PukeGreen
Active Member
There's a bit of an interesting article in IHT (and probably the NYT, too) about a receding tide of gentrification in some US neighbourhoods. The cool coffee shops and specialty shops are going under in the recession, leaving new residents surround by only the very uncool businesses that existed before. While some of these people seem due for a bit of a reality refresher ("let their children play with the handmade wooden toys in a Scandinavian-style coffee shop, Swork") I don't think this trend is good for anyone. Hopefully we won't see anything similar in Toronto...
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When the next wave wipes out
International Herald Tribune
http://iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=20473708
By Scott Timberg
Friday, February 27, 2009
LOS ANGELES: When Emily Cook, a screenwriter, bought a house four years ago in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, she fantasized what the area might look like in a year or two, with cafes and boutiques replacing tattered old businesses. "It was like fantasy football," said Cook, 38, who also sings in a band named Fonda.
A sad flower shop on the corner, she thought, could become a miniature Whole Foods. An upholstery store could be a gastropub where she and friends would grab a beer, and a neglected 1940s diner could become a retro spot for a quick meal.
But Cook has stopped fantasizing about what might be, and started worrying about what might shut down. The flower store has closed; no gourmet market is moving in. Lucy Finch, a vintage boutique, folded last month. That Yarn Store, a hangout for crochet-heads, didn't survive a bad winter.
And what will become of the storefront that once housed Blue Heeler, which sold Australian imports?
"Please don't make it another martial arts studio," Cook pleaded. "What is it about Eagle Rock and martial arts?"
The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in New York to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.
For long-time residents, the return to pre-boom rents may be a blessing. But it also poses a rattling question of identity: What happens to bourgeois bohemia when the bourgeois part drops out?
Over the last five to six years, Eagle Rock became the glamour girl of Northeast Los Angeles, a crescent where the asphalt jungle meets the foothills. The neighborhood of 35,000 or so has attracted screenwriters and composers, Web designers and animators, who labor on their laptops in cafes, discuss film projects at Friday night wine tastings, and let their children play with the handmade wooden toys in a Scandinavian-style coffee shop, Swork.
It is easy to sniff at such urban affectations. But the downturn endangers more than precious shops; residents worry that as stores close, the fabric of a bohemian utopia — with its Jane Jacobs mix of commerce and public spiritedness — will also unravel.
Less than a decade ago, Eagle Rock was an unlikely candidate for gentrification. For decades, students at Occidental College — who have included Luke Wilson, Ben Affleck and Barack Obama — complained to friends that there was nothing to do in their college town.
Tracy King, a real estate agent, said that when she moved to the neighborhood in 1983, "there were 79 auto-related businesses on Colorado and Eagle Rock Boulevards."
But as housing prices rose, bohemia expanded beyond the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Venice on the Westside and Silver Lake east of Hollywood. Eagle Rock filled with parents needing a place to roost. Hair salons with monosyllabic names like Loft quickly followed. Density increased, and so did foot traffic; shoppers could walk from store to restaurant to bar.
Real estate followed the national boom: a three-bedroom house in Eagle Rock that sold for a median of about $260,000 in 2000 more than doubled to $620,000 in 2005, before slumping a bit (to about $570,000) over the last year.
As the population changed, so did the culture. Jeff Tritch, 53, has worked for decades at his family's store, Tritch Hardware. He wears plaid shirts that likely pre-date Nirvana.
"Back in the '70s," he recalled, "the guys had 9-to-5 jobs and would only come in on the weekends. People nowadays come in all times. They have different kinds of jobs — on the Net, in the entertainment business. We don't have that Saturday rush anymore."
The new residents brought prosperity and, the locals say, a little arrogance as well. "They sounded the trumpets and announced a vision of something like Silver Lake or Los Feliz," said Bob de Velasco, who runs Commercial Printing Network, a copy shop. "But it's not going to happen. Eagle Rock wasn't meant to have that. Eagle Rock is an old-fashioned, atmospheric town."
