Bill Arnott’s Beat: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Writers’ Collective

A clink and scrape of flatware on plates. Lips smack. A bronchial cough. Huge potted fichus stoop at the ceiling, the look of good-natured green giants. I have a fifty-cent cup of coffee, which is not a Curtis Jackson reference. That’s the price of coffee at the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), for those of us who belong.