After 15 years of navigating what he describes as a “war zone” of illegal activity outside his doors, the owner of a popular Caribbean restaurant has almost given up on trying to run a legitimate business in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Running the gauntlet outside his restaurant to grab supplies from his commissary kitchen at the corner of Carrall and Hastings streets is an almost daily battle for Cullin David, who said he genuinely fears for his safety and that of his customers, staff, and business partners.
“My head’s on a swivel,” David told Global News in an interview. “I’m always looking over my shoulder.”
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The co-owner and chef at Calabash Bistro said he’s tired of dodging drug use, dealing, street disorder and violence on a block with one of the worst crime rates in the city.
“Killings, stabbings, knife fights. My business partners having to do their best to try and save a gentleman’s life that they witnessed being stabbed in the chest,” said David.
“The amount of violence and just horrible things that we’ve witnessed is a lot for anyone just trying to run a restaurant.”
When David opened Calabash Bistro in 2010, he knew he was on ground zero in the troubled neighbourhood, but said he was enticed by municipal and provincial promises of investment and improvement in the area, including greenways and tourist routes.
“Those early days, we had a lot of optimism,” David recalled.
The lease at 428 Carrall Street came with a cabaret licence allowing the restaurant to operate as a dance hall until 2:00 a.m., and David and his partners were eager to celebrate the Caribbean spirit and culture through food, live music and dancing.
Over the years, he said Calabash became known for open mic nights and as a space to showcase independent artists and young people starting out.
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“We used to have lineups for dinner,” said David. “We used to have lineups for dancing after.”
But he said the neighbourhood never improved.
“It’s kind of just steadily gotten worse and worse,” David said.
Calabash was one of the first restaurants to launch a composting program, but David said its bin was taken away due to all the needles being thrown into it.
More and more nearby businesses have shuttered, he said, and more and more human excrement is appearing on the sidewalk.
While he’s grateful there has been some recent movement on crime and crime prevention with the VPD’s Task Force Barrage targeting organized criminals and violent offenders since Feb. 13, David says Carrall Street near Hastings continues to deteriorate.
“The risk to myself, my partner, and our employees has increased significantly, especially at night,” said David, who noted his staff were involved in a very close call this past weekend.
At 1:40 a.m. Sunday, David said his cooks were moving items to the commissary space at the corner of Carrall and Hastings.
When drug dealers on the block spotted police on patrol nearby, David said they attempted to stash “something” inside Calabash’s commissary.
When his cooks stopped them and told them they needed to leave, David said the dealers became aggressive and began fighting his staff.
Calabash’s co-owner, Yonathan Hernandez, arrived, said David, and managed to corral the cooks in the commissary while he was left to face approximately 10 hostile individuals alone on the street.
Yelling, pushing, and shoving ensued, according to David, and Hernandez saw one dealer place his hand on a gun in his waistband before another dealer from the “day shift” saw what was happening and stepped in to defuse the situation.
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The incident, David said, began due to a police presence, but when things escalated, no one intervened.
As a society, he said, we’ve all allowed the chaos outside his doors to thrive.
“The business of poverty is big,” David told Global News. “There (are) a lot of people that make money from what’s going on down here.”
David said he would like to see a government approach that brings positive change for people struggling with mental illness and addictions.
“There needs to be some sort of holistic end game,” he said in an interview. “Something that is actually helping people.”
While David said the people outside his business are allowed to smoke drugs, drink alcohol, and listen to loud music at all hours, Calabash is fighting to survive.
Over the years, adjustments were made to the wording of licences and David said the bistro’s shifted from ‘cabaret’ to ‘food primary with patron participation entertainment,’ permitting live music and dancing until midnight.
Still, he said, Calabash continued to operate as it always did with live music and dancing up to 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. until recently.
Late last year, David said the province started enforcing the rules to ensure DJs and dancing stop at midnight.
“We were kind of shocked to have inspectors come in and say, ‘Well, nope, you can’t do this and you can’t do that and if we have to come back, you’re going to be fined upwards of seven grand,’” David told Global News.
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Before the provincial inspection, David said Calabash never had any issues or received any complaints.
“If we stop dancing and music at midnight, we’d be closed,” he said. “That last two hours of business is one of the things that kind of put us over the top.”
David and his partners recently took out a $15,000 loan and applied for a dual food and liquor primary licence, which would allow the restaurant to operate as a bar or nightclub, provided they have different hours of liquor-only service.
But there’s no guarantee Calabash will be approved.
“$15,000 later, not only are we faced with the prospect of being denied the licence, we probably won’t have any customers willing to walk through a war zone just to visit us,” said David. “We’re damned if we do, were damned if we don’t.”
In a statement, B.C.’s Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General said inspectors from the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch (LCRB) have issued three warnings to Calabash Bistro over the past six months, involving alleged contraventions “of operating contrary to licence purpose and permitting entertainment past approved hours.”
No fine has been issued, and the LCRB confirms it has received applications for two changes to Calabash’s licence and is working with the restaurant owner to process the application as expeditiously as possible.
When asked if the province could give Calabash a break from any potential enforcement while the dual licence process occurs, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General did not directly answer.
“In the meantime, the licensee must follow the rules of his licence, as outlined in the compliance meetings that have been held with the owner,” the statement read.
Catering is the only thing keeping Calabash alive, said David, who had hoped to stay in the Downtown Eastside as a hub for the Black, Latin, and Caribbean communities.
“At the same time now, I’m weighing on if I can, if we can stay open, or save ourselves.”
For the last two weeks, David said he’s been trying to find some sort of positive light at the end of the tunnel, hoping he won’t have to become a statistic before change occurs.
“That little light is dwindling, it’s almost out,” he said. “My mental health can’t really take much more of having to come down and battle through everything just to open the door.”