Indeed, in this downturn, De Velasco's printing shop doesn't seem to be hurting, nor is Tritch Hardware. The shops at risk are the ones playing the Decemberists in a continuous loop.
"Some of them tried niche things," Tritch said, with no gloat in his voice. "That didn't work out."
Kelly Witmer, 38, the owner of Regeneration, a retro-design shop that opened in 2006, looks exhausted by the drop in business. She recently rented out half her space to keep afloat. "It seems a little slow in Eagle Rock right now, in spite of people saying it's the next big thing, or the new Silver Lake," she said. "At least on my side of the street, there's not a lot of foot traffic."
Eagle Rock is less dependent on the film industry than Hollywood or the Westside, but film industry cutbacks haven't helped. "Eagle Rock is full of set decorators and assistants and film music editors and actors," said Craig Powell, who opened Pollen Botanical Design in 2006.
If an actors' strike materializes, these Hollywood types are exactly the people who will stop spending. Shannon Bedell, 37, who closed Blue Heeler, the Australian contemporary design shop, had counted on customers willing to shop locally as a matter of principle. "What do you call them now — they're not yuppies anymore, they're affluent 30-to-45 people who were new to the area but wanted it to be a neighborhood," she said. By any name, they've changed their shopping habits.
In bad times, neighborhood idealism can be compromised with one trip to Wal-Mart. In terrible times, idealism goes the way of that baby boutique that just tanked.
"The problem is this," said D. J. Waldie, a historian of Southern California, "if we truly believed that patronizing these places enlivened our neighborhoods, why aren't we there — eating the omelets or shopping at the boutique?"
"Those places are important — they dissolve some of the cruel anonymity of everyday life," he said. "They're part of the equation of making the local real to us. But they're not the whole equation. They're not enough."
Waldie added: "I've got enough handmade soap. I don't need anymore."
It is hard to think of many on-the-verge neighborhoods that, historically, have been able to stay on the edge. In New York, SoHo and Greenwich Village aren't the artistic havens they once were. And other neighborhoods, promising to be the next best thing — well, the "next" never arrived.
"Neighborhoods go through what you call a sweet spot," said Joel Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History," who is a critic of some forms of gentrification. "It's safe, it's a nice place to live, it still has unique shops and hangouts."
But this mix rarely lasts forever. "The ecosystems of these neighborhoods are very fragile," Kotkin said. "Over-stimulation, and, in a recession, under-stimulation, and you have dangers."
Powell of Pollen Botanical Design serves on Eagle Rock's neighborhood council and predicts that as many as six businesses of the two dozen or so that make up the new Eagle Rock could close soon. "What do you lose?" he said. "Character, ambiance, originality, creativity, edge. We're the interesting ones — the unique boutiques. We're the flavor, the salt in the food."
Or maybe not.
Christian Lander, 30, who jeered the pretensions of the creative class on his Web site, Stuff White People Like, lives a few miles to the west of Eagle Rock and says things will be fine — better even. "The economic downturn is good for fringe neighborhoods," Lander said. "It returns the neighborhood to the people who consider themselves to be real residents."
Indeed, Eagle Rock will probably return to being a neighborhood whose best qualities are well-preserved homes, old-school pizza and a really good hardware store.
But the ability to walk from place to place — which took years to build — could disappear. The cityscape will be dominated by Walgreens and muffler shops. Occidental students will again complain that there's nothing to do.
It would return, that is, to being a Los Angeles version of flyover country. And its residents would live a different life than they expected.
Jen Verti, 33, a publicist at the ABC Family channel who lives in Eagle Rock, is using grocery-store coupons for the first time in her life. "I think we've been more cautious," she said.
Apryl Lundsten, 38, who helps run a podcast, Eagle Rock Talk, said she dines out less since her husband lost his job as a television writer. Now, they are more likely to get together at friends' homes with food from Trader Joe's.
For her part, Cook, the screenwriter, has given up her neighborhood shopping fantasies. "When we first moved here," she said, "I wanted it to be cool. But that stuff doesn't matter anymore."
