The True Victims of Gentrification

Anyone that reads this blog (there aren't many as of yet) knows my position on gentrification. If you don't, I'll help you out here: I am from the school of thought that gentrification is simply an inevitable and cyclical process, not an evil to be avoided, as it is portrayed as in so many liberal circles.

Anyway, just when I thought I had heard every explanation on the evils of gentrification, I had a conversation with a young man that gave me some pretty amazing material to write about. While you might expect to hear what I'm about to share with you on a sitcom, or maybe in a Will Ferrell movie, this is my best recollection of an actual conversation my wife and I had just the other night at a local restaurant.

We were sitting in the lounge area of a new restaurant in the Cole/Whittier/Five Points neighborhood, having a conversation with our server, who was a mid-twenties, African American guy. Really nice guy--Always smiling, clearly very bright, and very gregarious.

Anyway, he had just dropped us our check, and I think to be friendly asked us if we lived in the neighborhood. We explained how we had just purchased a home a few blocks away, and were excited at the progress the area was enjoying.

"The neighborhood sure is changing," he said. He went on to explain that he had lived there his entire life, but that it really started to change about five years ago.

"I can still remember when we first saw white people walking their dogs by our house," he said. "We (were) scared! Me and my friends ran inside, we didn't know if they were under-cover cops or something!" He continued, "We used to hustle right up the street here," he said, gesturing in the direction of Manual High School. "You could make a million dollars!"

Did we look like we wanted to hear this? Did we look like the kind of people that would relate to being disappointed about not being able to hustle on a streetcorner anymore? Did he think this would endear the average customer to him? Did he notice we hadn't tipped him yet?

He went on: "There's a dog park there, right where we used to hustle! We knew it was changing then, because the only reason they put a dog park in is for white people. Black people don't walk their dogs anywhere," he exclaimed.

"The changing neighborhood is certainly good for your business here," I said, trying to subtly change direction. But it was no use.

"Change is OK, but it sucks when people are pushed out. All my old friends, they're crips (gang members), and they've all gotten scared away by all the white people and moved over to Park Hill. I'm not into that stuff, I mean I went to college. But all my friends, they got scared away."

I'll just end my recount there. I say again that I haven't fabricated or exaggerated this account at all. Someone actually told us that it's a bad thing when drug dealing, violent gang members are pushed out of a neighborhood by the dog-walking, coffee-drinking white people.

Those evil yuppies!

gentrification

Oh, city life

When's the last time you saw a human being urinate in public? Never you say? Well welcome to Cole--I saw two people--Yes, two--urinate within 1/2 block of our house in one week. How cosmopolitan!

Round one: I was home working when I noticed a strange, heavyset woman sitting on the curb in front of our house. As usual when someone strange catches my eye, I parked myself on the front sofa and watched her closely to see what she was up to. After a couple minutes she hoisted herself up from the street (no small feat) and then walked across the street to our friend Liz's house. I then saw her walk into Liz's side yard and apparently sit down. What happened next will likely scar me for life. Yup, Voila! She dropped her drawers, squatted, and let it fly--ten feet from Liz's house. Want a visual that'll stick with you all day like gum in your hair, imagine Rosanne Bar baring her fat white ass in the blazing mid-day sun and using your neighbor's lawn as a latrine. I was shocked, so much so that it took me an above-average 20 seconds to call the police. By the time I had described her to the officer on the phone, she had walked around the corner onto Bruce Randolph and out of site. Not that they could have likely done anything to her anyway.

But wait-- Then there was round two (Ding!) Fast forward two days and again I find myself watching a suspicious lady in front of the house. This time it's a short, chubby, sketchy-looking African-American woman wearing unsnapped coveralls (in retrospect I'm betting she chose that clothing for its easy-access features. I think they've been marketing coveralls all wrong. "When you need to urinate in the street--I mean when you REALLY need to urinate in the street, choose Red Kap Coveralls for their easy-open fasteners...)

Anyway, cut to the chase, one minute she's talking to our alcoholic neighbor from across the street, then when he walks into his house, voila! She drops the coveralls and starts urinating on the curb right in front of our house! Needless to say, I had already exceeded my tolerance level for disgusting people urinating in my field of vision, so I flipped out. This time I leaned my head out the window, carefully avoiding making direct eye contact with the offending act, and yelled "What do you think you're doing?"

"I have a small bladder!" was her reply.

"I don't care if you don't have a bladder at all, this is a neighborhood, nobody wants that here!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said, pulling up her coveralls and hurrying away from the house.

During these two experiences I couldn't help but remember the woman at our neighborhood association meeting who said something like "This is a great neighborhood, we don't need a police presence." Not if you enjoy people urinating in your yard, I guess.

The funniest thing about this is that I came to realize that both offenders are friends of the biggest problem individual on the block. Namely the alcoholic, likely drug dealing 60-year-old freeloading nephew of the nice old lady that owns the big house across the street. In typical Denver fashion, we have a pretty nice and responsible block overall, but it's that one problem house that always is the source of the drama. ALWAYS.

If we can just clean up that one last house, maybe we actually won't need a police president after all on our block. Stay tuned, I'm sure there's more drama right around the corner.