Crossroads Brewing
What one restaurant meant for downtown and why our response to losing it matters.
Hi everyone,
I know it’s been a little while and I’ll provide a more thoughtful (and exhausted) explanation of my absence in a future newsletter but I wanted to take a beat to talk about the recent fire at Crossroads and, out of respect for the topic, we’re going to skip the “Darrin rambles” intro and just get to it today.
The Mount Rushmore of “Downtown PG”
Nancy O’s
Betulla Burning
Crossroads
Trench
Depending on your age, we might not totally agree on this, but when I think about the founders of downtown Prince George’s restaurant scene becoming “cool” - these are the faces I choose to carve into the mountain (or Foothills).
Many have come after, and there were undoubtedly icons before (looking at you, Kelly O’s, and North 54), but as someone who has lived here since 2009, I felt like these 4 restaurants arriving across a few short years ushered in a new feeling for downtown PG for me and my University friends.
Long before I knew terms like “walkability” and “urbanism”, the best way I could describe this era of downtown PG was that the vibes just felt better.
Where I used to ALWAYS bring my visiting parents/friends to Earl’s or Mr. Mikes (btw, no shade to my franchise homies - I’m an unashamed, occasional Earl’s girly) when they visited, I felt myself excited to show them the offerings of downtown instead, and I could see them responding with something that made me feel really proud of what Prince George’s downtown was becoming.
They Understood the Assignment
It’s tempting to want to get annoyingly technical here - to dig into the urbanism principles that Crossroads was, unintentionally or intentionally, following: a big patio sprawling into the sidewalks, inviting music and ambience spilling out, large frontage windows where pedestrians can see folks dining (and vice versa) - so many small but meaningful touches working in harmony to have a positive psychological impact on that block.
But you don’t have to be technical to understand that Crossroads transformed the corner of George & 5th into something special and unique in Prince George.
In my opinion, it was the anchor for the entirety of George St. down to City Hall and with the help of The Makerie (RIP), Birch & Boar (RIP), and The Black Clover, and The Keg, you didn’t just have a good restaurant, you had a good street - an entire hub of walkability that encourages people to come, walk, shop, and enjoy.
The loss, even if it’s temporary, will be felt by all the surrounding businesses and I think this is a reminder to still show up downtown for the remaining businesses.
More Than A Building
There’s so much more I could say about the physical presence of Crossroads and the ambition that the owners had when they dropped Crossroads on to the lap of downtown Prince George all those years ago but I want to spend a moment talking about how they were also fantastic participants in what I call capital C “Community” building in PG.
If you’ve followed this newsletter long enough, you have probably seen me list out the many things Prince George CAN’T do because we spend so much money on our sprawling infrastructure. At the top of that list is often some version of using city dollars to hire staff/contractors to fund, plan and deploy festivals, block parties, markets, and other downtown events (and to all my City of PG employees/readers, I see you and know you folks do a ton with limited resources - that was a jab at decades of mismanaged city budgets/sprawling developments, etc, not at you).
We’ve talked about this idea in other domains before - that when the City can’t afford to supply its own city with X service (let’s say washrooms as an example), the responsibility falls to the business/private sector community (Ritual, Starbucks, etc) to provide that need instead and bear the cost where the City has failed.
Crossroads was the hub for downtown events. Often pulling together different funding partners to create events that punched WAY above their weight in class. In doing so, they showed Prince George residents that downtown could be so much more if it was given a chance.
The Intersection of Urbanism and Everything Else
I’d love to avoid the politics here - to mourn the loss of one of my favourite downtown spots with uncomplicated sadness but that isn’t the world we live in, sadly.
So, let’s say what I think needs to be said:
Crossroads was burned nearly to the ground by an arsonist - a dangerous repeat offender - a person who has been in and out of the system for a myriad of violent and non-violent crimes over the last decade.
The many ways that “crime and safety” overlap with downtown urbanism principles are endless - I did my best to write about it about a year ago here which is an incredibly prescient re-read in light of all this.
You’ve already seen Councillors like Sampson collapse in on this as a reason to bolster their tough-on-crime stances and, truthfully, I understand that instinct - to try and capture this incident as a clarifying event.
I really do think bail reform is necessary and, beyond that, there are pieces of Sampson’s tough-on-crime Facebook post that bear real weight for this moment PG appears to be stuck in. Is Sampson correctly identifying that this person probably should not have been let to roam freely - yeah, I think he is correct on that.
Do I think we should be using this incident as a chance to try and advance an harmful practices like an involuntary treatment agenda? No. There’s still almost no evidence that involuntary treatment does anything other than re-traumatize people in addiction, and cause more severe/harmful relapse/OD chance.
People want simple answers to complicated problems - I empathize with that.
“Tough-on-crime” and punitive tough guy verbiage helps residents (and voters) feel like “something is being done” but the truth is that there are so many layers sitting on top of this.
If affordable housing was more abundant and available, there would be less street level crime happening. Less street level crime relieves a massive amount of weight resting on an already overburdened judicial system to deal with complex repeat-offender cases.
I bring all of this up if only to caution those, like Sampson, from trying to use the emotion of this moment to override the data which tells us empathy-driven approaches are still the best thing we can be putting forward to advance the safety of our community.
Conclusion (Sort Of)
The first time my in-laws visited PG from Ontario, Crossroads was our first stop because we knew with certainty that it would be a great experience for them to *feel* downtown PG.
Shooting the first Street Festival was my first paid photo gig in 2018.
The night Britt and I got engaged, it was where we went for celebratory drinks.
It was the first restaurant we went to after the COVID lockdowns ended and restaurants re-opened.
Trying to write this newsletter in a way that correctly honours and grieves the incredible things that Crossroads was to me, while acknowledging the discourse that was certain to appear the moment this all happened was not easy.
Reading “I will miss my Off The Grid pizzas” and “we need to have empathy driven criminal reform” in the same newsletter is probably a very jarring and I want to really acknowledge that whiplash - I am not convinced this was the right way to write about all of this but I hope it’s clear I did my best to hold both feelings beside eachother.
More than anything, I want to end by saying I feel for the owners and staff of Crossroads. You all created something so incredibly special for our city and although we often wait until too late to fully recognize how meaningful something is, I hope the one positive from any of this is a chance for you all to see what you meant to this city.
Crossroads showed us what downtown PG can be when people invest in community.
The best way to honour that isn’t by doubling down on punishment: it’s by building a city where people have the housing, health care, and just the stability to thrive.
I don’t know what comes next for Crossroads but I’m sending love and positivity for everything they’ve done for us and for the city I love.
yes yes a thousand times yes. I nearly cried when I heard Crossroads had burnt down. And the cause is actually more about kneejerk reactionism to crime and criminals than it is sane policy. Yes we need bail reform, no that guy should not have been out -- but check out Front Burner this week for an interview with Irvin Waller, who talks about Boston and Glasgow decreasing violent crime in their cities by 50% in 2-3 years by looking at the "risk factors" (causes) of the crime in the first place, and saying no to inflated police budgets.
Toronto-based former Northern BC boy & equally Earls Girlie here - gutted to hear about Crossroads and loved this ramble about it. Hoping the community rallies. Really hoping I can stop in for a pint when my flight in or out is inevitably delayed around the holidays to visit parents, but that's probably wishful thinking they'll be back up by then.