Thursday, June 16, 2005

ah, the beauty of gentrification (possibly part 1 of a loooooong series)

I love how developers come into an area, drive up housing prices thereby driving people out, completely change the character, and then attach a new name to it to make it seem like it was yuppy-"hip" the whole time. This is the conclusion I came to during this email conversation:
friend (who hopefully won't kill me if she sees that i posted this)
He [owner of st ex and bar pilar] said they are trying to make bar pilar more of a neighborhood bar than st.ex, which i think is a bit funny, since they are still charging $9 for a salad. i guess by "neighborhood" they mean "residents of the ellington". regardless, im not hating, i love st. ex despite its recently limited menu. we should definitly try happy hour at pilar.
me:
yeah, and before bar pilar, wasn't there a salvadoran bar? i seem to remember one...oh well. neighborhood is a relative term i suppose in this gentrifying u st. corridor (although i guess 14th st. is now given its own designation by the developer crowd, given the number of condos going up on it, which is kind of unreal). you should tell mike to recommend a veggie burger or portabello sandwich to st x's lunch menu
friend:
i agree, they need to lure us veggies in with more than a plate of asparagus and a bowl of arugula.
have you heard about the plans for development on 14st, north of U? condos on "union row" are being planned. how many names can shaw have?
me:
haha. well, i guess a new crowd of residents demands a new hip name for each tiny area. "i dont live in shaw, i live in (insert trendy name here)." what cracks me up is that they are completely made up by the developers. it's just so funny that you can have developers that say, we're going to create a "hip" area, and they put a bunch of stuff in, and then it actually becomes "hip". it's kind of orwellian and creepy. oh well.

In other news, I'll have to think about how I feel about Wonkette's "musings" about the sexual abilities/styles of various type of journalists as compared to my limited journalist-sex experiences. (Note: she definitely left out independent media makers. Too hard to come up with a clever quip? I thought so. So marginalized!)

2 Comments:

Blogger Dulce said...

it's sad that i feel lucky to pay less than a 1000 bucks for a small one bedroom apt in columbia hgts..i was at a party last week and most of the night people were discussing the housing market..it's like porn for yuppies

7:31 AM  
Blogger Brynne said...

Haha, "porn for yuppies". Beautiful.

8:49 AM  

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