Gentrification

[angus]

examples?

In 2001 Bill Clinton, America's First Black President, moves into an apartment on 125th Street in Manhattan and establishes a foundation.  Within months, the Apollo Theater is refurbished and re-opened, storefronts are upgraded, a bunch of white people start moving in, grits-and-collards restaurants are replaced with "Authentic Soul Food" restaurants, and suddenly what used to be the 'hood is crawling with YUPPIEs and paparazzo-stalkers.  The rent starts to increase, and fifth-generation residents are forced to find new digs, just so one Arkansas hillbilly-cum-intellectual who probably doesn't know who is real Daddy is can live in the Big City and set his paranoid, controlling, uptight lawyer wife up with a ladder to climb to the presidency so that the faux-feminists can claim that "you've come a long way, baby" when she becomes elected.
 

[angus]

Perhaps.  Here's another example:

When I was a grad student at BU, the Kenmore Square neighborhood, near Fenway Park, was a dump, but it was an interesting dump.  There was a bar called Der Rathskeller where ska bands and other local musicians would play.  Never a cover.  Always a good time.  A sixteen-ounce glass of Samuel Adams cost $1.75.  A vodka martini would cost about two dollars.  This was in the early 90s.  There was also an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet, with naan, aloo chat, tandoori chicken, saag paneer, green chutney, red chutney, gulab jaamn, and a whole bunch of other stuff (mango lassi costs extra, if you want one, although I usually drank water there).  There was also an all-you-can-eat Korean buffet with at least nine kinds of kim chee.  No exaggeration.  There was also a GAP clothing store.  Cheap stuff. Hoodies for ten dollars, boots for twelve.  Not particularly well made, but decent enough for young people.  Students.  There were, of course, bums in the stairwells leading to the Kenmore Square T stop, and one particularly interesting, very effeminate guy who would recite any English poem you want to hear.  Keats, Hemingway, Longfellow, Yeats, just name it.  I remember the first time he approached me, asking for "a dollah!" and I said, okay, how about Robert Frost Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.  No sooner had I said that when he began a spirited telling of it.  "Whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though ..."  

By the time I was hooded I noticed that they started fixing the place up.  The Rat was gone, and good beer under two dollars was a thing of the past.  I moved to California around the turn of the century and didn't visit the old neighborhood for a long time.  Eventually, around January of 2012, when I was getting tired of Iowa and applying for other jobs, I found myself visiting Simmons College for a grueling two-day job interview.  On the second evening they took me to a very posh seafood place in Kenmore Square--I could barely recognize the place; valet parking and men's room attendants; gone were the Indian and Korean buffets, and a high-end, "brick oven" pizzeria where the GAP used to be--and it was about a million miles from anywhere I'd know.  Oh, sure I enjoyed the wining and dining at the end of the interview.  I had more than a few glasses of French wine, and oysters from all over Maine and Massachusetts Bay.  The tall black guy in tuxedo who stooped over to present them looked like a caricature.  Like one of those old statues you'd see in people's lawns back in the 70s.  We also had a plate of cheeses.  Five tiny little slivers of cheese, each with a bit of special sauce poured upon it, all served on a wooden palette, for just twenty dollars.  (I happened to notice the price of a couple of the hors d'oeuvres on the menu as I was ordering and I remember the "cheese sampler" being twenty dollars.  I think I probably had a steak and a lobster with mashed potatoes and broccoli with hollandaise sauce for my main course.  I have no idea what the total bill was, but being as there were five of us, and we all consumed copious amounts of pre-food food, food, after-food food, and wine, I'm guessing that it was well into the three-figure range.)  

Man, in 1995 you couldn't find a three-figure meal within a thousand-meter radius of that place.  Well, except maybe just outside Fenway Park, where you could eat a hundred of those cheap little hot dogs for perhaps a hundred dollars, and each one would come with as many grilled onions and bell peppers as you want.  But most of the meals were about six dollars or less.  There was a Dunkin Donuts and a couple of little bottle shops where that posh oyster and cheese place is now.  

As you might imagine, I had mixed feelings about the gentrification of Kenmore Square.  Nice place to visit, but I'm not sure I could afford to live there.  At least not any more.

[angus]

San Francisco is a recent, non-racial, example.