She still likes Eagle Rock and jokes that she can even make peace with the martial arts studios. "I'm thinking," she said with a smile, "of taking it up."
----------------------
When the next wave wipes out
International Herald Tribune
http://iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=20473708
By Scott Timberg
Friday, February 27, 2009
LOS ANGELES: When Emily Cook, a screenwriter, bought a house four years ago in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, she fantasized what the area might look like in a year or two, with cafes and boutiques replacing tattered old businesses. "It was like fantasy football," said Cook, 38, who also sings in a band named Fonda.
A sad flower shop on the corner, she thought, could become a miniature Whole Foods. An upholstery store could be a gastropub where she and friends would grab a beer, and a neglected 1940s diner could become a retro spot for a quick meal.
But Cook has stopped fantasizing about what might be, and started worrying about what might shut down. The flower store has closed; no gourmet market is moving in. Lucy Finch, a vintage boutique, folded last month. That Yarn Store, a hangout for crochet-heads, didn't survive a bad winter.
And what will become of the storefront that once housed Blue Heeler, which sold Australian imports?
"Please don't make it another martial arts studio," Cook pleaded. "What is it about Eagle Rock and martial arts?"
The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in New York to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.
For long-time residents, the return to pre-boom rents may be a blessing. But it also poses a rattling question of identity: What happens to bourgeois bohemia when the bourgeois part drops out?
Over the last five to six years, Eagle Rock became the glamour girl of Northeast Los Angeles, a crescent where the asphalt jungle meets the foothills. The neighborhood of 35,000 or so has attracted screenwriters and composers, Web designers and animators, who labor on their laptops in cafes, discuss film projects at Friday night wine tastings, and let their children play with the handmade wooden toys in a Scandinavian-style coffee shop, Swork.
It is easy to sniff at such urban affectations. But the downturn endangers more than precious shops; residents worry that as stores close, the fabric of a bohemian utopia — with its Jane Jacobs mix of commerce and public spiritedness — will also unravel.
Less than a decade ago, Eagle Rock was an unlikely candidate for gentrification. For decades, students at Occidental College — who have included Luke Wilson, Ben Affleck and Barack Obama — complained to friends that there was nothing to do in their college town.
Tracy King, a real estate agent, said that when she moved to the neighborhood in 1983, "there were 79 auto-related businesses on Colorado and Eagle Rock Boulevards."
But as housing prices rose, bohemia expanded beyond the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Venice on the Westside and Silver Lake east of Hollywood. Eagle Rock filled with parents needing a place to roost. Hair salons with monosyllabic names like Loft quickly followed. Density increased, and so did foot traffic; shoppers could walk from store to restaurant to bar.
Real estate followed the national boom: a three-bedroom house in Eagle Rock that sold for a median of about $260,000 in 2000 more than doubled to $620,000 in 2005, before slumping a bit (to about $570,000) over the last year.
As the population changed, so did the culture. Jeff Tritch, 53, has worked for decades at his family's store, Tritch Hardware. He wears plaid shirts that likely pre-date Nirvana.
"Back in the '70s," he recalled, "the guys had 9-to-5 jobs and would only come in on the weekends. People nowadays come in all times. They have different kinds of jobs — on the Net, in the entertainment business. We don't have that Saturday rush anymore."
The new residents brought prosperity and, the locals say, a little arrogance as well. "They sounded the trumpets and announced a vision of something like Silver Lake or Los Feliz," said Bob de Velasco, who runs Commercial Printing Network, a copy shop. "But it's not going to happen. Eagle Rock wasn't meant to have that. Eagle Rock is an old-fashioned, atmospheric town."
Indeed, in this downturn, De Velasco's printing shop doesn't seem to be hurting, nor is Tritch Hardware. The shops at risk are the ones playing the Decemberists in a continuous loop.
"Some of them tried niche things," Tritch said, with no gloat in his voice. "That didn't work out."
