Shuttered Sherbrook cause for celebration in West Broadway By: Rebecca Chambers Posted: 2:42 PM CST Monday, Feb. 5, 2024

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2024 (580 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1964, Maria and Oreste Venesia signed a paper and accepted $1,000 toward the purchase of their home located at the corner of Furby Street and Westminster Avenue.

It was to be demolished to make way for a new motor hotel. But the developers didn’t pay the Venesias the balance of the purchase price; instead they were determined to demolish the house while the couple vacationed in Italy. So began the exploitation of the residents of West Broadway at the hands of what would later be known as the Sherbrook Inn.

Last weekend, we reported the closure of the Sherbrook Inn vendor and bar, throwing into doubt the future of this blight of West Broadway. When the Free Press asked for further information from the owner, he replied, “We’re allowed to stay private” and hung up.

Infamous Sherbrook Inn shutters bar, vendor

The mismanagement of the Sherbrook Inn is anything but private. It’s public, it’s ugly and it spills onto the streets daily.

For two decades I have been awoken by the fights, cries for help, screamed profanities and sirens at the Sherbrook Inn. I have seen a dog beaten by a baseball bat. I have seen people defecate in broad daylight. I have called 911 to rescue a woman, barefoot and shirtless, crying in the rain. I have seen people chased out of the bar with baseball bats and pool cues. And that’s only what happens outside the walls, and only what I’ve seen, and not even all of it.

Inside the filthy vendor, I was once pulled aside by a frightened young woman. She said she’d just gotten off the bus from up north and was given this address and the name of a man, a friend of a friend, who would take care of her. She was scared and she didn’t know anyone else in Winnipeg.

Inside the building, the basement banquet area was closed years ago due to flooding and never reopened. The decommissioned rooftop pool leaks rainwater onto the bar stage, which was later reinforced with plywood, followed by jerry-rigged indoor drainage pipes channeling the water into a trash can. I can only imagine what the rooms upstairs look like.

The vendor, so notorious that local Juno nominees the Perpetrators, wrote a song about being beaten and robbed upon leaving, consists of a small windowless stall that reeks of urine, vomit and weed, and takes cash only. The beer is passed to customers via a little door under the counter. The employees are behind a thick, stained acrylic divider that long predates the pandemic. The countertop is worn down to raw wood, decades of change scraped through a small opening carved into the plastic.

The parking lot is littered with needles, condoms and garbage. The northern edge is lined with trees, a frequent stand-in for a urinal from whence I once received a shouted marriage proposal by someone mid-stream.

And the owner wants privacy. Maybe, but the mismanagement and callous disregard for safety, well-being and neighbourhood health has been anything but private. The Sherbrook Inn is a very public and well-known disgrace. West Broadway is both a victim and a witness to the effects of overt indifference and unmitigated decay on Sherbrook Street.

Granting privacy, in this case, is covering for decades of the exploitation and oppression of my neighbours and neighbourhood. This claim to privacy continues a legacy of hands-off management, wilful ignorance and outright disregard for the harm perpetrated by this business.

Lest we conflate damning the Sherbrook with damning the folks who rely on it, let me be very clear. We know many of our neighbours are struggling, and we know that crime feeds on desperation. This can’t all be attributed to the Sherbrook Inn, but the hotel is an integral part of the ecosystem that keeps the desperation well-fed. Everyone deserves safety. Everyone deserves a home. Businesses like the Sherb are a place of last resort, an unsafe port in a storm. West Broadway and Winnipeg deserve better.

There will be defences to the Sherbrook, there will be reminiscences of good times, but there is no justification that can redeem this place, no tales of sunny days to defend its mismanagement and legacy of thriving on the suffering of those within. Shame on this place.

In a blinding spotlight of very public and deep disgrace, good riddance to the Sherbrook Inn.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca

Rebecca Chambers

Rebecca explores what it means to be a Winnipegger by layering experiences and reactions to current events upon our unique and sometimes contentious history and culture. Her column appears alternating Saturdays.

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