Twenty forth and york is my home in the mission…. Yesterday while walking in the neighborhood I stumbled across a newly renovated sushi bistro. It isn’t open yet, but under construction. I actually smelled it before I saw it, that smell of construction site… of plywood, adhesive, saw dust, of exposed earth. I am a plumber for a living, it’s a smell that that I know quite well and strangely a smell that I actually like. What was there before I couldn’t remember… wasn’t it that fancy panty shop, I asked myself, where did that go?.. oops that’s still here but right next door. I got very sad and annoyed, which is always my reaction to what I perceive as fancy bizness in the neighborhood… and as this kind of gentrification is now spreading to my neighborhood, I am annoyed a lot. . and saddened a lot…
If we or our loved ones are lucky enough to have not been evicted recently, or had condo lofts built next door, its the retail face of gentrification that many of us see when our neighborhoods are invaded by developers, real estate speculators, business entrepreneurs, home-buyers, “hipsters”, yuppies or the baby stroller traffic jams on the sidewalk. These new businesses cater to the tastes of the new residents… or do they? Which comes first, people who like really good coffee, sushi and lingerie boutiques or people who make really good coffee, sushi and sell lingerie? Don’t working class people like good coffee and maybe even sushi and lingerie? I know I do? (and of course that depends on the price of these things).
Which ever comes first, the gentri or the gentrification, maybe the question doesn’t really matter, as the outcome of the process of gentrification, I would argue, is always destroyed community and lives. The retail manifestations of this kind of change are always a warning sign of more to come.
… i get really angry at the new business in the neighborhood, I don’t know most of the folks who operate these businesses, so maybe it’s unfair in some way to have such a reaction without some attempt to find out who they are and what they think about the changing neighborhood. After all, I am a small businessperson of sorts as I work for myself as a plumber. I have talked to some of the many of the workers in these businesses and I will try to share some of that in the following months.
Gentrification is many things.. it is heartbreak, it is memory loss, it doesn’t care about historical context, or cultural context.. its ideology is all about growth economy. It is brutal.
Gentrification, in san Francisco at least, comes in all colors, genders and sexual preferences, although my assumption is that it primarily white and heterosexual.
Some of what it creates is a mono culture of class, a “safety zone” for the bridge and tunnel crowds, a “slummers playground”, a place to build equity for a while until you move up and out to another neighborhood, until you “cashout”.
Gentrification is eviction, and for low income people, many times that means moving out of s.f, as a new flat and a new lease would be totally unaffordable… and for many others eviction can mean homelessness…
Gentrification is “quality of life policing” where police target homeless people, sex workers, and youth of color to get “undesirable elements” off the streets where they are perceived as bad for business. The recent gang injunctions in San Francisco are a disgusting testament to this kind of racist policing to target youth of color.
Gentrification is allocation of tax money away from services for poor folks and the arts and into bigger police budgets or into keeping the opera and the symphony alive and well.
Gentrification in its advanced stages is a disneyland for tourists… where cities become parodies of themselves. Think fishermen’s wharf or some parts of north beach… think Greenwich village or the lower east side of new york or times square… Williamsburg Brooklyn…
I want to say upfront, that I am not a hater when it comes to “new people” in the neighborhood. I consider myself a san Franciscan, although I am from new york. This is my home and I have lived in the mission long enough that my heart calls it home…….. I really, really, really love san Francisco. The issue of “nativism” in discussions about gentrification has always annoyed me, as in who deserves to be here.. who is really a san Franciscan and who has been here long enough to deserve the right to be here? There is a race/class element to these discussions that always feels complex, and that quite honestly sometimes feels bigoted to me.
Some of the easiest targets in this “nativism” are “hipsters”. Hipster hating is rampant in my community, and although I like to join in the fun from time to time, (I know some great hipster jokes). Hipsters have become the scapegoats of a lot of anger about the gentrification in the neighborhood. Hipsters are visible, they are in cafes and bars, on their bikes, in the street, in bands etc. and in some ways this makes them an easy target.