Trendy hipsters and tech workers have been moving into the city for years because San Francisco had become known as a "cool" and "progressive" city. A few weeks ago, the last remaining lesbian bar in San Francisco closed down, as a result of San Francisco's LGBT populace and culture being displaced by 30-somethings trying to develop the newest hit app.

San Francisco has undergone many attempts at gentrification.  See, for example, my diatribe regarding the neighborhood at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets in Bono's Modal Libertarians thread.  Well, that was intended to be an example of Yuppification, but it also works as an example of gentrification.  In all examples of gentrification, the net effect was the increase in the price of living, displacing many long-time residents long-time local businesses. 

[angus]

I will say that attempts to freeze neighborhoods in amber, and to pull up the drawbridges on anybody, is counterproductive and doomed to failure and really kind of an ugly impulse if you ask me. 

You read far too much in between the lines.  I don't see any posts in this thread advocating frozen or amber-coated neighborhoods.  We're just discussing our observations.  Gentrification obviously has advantages and disadvantages, and the disadvantages are worth pointing out.  (Pointing out the advantages not being necessary, of course, because you can count on the building contractors to do that.)

[angus]

I can't speak for Patrick, but it didn't strike me that way.  At least he doesn't seem to favor a bill aimed at preventing a guy from selling a condo for 20% more than what he bought it for.  I can speak for myself, and for myself I'd say that his post expressed a sentiment which was not ugly  at all.  It was poignant.  He is a man with an identity, and that identity was informed from the nurturing of his youth.  That nurturing environment is being destroyed by economic flux.  In the grand scheme of things I don't try to control the flux--and my guess is that Patrick isn't trying to control it either--but the flux that makes Meg Ryan's bookstore get sold to Tom Hanks' megastore (what a horribly shallow Gen X movie, by the way) is the sort of flux I'd expect a soft Red shield like yourself to try to protect against from the sort of market sympathizers like me.  Even a Republican-sympathizing neofascist like myself can understand the poignancy of a homeland lost.  

Strange days indeed.  No wonder you guys are losing control.  

[angus]

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If you're thinking about the Bertucci's in Kenmore, it's a reasonably priced chain in the Boston area, not a high-end restaurant.

I won't argue with you about whether it's high end, but any place where the cheapest entrée is 15 dollars and the prices range from there up to 80 dollars is higher end than the GAP and the $5.99 all-you-can-eat Indian Buffet that it displaced. 
 
Anyway, I've been to Bertucci's a couple of times.  Well, other ones, not that one because it wasn't there before.  I even have a Bertucci's coffee mug.  It's decent pizza, but overpriced. 
 

[angus]

the original and only location in Somerville's Davis Square to enjoy the pizza, and use the indoor Bocci court if it was available.

I know it well.  I lived for over five years within easy walking distance of Davis Square and have been to every restaurant in that vicinity.  That is also the only the Bertucci's I've ever been to, and it's where I got my Bertucci's mug.  I'm also familiar with Steve's and his award-winning ice cream.

In my humble opinion, the best pizza in those parts is (or was) on the corner of Highland Avenue and Lowell Street.  I don't remember the name of the place, but the old Lebanese woman there also had homemade Baklava from time to time.  A large one-topping pie went for five dollars. 

My point wasn't to haul this off into a discussion of Bertucci's, or whether its pizza is worth what they charge for it, or even relating to Davis Square (which has also been somewhat gentrified, by the way.  The house I lived in consisted of three three-bedroom flats, one on top of another, and was purchased for $260 by the new owner in 1992 and five years later re-sold for just under $700. I'm sure Steve's, Mike's, Bertucci's, and the Someday Cafe have all had rent increases in the past 20 years as well.)  My point in that post strictly related to the distant Kenmore Square, and the stark gentrification it has received in the past 15 or 20 years, and about the fact that the gentrification has made it prettier and more welcoming to those with wads of cash, but it has made it less welcoming to those who lived there for many years (sometimes without a roof over their heads).

I'm not staking out a position for or against gentrification, and I indicated this very clearly in my earlier posts, but I think we should be honest about its effects.  I'm of the opinion that in this thread we should be sure to emphasize the negative ones, since you can be sure that the cocooned and sheltered posters in this forum will be certain to emphasize the positive ones.