This image is from Save On Meats’ owner Mark Brand’s Instagram feed tonight, with the following note:

“These anarchists stole our sign. Yes I’m serious. They won’t stop until the capitalists leave the neighbourhood. I’m serious. They will be embarking on a mission to close save on meats. I’m serious. Japanese peace pose. They’re serious. In all seriousness this sign is a real heart felt piece for the people who work with us. It makes them really sad that people would steal it and disrespect their living. Therefore making me upset. Help me find it and spread the word fast. I’m serious.”

Since it’s not April 1st, I’m assuming Brand is serious, however much it might seem like a stupid prank. The sign is the work of local artist Dan Climan who is, incidentally, a pretty awesome cat. It’s unclear if the thieves are the same folks who vandalised the Famoso pizzeria on Commercial Drive and sent out the following press release:

For all too long now yuppies have been peacefully going about their gourmet dinners, buying up their lucky condos and flaunting their wealth by driving around in expensive cars. We thought it would be great to remind them AGF is still here. So last night, for the third time, Famoso Neapolitan Pizzeria was attacked. Several of its windows and one of its cameras were smashed. Famoso thought that putting up their pathetic cameras would stop our attacks. They haven’t and never will. We are also inspired by the picketers of the new yuppie restaurant in the downtown east side called Pidgin. They have been giving yuppies a taste of the class war for weeks now. Over the last week City of Vancouver, who promotes gentrification with their Grandview Woodland community plan, were also were visited by the AGF. Two of their trucks had their windows smashed (6 all together, including 2 windshields) and one of their tractors had their huge window shattered. This is a fucking class war and we will not stop until we are free from class, the state and all others who oppress us. Your time will come. Pidgin its time you fly away or face the consequences.

Even if they aren’t the same perps…jeez, who steals a work of art to launch a class war?

UPDATE: So it appears that the sign was allegedly ripped off a while back. The photo appears in a release on the Vancouver Media Co-op page, date-stamped March 14th. The tract reads a lot like the one detailing the attacks on Famoso…

On a recent eve, a small group of merry mischief making anarchists made off into the night with a prominent piece of gentrification propaganda: the Save-on Meats a-board. The act was meant to let the gentrifiers know that they have entered an area with a long history of class warfare. The ghetto revolt will not stop until every capitalist enterprise has ceased to destroy daily life. This small action is one facet amongst many. It isa symbol of the slow and deliberate dis-assembly of the capitalist machine. Gentrification: the civilization of wild terrain, colonization, the shift; scary/undesirable/unknown to “the new frontier in fine dining”, the process that makes the displacement of a social class inevitable and acceptable, even to the displaced. Two capitalist endeavors, Save-On Meats and Pidgin, have pasted “ethical consumerism” veneers onto their schemes (so have many others, but for now here’s a rant about these two). Brandon Grossutti’s Pidgin is a restaurant for the wealthy and well-dressed bourgeois/up-and-coming class, and was designed to allow the patrons to sneer out the huge windows at the vibrant life of the lower class beyond those windows. The restaurant lent a hand and hired someone “from the community”: a dishwasher who gets paid minimum wage, and with that, Pidgin must have become the only restaurant to ever be publicly applauded for hiring a wage slave. And entrepreneur voyeur, Mark Brand of Save-On Meats, continues his crusade against the poor; masquerading as a savior with his paternalistic, segregating token program, and his multiple gentrifying businesses in the DTES-area. Save-On also sells cheap meals to many DTES housing corporations like Atira, which Brand brands as “supporting the community”, but he fails to mention that the meals he sells are usually containers of potato salad, hot dogs, sloppy joes, macaroni, and other anti-nutritional choices which promote neither physical nor mental health. These businesses gloss over the most vilifying fact: by catering to the wealthier elements of this fucked up city, they are raising property values in the poorest neighborhood of all, and their very existence has rendered much housing already unaffordable to those getting by on piddly welfare cheques. Buniness owners like Brand and Grossuti claim to want to “start a conversation”. This conversation has been going on for years. EVEN IF the gentrifiers think they are doing right by the present residents of the DTES, their very presence is a key ingredient in an ongoing movement to displace the existing residents and create a newly fashioned enclave for outsiders. We will not stop. We will take their property apart bit by bit if we haveto, and we’ll have fun doing it.

So there you go. Mark Brand is anti-nutritional, too. Also, fun.

Via Reddit: “Whoa guys…They stole a sign. Guess we’ll just have to rely on that HUGE NEON SIGN WITH A PIG ON IT THAT SAYS SAVE ON MEATS. Idiots.”