Kelly Witmer, 38, the owner of Regeneration, a retro-design shop that opened in 2006, looks exhausted by the drop in business. She recently rented out half her space to keep afloat. "It seems a little slow in Eagle Rock right now, in spite of people saying it's the next big thing, or the new Silver Lake," she said. "At least on my side of the street, there's not a lot of foot traffic."
Eagle Rock is less dependent on the film industry than Hollywood or the Westside, but film industry cutbacks haven't helped. "Eagle Rock is full of set decorators and assistants and film music editors and actors," said Craig Powell, who opened Pollen Botanical Design in 2006.
If an actors' strike materializes, these Hollywood types are exactly the people who will stop spending. Shannon Bedell, 37, who closed Blue Heeler, the Australian contemporary design shop, had counted on customers willing to shop locally as a matter of principle. "What do you call them now — they're not yuppies anymore, they're affluent 30-to-45 people who were new to the area but wanted it to be a neighborhood," she said. By any name, they've changed their shopping habits.
In bad times, neighborhood idealism can be compromised with one trip to Wal-Mart. In terrible times, idealism goes the way of that baby boutique that just tanked.
"The problem is this," said D. J. Waldie, a historian of Southern California, "if we truly believed that patronizing these places enlivened our neighborhoods, why aren't we there — eating the omelets or shopping at the boutique?"
"Those places are important — they dissolve some of the cruel anonymity of everyday life," he said. "They're part of the equation of making the local real to us. But they're not the whole equation. They're not enough."
Waldie added: "I've got enough handmade soap. I don't need anymore."
It is hard to think of many on-the-verge neighborhoods that, historically, have been able to stay on the edge. In New York, SoHo and Greenwich Village aren't the artistic havens they once were. And other neighborhoods, promising to be the next best thing — well, the "next" never arrived.
"Neighborhoods go through what you call a sweet spot," said Joel Kotkin, author of "The City: A Global History," who is a critic of some forms of gentrification. "It's safe, it's a nice place to live, it still has unique shops and hangouts."
But this mix rarely lasts forever. "The ecosystems of these neighborhoods are very fragile," Kotkin said. "Over-stimulation, and, in a recession, under-stimulation, and you have dangers."
Powell of Pollen Botanical Design serves on Eagle Rock's neighborhood council and predicts that as many as six businesses of the two dozen or so that make up the new Eagle Rock could close soon. "What do you lose?" he said. "Character, ambiance, originality, creativity, edge. We're the interesting ones — the unique boutiques. We're the flavor, the salt in the food."
Or maybe not.
Christian Lander, 30, who jeered the pretensions of the creative class on his Web site, Stuff White People Like, lives a few miles to the west of Eagle Rock and says things will be fine — better even. "The economic downturn is good for fringe neighborhoods," Lander said. "It returns the neighborhood to the people who consider themselves to be real residents."
Indeed, Eagle Rock will probably return to being a neighborhood whose best qualities are well-preserved homes, old-school pizza and a really good hardware store.
But the ability to walk from place to place — which took years to build — could disappear. The cityscape will be dominated by Walgreens and muffler shops. Occidental students will again complain that there's nothing to do.
It would return, that is, to being a Los Angeles version of flyover country. And its residents would live a different life than they expected.
Jen Verti, 33, a publicist at the ABC Family channel who lives in Eagle Rock, is using grocery-store coupons for the first time in her life. "I think we've been more cautious," she said.
Apryl Lundsten, 38, who helps run a podcast, Eagle Rock Talk, said she dines out less since her husband lost his job as a television writer. Now, they are more likely to get together at friends' homes with food from Trader Joe's.
For her part, Cook, the screenwriter, has given up her neighborhood shopping fantasies. "When we first moved here," she said, "I wanted it to be cool. But that stuff doesn't matter anymore."
She still likes Eagle Rock and jokes that she can even make peace with the martial arts studios. "I'm thinking," she said with a smile, "of taking it up."
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