213th DTES Street Market in Vancouver

Home > AHA Media, Community Engagement, Downtown Eastside, DTES, DTES Street Market, Jacek Lorek, Pigeon Park, Roland Clarke, Vancouver, Vancouver Downtown Eastside > 213th DTES Street Market in Vancouver

213th DTES Street Market in Vancouver

July 7, 2014 ahamedia Leave a comment Go to comments

213th DTES Street Market and 28th Street Market of 2014

Roland Clarke, Coordinator of the DTES Street Market says:
It was on and off spotty with rain today.

This kept the market calm, but made it a little more unpleasant for the volunteers during the day.

There were a number of great things to talk about that were made possible at the market by the Great Beginnings grant from the City of Vancouver.

First, We made our first vendor ID tags. The system arrived on Friday, and that gave us a couple of hours to play with the system, set up the database, and create a vendor tag template. Here is an example of a vendor ID tag.

After 6-8 weeks or so, we should have a large enough penetration among our regular vendors to start demanding that vendors where tags, and to start kicking out vendors that do not have tags.

We had a vendor meeting, where we introduced a number of the upgrades to a little over 40 vendors – with widespread support. Tanya Fink from the planning department attended the meeting as well.

We introduced the concept of ID badges, the Greenway Mural, and the private security guards. Most vendors were quite supportive of the fact that we will have better security at the market.

After the vendor meeting, we accepted about 30 membership forms, and processed a little more than 20 badges to hand out on Sunday. All the vendors that got their badges were extremely happy and proud. The market is a big source of pride in the Downtown Eastside.

At the market, we started hanging tarps along the east side of Carrall St. in order to simulate the Greenway Mural, before the canvas hangings are ready. This Sunday, we hung 3 tarps. Next week, we will hang 5-6, and so on until the tarps are hanging the entire length of Carrall St.

We also began increasing the number of early morning clean up staff. This way we can have an impact on the early vendors. As the percentage of ID tags increases, we can also start to crack down on vendors that come too early in the morning.