The “hipsters” I know do not identify as such. In fact, no one I know, (including myself) no matter how many of the hipster signifiers they were sporting would identify as a hipster…. no matter the hoodie, fixee, tight pants, asymmetrical haircut, baseball cap, the over developed sense of irony, love of obscure pop, the facebook profile, the hangover… nor the “punk rock” hipsters with all the black, the boots, tight pants, hoodie, the pitbull, the piercings, the asymmetrical haircut, the fixee, tattoos, bondage gear, the hangover, the punk rock swagger… Hipster is always used in the diminutive, in the derogatory by everyone I know.
. …. So I am going to go out on a limb here and because my parents were from Brooklyn I will speak my mind in that new york way for a moment……..
Ask anyone you know to close their eyes and envision a typical hipster and then ask them the race of the person they see. 9 times out of 10 it’s a white person they see.
… I have begun to feel that hipster hating may be a way to indirectly express deeper feelings. Sometimes I feel when it is expressed by my friends who are people of color, that hipster hating is some kind of cloaked bigotry, as in its white people who are destroying the neighborhood …so fuck that and fuck them. Whereas hipster hating coming from friends who are white I feel is white guilt coming to the surface… guilt about being part of the gentrification themselves by being white and moving to a neighborhood that is mostly working class and latino…. So similarly its fuck that and fuck them…. plus the added element of “fuck me”….. I, myself fall into this later category of fuck that, fuck them and thus fuck me….
…. I’ll put my “California speak” back on and say… its not that any of these feelings are wrong, they are of course justified given the cultural and economic history of the neighborhood and I would argue, of racism, capitalism, and the very notion of private property itself….. but maybe that’s a different discussion?
Last year my neighbor sold his house, after 30 years in the mission. It sold for 1.2 million dollars. Two flats, an in-law with a garage in a very plain looking building. Maybe he got out just in time as the housing prices, even in san Francisco are dropping. He told me at the time that he was moving back to mexico to retire… and who can blame him, after 30 years of working and paying a mortgage. You could make the argument that the sale of his house for 1.2 million dollars did more damage to our neighborhood than the new coffee kiosk, the new sushi bistro, or the fancy panty shop … couldn’t you? I mean the folks who moved into this 1.2 million dollar house are definitely from a different class than most of us on this block of 24th and mission. And, we could safely assume, if they sell one of the flats it will be at market rate. If they rent one of the flats it will also be at market rate … this one house on my block will never again be affordable to anyone who makes less than a shit ton of money? Which comes first the gentri or the gentrification?
I have discussions with friends all the time about the gentrification in the hood, the skyrocketing price of rent (a two bedroom flat in the mission is now $2400/month even in the current “recession”!), the latest news on what ridiculous restaurant has moved in, what new boutique. Ive helped many people fight their evictions, celebrated when they won and helped them move when they lost, ive worked on campaigns when anti tenant propositions get on the ballot, ive gone door to door, ive cursed the sheriff when he arrives with his posse to do private property’s dirty work and removed the tenants from their home, ive rent striked, and walked picket lines and done direct actions and occupations of buildings.
I have been asking questions to just about everyone I know … what are effective ways to stop gentrification, should we focusing our energy on creating affordable housing, saving rent control, land trusts, squatting? A lot of the actions and campaigns I have been to recently are about saving individual families from eviction, either from the ellis act or from t.i.c’s. or about changing the plans of big development to include “real” affordable housing. These actions have been awesome and I think that the politics of confrontation is something that we need a whole lot more of. I don’t however want to be fighting these individual battles and the larger war, the right to a home, the market driven real estate economy, or the very notion of private property get pushed to the background as we try desperately to put out the latest fire…..I don’t have any answers….
