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