In John Carpenter's ancient 1981 film Escape from New York, convicted bank robber Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is sent into futuristic 1997 to rescue the US President from Manhattan, which by 1997 is a gigantic max-security prison. The film was called sci-fi, but today's gentrified Manhattan or San Francisco or Denver makes the film alternate history, a future not based in reality.
Two recent news and developments in Denver's
gentrification made we wonder about my Northside neighborhood, which I and
Bloguista Manuel Ramos have often written about, realistically, facetiously, or
soberly, as Ramos wrote:
"One of the regrettable things that has happened
to Denver’s Northside, where I've lived for more than thirty years, is the rise
and victory of the 'suburban aesthetic': boxy, boring housing lined up in rows;
a uniform 'non-conformist' style from clothes to music; restaurants that are
destinations rather than good places to grab a bite to eat; an obsession about
'making it,' a flaccid, common denominator cultural perspective. A great
neighborhood has to be more than that."
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| A Highlands developer's dream |
Gentrification is defined as:
"revitalizing neighborhoods, the
movement of young, often single, professionals into low-income, heavily
minority, neighborhoods near urban employment centers. Low-income and minority
residents are pushed out by gentrification as the local culture and consumption
patterns are taken over by upwardly mobile professionals."
Progress is defined as a gradual
betterment; the process of improving
or developing something over a period of time; the act or process of growing or
causing something to grow or become
larger or more advanced."
Bolded words above took on different meanings as
I sat on my front patio this week, wondering how gentrification had
"revitalized, improved" or made the neighborhood "more
advanced." It is "larger" in terms of population density, with
condo and apartment complexes going up like Peyton Manning's touchdown-record.
Gazing down the street, from house to house, this is
what I know. When people moved into these houses that were built in the 1940s,
they were looking for homes to start families, places to raise their kids,
within walking distance of neighborhood schools [3 within 5 blocks], and maybe
not far from their jobs.
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| A home the developers didn't raze |
In both of those two houses (imagine following my
finger) live steelworkers, in that one a factory worker and his grocery clerk
wife, in that one a retired railroad worker, in the corner one a postal worker,
in that one lived a president of her union, and next door, a federal government
worker, Until recently, I was a teacher. All of those people belonged/belong to
unions--there's more I don't know about--which were part of the community
culture. Finding a gentry-neighbor who's part of a union or who would support a
union picket is as hard as finding cheap houses around here.
Next door to me lived a Chicano who I went to college
with and was part of the Chicano student movement. Across the street, a woman
who was one of its poets. The three of us, at least, had that in common.
Student radicalism, Chicano pride, nonviolent protest. None of the gentry on my
block come from such backgrounds.
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| A home, not an investment |
Across the street lived two girls who went to the
Northside middle and high school with my two kids, one of whom lives five
blocks away. Next door and two houses down, and in others sprinkled down the
block, live/lived other kids who went to the same schools. They called
themselves Northsiders, Vikings and attended North High School. Many stayed
together at the same schools until they graduated or went on to college. With
charter and split or hybrid schools all around us, the few gentry kids won't
have neighborhood schools in common.
I can see the house where the Italian old lady [her
son still lives there] use to drink on her porch. She was the same woman who
would take care of neighborhood Mexican kids when their mother was late getting
home. Or would feed Chicano children who she knew didn't have enough to eat
when they got home from school. A steelworker from another house would
regularly mow the two lawns of old ladies who couldn't push a mower or afford
to pay anyone. A welder who lives over there and the guy who live there will
weld something for you for free or run his snow-blower down other people's
sidewalks. Another guy helped me with my fire-pit and another has fixed my car
for me and neither would accept money. Of course, sometimes neighbors paid for
work or bartered. I wonder whether today's gentry neighbors, with some
exceptions, would act so neighborly for kids who might have lice in their hair,
or let their gentry kids play with them, or even imagine that hungry
neighborhood kids might be part of their responsibilities.
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| Really--you'd want to live in this? |
South of me lived a Chicano, then a Mexican family,
then another Mexican family that had migrated without papers from the same
region of Mexico. Next door to them, another family from that region. North of
me lived a paperless Mexican family, and I can count five others on the block
that are still homes to Mexicanos. Counting us, there's six Chicano families
still around. Decades ago, I had no doubts about why my family moved here.
Because there were Chicanos, working class, Mexicanos who spoke Spanish. Good
decent-priced restaurants with a chorizo breakfast, or bars with affordable
shots or a variety of tequilas, or clubs with live music and no cover and cheap
beer, or Catholic church bazaars where you ate good, danced in the street and
saw and talked with your raza neighbors. With the gentry here, most of that is
disappearing. I know that in a lot of cases, the gentry see that as Progress.
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| Kurt can't save us from Highlands |
Our Chafee Park pocket of ranch house bungalows is
zoned for families and no apartments. The developer-gentry may try to change
that. (Over mi cuerpo muerto.) The old Northsiders moved here to find homes.
