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East Van’s Excellent “Matchstick Coffee” Landing In Chinatown This Winter

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The good folks at the Fraserhood’s awesome Matchstick Coffee Roasters have picked up a space in Chinatown. If you’re unfamiliar with Matchstick, they’ve been kicking ass at Fraser & Kingsway for coming up on two years now, squarely focusing on hand-crafted preparation of single-origin, high quality coffees. They’re working on getting their building permit for the 2,800 sqft space at 213 East Georgia – the same block as Mamie Taylor’s and Phnom Penh, and just a few doors in from Main Street – with the goal of opening up in the early new year. More details soon.

There are 4 comments

  1. Oh, i dont think there could be a better local!! we love you guys and youre going to smash it in this hood! xxxxxxxxxxx big love

  2. It’s sad for me to see Chinatown disappearing from being “Chinatown” losing that cultural flavour I loved to see so much growing up as a child, we were there. It’s also sad to see culture and tradition being taken over by modernity and expansion. 🙁 What used to be a bustling hub is now two quiet streets that the new generations don’t visit anymore, thanks to the bad reputation of unsafe, druggie DTES. I am deeply saddened.
    Vancouver’s Chinatown used to BE something. And now it’s pretty much dead, and, please excuse my word for this but, “invaded” by a wave of new hipster, trendy cafes and food spots. I am, however, a major foodie and love that there’s all these awesome new places opening up. I just wish they weren’t in Chinatown, or that the new places opening were Chinese or Asian in nature.
    I love Richmond, it’s great, but I can’t help but wonder how Chinatown might have flourished if “Richmond-Little China” never happened. I still really wish Chinatown can be revived. Vancouver’s municipal government could have bothered to protected it. For tourism purposes, people come to Vancouver and would expect to see a proper Chinatown but I am bothered by what tourists would see these days because this not how Chinatown used to be. The Chinatown now, isn’t really Chinatown anymore. 🙁 There are few buildings left as heritage sites, but it is disappointing to know that when tourists come to Vancouver, they aren’t seeing the real deal and they, too, are probably disappointed. If I wanted to see a Chinatown now, I’d go to San Francisco, they did a much better job with theirs. I haven’t been before, but surely, it can’t be any less than ours, fading away and heeding to the new yuppie developments in the area. (And on a side note none of those new business owners are even Asian 🙁 not to be discriminatory, but if it were new Asian youth making their commercial marks in Chinatown that would make the situation less of an invasion and loss of cultural and maybe more like an evolvement but at the moment it’s like we are on the tracks to wiping away Chinatown for what it is. So, so sad.)

  3. vivian, what a horribly misguided and racist opinion. you’d rather see shuttered businesses and poverty take over than have white people making an honest living. your point is also moot since the chinatown b.i.a. are the ones who encouraged this new “invasion.” can you please tell us what is preventing asian youth from starting businesses in the area? and if none are stepping up, you actually prefer that no one does and that the neighbourhood should just decay further?!?!

    ridiculous and shameful.

  4. Hi Andi,
    No, I am not AGAINST anyone making new businesses in Chinatown that are not Asian businesses, I am just saddened by it, and exactly my point there are no Asians wanting to start new businesses in Chinatown! I am pretty sure I did say that as a foodie I am very happy to see all these new food establishments opening up around town, just the same for Chinatown, I am just saddened that Vancouver hasn’t made an effort to restore Chinatown’s once great glory from many, many years ago that has since been lost. It’s saddening for me to see our Chinatown not really be a Chinatown anymore. It doesn’t matter to me who is setting up new businesses it’s just the fact that Chinatown is dying, and in place of it is new hipster cafes and while there’s nothing wrong with that, I was only saying that to raise examples of what IS happening in Chinatown. In the future if more changes pursue and the Asian community, basically the only ones who even go to Chinatown anymore, maybe they would just rename the area, because there will be nothing left of it from the original site. And tourists will have nothing traditional nor Asian to see of it.
    Nothing is preventing Asians from starting up businesses. That’s why I’m sad that they arent’! Please, reread my original comment, because I am not “racist and misguided” at all. Thanks.

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