Duk Shing coffee shop

Back in the early 1990s, I used to frequent a coffee shop in East Toronto which was a popular hangout for troublemaker teens. It was a bit of a lawless place. Illegal cigarettes were sold under the counter and there were constant rumours of gambling on site. The air inside was always thick with smoke as it was a popular place for delinquent students to take their cigarette breaks.

I had a few memorable incidents at this establishment, which made me well known to the proprietor and the regulars.

I first gained notoriety at Duk Shing when I — at the time totally removed from the miscreant scene — went inside the shop to confront a group, led by “Big Brother”, that had been “rolling” my friends (i.e. robbing via threat of assault). The plan was for my friends and I to confront BB inside Duk Shing and make it known that we would not be pushed around. A rival faction, who had their own beef with the group and was friendly with us, waited outside in full view from inside the shop as our backup.

I had hitherto never entered Duk Shing, but mustered the courage to take a lead role in the operation. I went inside armed with a meat cleaver, baseball bat and several knives on my person in case the group tried to attack me. However, once inside I saw that quite a few of the “enemy” crowd were my childhood friends.

I called out BB’s name and challenged him in front of his friends, goading him to try to roll us now that we had numbers in our favour. It was a tense standoff and BB stood down, humiliated by our brazen act on his turf.

A brawl was avoided, although I did become enemy number one to certain people there that day. (This prompted/ necessitated me to build up my own connections in the neighbourhood to protect myself from the possibility of getting jumped on the streets.)

A year later I got in a fight inside the premise. In that incident, I ripped the stairwell banister off the wall after delivering a jumping kick as part of the fiasco. Police were later involved and took photos of the regulars as part of the investigation. It became known as “photo day” at Duk Shing. I had to lay low and shaved my head after the incident.

The neighbourhood has since underwent gentrification. Duk Shing is now a vegan cafe that caters to hipster teens.