… but back to the hipsters….i feel there is this perception that hipsters are trust fund babies as in they don’t have to work because they are receiving a check each month from mommy and daddy. While this is probably true with some, my experience is quite different. Most of the folks I know who would get profiled as hipsters are actually working class kids who are struggling to get by in this city like most of us. They are renters, they are students, school teachers, they make coffee (baristas), they are waiters, pizza makers, sound engineers, they work in bookstores and record shops, used clothes stores, in temp agencies, as laborers on construction sites, carpenters, as house cleaners etc. They are doing the jobs that people new to a city have always done… they are doing the jobs that working class people always do in cities.
For those of us who work on local politics,(housing, homelessness, immigrant rights, service providing etc.) we got “politicized” at some point in our lives, there was a moment in our lives at which this happened? For some folks I know it was punk rock or hip hop that politicized them, for some it was a teacher or another person who was influential in showing them different ways of thinking. For some it was college. For some folks I know it was their parents….. some of my friends had hippie parents with college educations but for those of us that didn’t have this privilege we were lucky to have someone or something to show us different ideas….
I got politicized by punk rock, and yes that makes me a cliché, thank you very much. First it was the clash, which led to bands like chumbawamba and then crass and so on… which led to me actually picking up a guitar and writing songs….. which gave me art….which led to me seeing a world outside of the abusive one I grew up in …it gave me community and hope. But before all that happened I was really lucky to have a social studies teacher named george larocca, who was not at all like the rest of the teachers at my school. He dressed like us, he had long shaggy hair and he gave us an alternative to the history in the text books. In some way he gave my budding rebellion a language, something real, something more than simply “fuck authority”. To him I am forever grateful. THANK YOU MR. LAROCCA.
I want to go out on another limb here and say….I think that hipsters could actually be one of our allies in fighting the monster of gentrification. Allies like any perceived group of people can be. (sorry for the generalities here). Allies in the sense that they are renters, that they are workers, that they can be really creative, and the hipsters I know are really sincere. Sincerity is the new black y’all…..
Maybe organizing hipsters is a little like union organizing, or student organizing, you go out and you talk to your membership and ask them what they care about. The fact that gentrification and skyrocketing rents hurt most of us seems like a good place to start …. I am not saying that I am about to try and organize hipsters, oh hell no!…. no one identifies as one anyway and I am more curious about who the folks in the neighborhood are and what they think.. I have enough organizing on my plate already…
So in the following weeks and months on this blog I will be talking to people in the neighborhood. All kinds of people, I will let them identify as they will, and I will be asking questions about the changes in the neighborhood and what they think we should do about it.
Stay tuned for more, and expect me to interview you if you are a friend….
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You are amazing! Such spot-on observations and inspiring provocations.
Y & I just noticed that Sushi Bistro the other day, and my reaction was “there goes the neighborhood,” though I know it’s been going for awhile now. But there’s something so ominous about a f’n’ sushi BISTRO. And what WAS there? Maybe nothing. There are plenty of empty store fronts left on 24th.
I struggle with my own variations of the white hipster/not-hipster trust fund gentri guilt. As an owner and a landlord, I am definitely that much closer to being The Man. But when I bought my place on Pot Hill, back in 1997, I specifically told the gay white realtor I worked with (who soon after happened to be part of the gay white gentrifications of Hayes Valley and Vallejo, oy) that I would not even consider a place that was occupied by a renting family. In the end, I evicted a young white lawyer couple! I figured (quite rightly) that they’d be fine. Anyway, I appreciate my potential as a landlord ally.
You are so right that everyone scapegoats the hipsters, yet no one would ever identify as such. Who are these elusive creatures? More importantly, how can we encourage cooperation without anyone having to admit that they’re a hipster?
The NE Portland OR neighborhood of Alberta has experienced a kinder, gentler gentrification in the last few years. At first, there was a real effort among the young white hipster/not-hipsters who bought homes and started arty boutiques and watering holes. But it just takes a few aggressive, non-caring developers to recognize a goldmine (like Williamsburg, for crying out loud) and completely transform it, eradicating the white working class hipsters along with the original families (who tend to be “of color”).
