Remember Carnegie's Living Dead in the Women's Memorial March

Since the annual Women's Memorial march to remember missing or murdered women on the Downtown Eastside began today with opening ceremonies inside Carnegie Center, it would be fitting to use it to remember the living dead in Carnegie Center too.  

They are women whose liberties and reputations have been killed off by Big Brother Skip Everall or Big Mother Ethel Whitty at Carnegie Center because they dared speak up about human rights or due process.  They are the women on whose necks the guillotine slammed down.   

 
These women are noticeably missing from Carnegie events.  Driven out.   

Just hours before the Valentine's Day Women's Memorial march began, a male musician from Carnegie was talking about how a female musician who had spoken up about human rights violations at Carnegie, tried walking into the music jam next door at the Health Contact Center. A staffperson who has worked both at Carnegie and the Health Contact Center arranged for her to be ushered out.  No singing, no music, for her.   Banished to the world of the living dead.  

As today's march proceeded down Main St. and then over to Oppenheimer Park, I remembered the women who have spoken up.  And I remembered their attackers, Skip Everall, Ethel Whitty and other povertarians.  They will strike again.

Starbucks: Internet Gouging and Free Oatmeal

This week, residents of the Downtown Eastside and Gastown found cardboard coupons in their mailboxes from Starbucks.  Starbucks is inviting residents to drop in and try their new "Perfect Oatmeal" with nuts and berries --  free.  I read the fine print: they don't require that you buy one of their not-recession-proof coffees.  

I took the coupon in this morning.

Like I said, there's no catch.  A young woman server with auburn hair asked me if I would like berries or nuts or brown sugar, or all three on my oatmeal. I went for everything but the brown sugar.  She went to the back counter to fix it, as I gazed at the sandwiches displayed at the front counter.  A turkey and cheddar sandwich was $5.95, a ham and brie sandwich was $6.25.  They looked tasty but for for me, for a sandwich, "Six bucks sucks."  

The server handed me the quick-fix oatmeal in a round container with a lid that looked like a small ice cream container.  "Let it steam for a couple of minutes," she advised.  On top of the lid, she had piled a plastic spoon wrapped in plastic, and two clear plastic bags.  One of the bags contained nuts: "Almonds, walnuts, pecans".  The other contained berries:  "Dried cranberries (cranberries, sugar, sunflower oil), raisins [contain sulfites], dried blueberries (blueberries, sugar, sunflower oil), dried cherries (cherries, sugar, sunflower oil)."  Berries, especially blueberries, are big with the anti-aging crowd these days because they are loaded with anti-oxidants. Walnuts are big too.  [And lets not forget Edgar Casey who said that a couple of almonds a day can keep cancer away.] 

What surprised me was how generous the portions of nuts and berries were.  

"Shouldn't there be milk with oatmeal?," I wondered.  That's the way my mother always made it. But I didn't ask because I figured the server knew what she was doing.  Besides, I hadn't yet looked under the lid.

The oatmeal tasted good.  Hot enough too.   After I finished though, I was reading the side of the "Perfect Oatmeal" container which made the claim of "a satisfyng sprinkle of nuts, fruits, brown sugar and your choice of milk."  Milk!!  It would have been more perfect with a little milk.

While the oatmeal was free, Starbucks was gouging for internet access.  When I asked the servers if they had internet access, a different server told me they charge $7 an hour for internet access and $50 for the day.  But if you have a Starbucks card, she explained, you can access the internet for 2 hours and the only cost deducted from your card is for your food and beverage.  

A friend told me that he went to Starbucks in Tinseltown last year and was also told that the internet would cost him $7 an hour.  He was annoyed and recalled saying to the server, "So for a coffee and an hour on the internet, it'll cost me ten bucks."  The male server responded, "Yes," as if it was nothing. [That explains why Waves coffee shops are so popular.  You can get a coffee or tea for roughly $2 and use the internet for free, for hours.  Waves recently opened a store on the Downtown Eastside, and is preparing to open a second just two blocks from the first.) 

I turned on my computer on at Starbucks to make some notes and a notice popped up on my screen announcing that I was connected to the internet.  So I ended up with free internet on top of free oatmeal.    

Coming Unhinged

Photo:  Inside the men's washroom at McDonald's at Main & Terminal last night, the door had come off.   My guess is that there had been a fight.

This afternoon the door was lying flat on the floor.

There are often pools of urine on the floor in that washroom.

But that Mcdonald's still has the hottest coffee in town.

Homeless Shelter Attracting Pot Smokers to McDonald's Across the Street

Photo:  The new homeless shelter is the white building in the background.

 

When you change one thing, you may affect things around it.  

A regular customer at McDonalds at Main & Terminal says there are more "bums" standing around outside now that the new homeless shelter has opened across the street.  They congregate in front of McDonalds a little after 7 p.m., and hang out until shortly before 8 p.m. when the shelter opens.  The customer sometimes ducks outside himself to have a quick cigarette, so he knows who's who out there.

"Are they the ones smoking pot?," I asked.  "Yeah", the customer said.  On two evenings out of the last three, I walked through a cloud of strong pot smoke when going in the front entrance at McDonalds to buy a take-out coffee.  

When Mayor Robertson and his HEAT team turned the empty warehouse across the street from McDonalds into a homeless shelter, they probably thought that because the building was in an industrial area and situated well back from Main St., it wouldn't affect people in the neighborhood.  

Pigeon Park Savings: What's your Number?

Pigeon Park Savings, part of VanCity, has been sending letters to Downtown Eastsiders with dormant accounts, reminding them that they are being charged an annual fee of $20 per year for such accounts.  

They instruct people to: "Please call us to review your options...."

But when you look for a phone number on the letter, there isn't one.