves public relations person (I believe it was a Waves pr person who left a comment on a previous post about hot chocolate) suggested doing to ensure the hot chocolate was hot: get the cold whipped cream on the side. But the hot chocolate was still not hot, just warm. I only drank half of it.

I will never again trust Waves hot chocolate.

Hot Chocolate at Waves Not Hot Enough

On New Year's Eve, a friend and I dropped into Waves cafe at Hastings and Richards St. in Vancouver. We both had a Belgian dark hot chocolate with whipped cream on top.

The taste was fine but it was not hot enough for me. It was medium hot. I don't know; maybe it's not possible to make hot chocolate really hot, like tea.

I usually get Hojicha green tea at Waves. The tea looks brown because it's roasted, and the water is always piping hot.