OK, enough preaching to the preacher, or I think this comment may outword your post. I just wanted to thank you for starting the new year off with a hearty serving of food for thought. Let’s make it a potluck, shall we?!
m + this is the piece i mentioned …
http://missionmission.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/opinion-harness-this-energy-for-the-struggles-to-come/#more-2632
Opinion: Harness This Energy For The Struggles To Come
By Emily and Kendra (via email)
We also attended the hearing [yesterday] as Mission residents and are happy that the commission voted to disapprove American Apparel opening a shop on Valencia St. Unfortunately, some of the public comments about the project and characterizations of the Mission upset us enough to speak up about some racism and classism that we witnessed.
Specifically, we found references to crime and the evolution of the Mission from an unsafe and undesirable place to a thriving business corridor as particularly offensive. Some comments, mostly from young white residents and business owners, referenced the idea that “we” made the neighborhood good, implicitly distinguishing themselves from other residents and businesses in the neighborhood, including the large Latino community.
Actually, long term residents HAVE been and continue to organize for a safe, clean, and thriving neighborhood, long before these newer boutiques moved in. The Mission Economic Development Association, the Mission Anti Displacement Coalition, and other concerned residents have been engaged in struggles against displacement and for economic justice for years.
Additionally, many of the small businesses argued that if formula retail enters Valencia Street, it would change the flavor, culture, and vibe of the neighborhood. However, this stance fails to acknowledge the neighborhood change that has already occurred.Boutique owners share responsibility for displacing family businesses and replacing them with businesses that sell specialty products that are not affordable for neighborhood residents.
Some comments referenced that our neighborhood can and should be divided into Valencia St. and the other Mission streets. In our excitement to keep out American Apparel, we must work together to fight against these sentiments and the splicing of our community. We hope to keep seeing small business owners call out what’s right, not just on Valencia but in important battles to come on Mission St. and other places in the neighborhood.
We are writing this as newer residents in the Mission, who are working to be responsible allies to long-term residents by forming relationships with our neighbors and people who have been in this fight for decades. It is our responsibility to listen and learn the histories of the neighborhood in order to join the movement for safe communities. Let us not forget that the safety of which many people spoke of today was won at the hands of long-term residents who have fought to increase safety in the neighborhood for their families and children.
For those of you who weren’t able to stay until the end, we would highly recommend listening to the Commissioners comments, specifically Commissioners Borden and Olague, who called out some of these contradictions and spoke passionately against displacement and for the neighborhood.
The community turnout for this issue was unprecedented and we hope to continue to harness this energy for the struggles to come. In the meantime, let us reach out to business owners and residents in the Mission. The Wal-Marts and the American Apparels of the world don’t want us talking to each other. Our struggle for our neighborhood will be stronger if we know each other and our stories.
I think about this every day. As the Obama signs remain in the windows of progressives, and Save Medjool signs replace Stop American Apparel (and how long has it been since I’ve seen Stop the Endless War signs?), I sometimes think that my time has run out.
I moved here in ‘99, well after the first and second waves of anti-gentrification work in the neighborhood. When I stopped hanging around la mission and finally moved in (2000, Woodward Alley btwn Duboce & 14th), I immediately recognized the neighborhood on the verge. I joined campaigns and tried to sabotage every element of bougeouisiness I saw. I recognized then, and still do, a strange privilege that comes from being a single working person with financial obligations only to myself. My friends and I often joke that if we saw ourselves walking down the street, we’d surely make snide hipster comments about ourselves (I know, it’s so post-post modern). But it’s so circumstantial. To me, the hipsters are the folks who actually don’t care about the fact that their landlord evicted someone else so that they could move in, or they’re the people who refuse to have conversations in which they might have to criticize themselves…
I’m looking forward to your interview!