Yes, they expected the house's value to rise, at least from inflation. But they
moved here to stay, except for Mexicanos and Chicanos who got trapped by
balloon payments, ARMs and under-qualifying loans. The four families I know about
who lost homes had to move east to Aurora where ethnics can more afford to live
or rent.
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| Architecture: Highlands-ugly |
The developers have created another circle of Dante's
Hell. Apartment buildings are going up, yes, like a Broncos' score. Monthly rents average $1,145. "Over 9,000 new apartments were built in 2013, 8,700 more
are expected this year, and another 8,700 in 2015. 55,000 people will migrate
here next year. "People are definitely looking at Colorado as the place to
be. We have become an area where young professionals are moving. Entrepreneurs
can start their businesses anywhere in the country, and so they are choosing
areas where the lifestyle matches their preferences."
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| You buy this, you breathe the chems |
I think of the new Northside--the developers renamed
us Highlands, without our input--as Legoland. Like Ramos described above, apartment
and condo boxes are slapped together with OSB instead of plywood like the old
homes. It's 2/3 cheaper and the gentry will only see the outside. It doesn't
matter that California wants to require
special warnings for these "chemicals known to cause cancer and birth
defects or other reproductive harm, wood dust known to cause cancer." The
median price for these boxes is $263,000. It's about money, investment,
flipping houses and moving on. Not about neighbors and community.
This month in the Denver Post, Fine Arts Critic Ray Mark Rinaldi published "Did diversity miss the train in Union Station's architecture?" (The place is only ten minutes from my house.) The whole article is worth reading, but here's a sample:
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| Not Union Station; just big Lego |
"The urban playground at Union Station isn't drawing people of color and it may be the building's fault. Walking through the station, it doesn't look at all like Denver in 2014. More like Denver in 1950, Boise, Idaho, or Billings, Mont. If, that is, you are white and not paying attention. Or if you think diversity doesn't matter. If you do, you can't help but feel like something is off amidst all the clinking of martini glasses. If you are a tourist, you might get the idea that Denver doesn't have people of color. Or worse, you might think it's one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. That's not the case.
"The architecture's
roots are in the glory days of France, England, Greece and Rome, empires that
were nearly absent of ethnic minorities and who felt fully at ease invading,
exploiting and actually enslaving the people of Africa, Asia and South America.
"Yes, that's
all in the past; things have changed. But the $54 million renovation of Union
Station doesn't take that into account. It restores the symbols of an old world
with no updates. The gilded chandeliers have been rewired, the marble polished,
but there's no nod to the present. Is Union Station Ready for the Next 100 years, as its marketing proclaims?"
Rinaldi
received over 316 comments. I won't't be surprised if the paper's conservative owners demoted or restricted
him to articles about Bronco Stadium architecture. Here's a sample of the
comments:
"So writing
a racist article is OK if it is against white people?"
"White guilt
is a large part of any college education now."
"We should
just blow up all beautiful old buildings so that nobody is ever made uncomfortable
by being reminded of what their ancestors didn't accomplish."
I
don't know how many comments came from developers or gentry. But none of this
sounds like the old Northside's neighborly ways of Italians, Chicanos,
Mexicanos and others living next to each other. It certainly doesn't sound like
tolerance.
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| Highlands next improvement? |
If you
missed it, check Bobby Lefebre's La
Bloga post from last week, Vanishing Chicano Culture and the Gentrification of Denver’s Northside. "He is the driving force behind the We Are North Denver movement that has
shined a bright spotlight on the massive changes happening to the Northside -
good and bad. When racist flyers recently appeared in the neighborhood, Bobby
responded with action that focused on unity
in the community. He wrote the following article originally for his
website, which you can find at this link." Like Ramos said there,
"As a resident of the Northside for more than thirty years, I agree with
much of what Bobby says in this piece. Both Bobby and I would be interested in
your reactions."
The Northside that's become the developers' and
gentry's Highlands is a great candidate for a new Darwin Award for City
Suicide. Already the signs of super-congestion, unflavored architecture and an
unaffordable lifestyle and life have settled over my neighborhood like a new
Brown Cloud. It didn't and doesn't have to be that way. Richer, whiter
neighborhoods were inoculated from turning into Legoland. For instance, there's
the Bonnie Brae Neighborhood Association whose zoning committee reviews all
zoning requests. It's one of the most charming, coveted, million-dollar-homes
areas in the West. Take note developers--of million-dollar-homes. Not made of
cheap, toxic OSB or intended to look like Legos. And how about some solar? |
| Old Northside home, family-friendly |
Except for the Lefebre and Rinaldi articles, I don't
know why I wrote this. I'm not lamenting so much as remembering. Why we came
here. What here is. And was. What it shouldn't become. What it shouldn't lose.
Its ethnicity. Its multi-national neighborhood quality. Its sense of community.
It's the Northside.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG, a.k.a. a Northside who's not quitting. Or
moving.
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