As we reported over the weekend, Woodland Smokehouse and its awesome tenant, the East Side Boxing Gym, were both destroyed in a fire during the early hours of Saturday morning. Co-owner Tyson Reimer sent us the above shots last night. Despite the characteristic “there’s probably a bright side” looks on their faces, they’re pretty bummed by the situation, as you can well imagine.

Their loss aside, the youngsters who use the gym now have no place to go. Hopefully, their predicament won’t last long. One of the Aprons For Gloves organisers, Tavia Cosper, sent an encouraging note to those in Vancouver’s restaurant trade who helped build the gym last year: “We need to act quickly to get the kids back into a safe space and get the club back up and running. I know how important the gym is to all of you (either as a contender or a volunteer) and we can use all the help we can get.”

She noted that a fundraising page had just gone live, and that there were already donations pouring in. What’s more, there will be a fundraiser on Sunday, November 10th at The Bottleneck. Doors will open at 5pm and a donation of $5+ is suggested at the door. We hope to see a lot of our readers there. They will be selling “East Side” t-shirts to raise funds and partial proceeds from the evening’s beer sales will go to the cause. “We will also be showing the final episode of the Aprons For Gloves documentary,” Cosper added, “so get ready to shed a few tears (maybe that’s just me).” Watch the previous episodes here to see all the hard work that so many people put in to make the gym possible.

Spread the word!

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Honour Bound details the many cool things that we feel honour bound to check out because they either represent Vancouver exceptionally well or are inherently super awesome in one way or another.