We got word the other day that Main Street’s restaurant of cozy nostalgia the Rumpus Room is closing at the end of the month. Did they run out of deep-fried pickles? Is a customer suing the owners for a Jenga or Hungry Hungry Hippos-related injury? Sadly, it’s for reasons more mundane and predictable than that... condos.
“So I’m writing this with the most heaviest f$%&ing heart in my life,” co-owner Rachel Zottenberg announced on the Rumpus Room’s Facebook page Monday. “After the most brutal battle, we are being kicked out of the Rumpus Room at the end of the month. Condos.. right.. you’ve heard this all before. Yay for the new Main Street. Good for you.”
As is often the case in Vancouver, the quirky, rough-around-the-edges places that often make a neighbourhood desirable in the first place inevitably attract condo developers, which then proceed to eradicate or sanitize those very things and out-price the residents who enjoyed them. With any luck however, the new condos will pay homage to what they’re replacing by branding the new Mount Pleasant development something like Rumpus Estates, Plaid Gardens or The Shorn Beard.
World class city!
