Richard Marquez

Cuchillo Restaurant – Robbin’ the ‘hood

Cuchillo is a crime scene. You won’t see yellow police tape or chalked outlines near street sewers, or any evidence of a bloody stabbing in front of Cuchillo — it’s all missing from this sinister spectacle. Instead the heart of Japantown on Powell Street and on unceded Coast Salish soil is wounded. The building’s owner, multimillionaire slumlord Steven Lippman, the City of Vancouver, and Cuchillo’s owners are all complicit in this unreported crime. Living above Cuchillo restaurant (which means “knife” in Spanish) are the York Hotel’s 34 low-income residential tenants. The tenants have no kitchens or private bathrooms.  Most have been very hard hit by rising rents that are well in excess of the $375 monthly shelter allowance. (…)