yuppies and developers: you get what you pay for
Posted by Lil Miss Hot Mess on November 10, 2009
I’m livid.
Today Anna Conda announced that Charlie Horse is over, effectively immediately. I can’t get all the facts straight but it has to do with the gentrification of the Polk — hell, the gentrification of the whole city — specifically yuppies who want to have their cake and eat it too, and developers who want to sell it to them. Anna thinks that it’s a combination of people complaining about noisy queens and the Polk St. Merchants Association wanting to get rid of the gay bars. The Gangway (nearby on Larkin) already shut down all DJed parties months ago due to complaints. It’s ridiculous!
Like I said, I don’t know the full story, so I don’t want to start the blame game or get too much into the specifics of it.
But hello, San Francisco: this is what you get when you invite your city to become a dot-com yuppie playground. This is exactly how neighborhoods gentrify. It’s easy to point fingers at artists and gays as gentrifiers — and not to say that we aren’t part of the system — but the bigger picture is about government colluding with the wealthy using tactics like selective law enforcement and policies that favor development.
It’s interesting and upsetting to see a group of mostly younger gays who are more politically- and artistically-inclined (for what it’s worth) being pushed out of a neighborhood so that Marina girls and their Financial District boyfriends can come in to party. Who’s next? We’ve already seen so many immigrants be forced out. Maybe many of us were the first wave of gentrification in this neighborhood — after all, the Polk is historically queer, but really owned by hustlers and street girls — and that’s why it’s got to be more about our right to party. It’s about everyone’s right to the city. It’s about preserving a city that’s known for being one of the weirdest, sanest, and most beautiful places on earth (even right now it feels pretty disgusting).
I keep thinking about the Castro’s role in all of this. I’m saddened and outraged to think that by having “our” neighborhood — just like “we” want so many “rights” — we’re really pulling any sense of queer solidarity apart. We’ve legitimized a space that is itself exclusive and unaffordable (to say the least) while at the same time legitimizing the takeover of the rest of the city. It’s similar to critiques of marriage: we’re selling each other and everyone out by trying to get our tiny slice of the pie.
I’ve been doing drag for less than two years, and I’m not even enough of a regular at Charlie Horse to feel real in calling it my family, but right now I feel devastated. It was truly a unique space, not without its own issues, but with a sense of relaxed and full-of-potential gay-boy community that is so hard to find these days. It’s the only place I can say I’ve “regularly” performed and it’s really filled the city with The Place to do and see drag in the city post-Trannyshack (and in its own right as well). Anna did a phenomenal job of building an environment where just about anyone could get up on stage or chat with someone on the patio and actually enjoy themselves, and she deserves so much credit and love for that.
It’s a shame to see it get sold out to yuppies and businesses looking for the next big thing. I keep thinking of the saying “you get what you pay for” and how it works both ways: when only the wealthy can pay to live here, there’s not going to be anyone left to make it work (or work it).
18 Comments to "yuppies and developers: you get what you pay for"
1 | toby
i love this post!!!! such an important issue and conversation to have. anyway i just wanted to express my love for this blog and everything that you’re doing!!!!
2 | Ivan
Thank you for this analysis. I think it’s important to link it to both the Castro and the larger gay marriage movement. In moments like this it becomes easy for people to argue that spaces such as Charlie Horse are unacceptable.
CH is a place that has really fostered a space for queer community. And even though I agree with you that it’s not without it’s problems, it could still be downright inspiring. So many people see rowdy queens, while for me, one of the most inspiring things was to see the support that people gave each other in this space. Standing in the front for only a few months, one of my favorite things was glancing over to see Anna’s face as she genuinely lit up with some of the acts.
The gentrification of SF is violent. And it’s sad to see the ways in which it’s growing.
3 | Lil Miss Hot Mess
Thanks, yall, for so quickly reading this quick analysis.
Just want to quickly affirm what Ivan said about seeing Anna’s face light up. It is pleasure in a pure sense.
And yes, gentrification is a form of violence. I went to a talk tonight about Palestinian political prisoners, which was also connected to the Prison Industrial Complex in the US, which is also, clearly connected to gentrification and other forms of population control.
Queers are in an interesting role: we’re cool to be around for a minute, but not always or not forever. I guess the same could be said about a lot of communities of color as well: bitches want their burritos, but only on their terms.
4 | Wagnerian
Wow… marriage, meaning equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians, is now somehow linked to gentrification in the Tenderloin.
No.
13 years ago, I lived in the Mission. Gentrification back then was incredibly intense. Longtime Mission dwellers were moving out of the city in droves. Everybody knew someone that was getting evicted, lofts were going up everywhere. I went to a meeting held by the Mission Anti Displacement Coalition in a packed gymnasium where the crowd screamed at city planner Richard Greene for an hour. The working class dive bar by my house over night became “Beauty Bar”. Starcleaners, the coolest place in the city to do shows, hold a queer open mic, and which was a real community arts spaace in the truest sense of the meaning, was shut down by the police on the night a metal band from Belgium was playing. Many other art-spaces shut down and lost their leases as well. Farther out, a major band rehearsal space shut down. 600 bands practiced there. The owner sold it for 1 million dollars to a company that was going to turn it into a server farm. That incident in particular caused a number of people to move outta SF. The Mission started to feel sad. Ghosts everywhere. The gentrification of the Mission is still happening, 13 years later.
I live in Oakland now. A guy I know who works at Google has a cool apartment that sits on the roof of a building. Every day a Google owned shuttle picks him up @ his doorstep and takes him to his job in the South Bay. I told him “The Mission is my TRUE home” He asked me why I didn’t live there now, and I said “Cause YOU live there now, mother-fucker!”.
I’ve come to terms with what happened. Self styled activist types always want to point out that artists are the first wave of gentrification. Freaks and artists should be aware of this I guess, but what can they do?
I don’t know if there is a way to fight gentrification. It’s clear to me that certain populations without money don’t have any power. If police want to excercise their ’selective enforcement’ what can the people do? All through the 90s Willie Brown made sleazy deals with developers. A friend of mine who is a brilliant songwriter and beloved by many, but who is also schizophrenic, went up to Willie Brown during an appearance at Castro Street Fair and asked “Why did you destroy our city?” and Brown said “Why don’t you leave?”. Brown is still here. My friend is in Santa Rosa.
I don’t think the problems are equal marriage, or Palistinians. I think the problem is that people with money have power and people without don’t. Period. Freaks, artists, poor folks, queers are vulnerable communities. If they find enclaves to exist amongst each other as communities they only do so at the bequest of power. Perhaps we can live under the radar, but that is especially not likely now.
5 | diabólica
OOOOHHHH NOOO!!!!! this is devastating. ¡¡abajo las marina girls!! ¡¡¡¡¡¡que viva anna conda!!!!!!
;(
6 | Lil Miss Hot Mess
Thanks, Wagnerian for sharing your stories.
My point in connecting this to marriage is simply that “equal treatment under the law” is itself a problematic ideal when you consider who the law ultimately benefits. As you say, it’s the freaks, artists, poor folks and queers (and I would add immigrants, people of color, and others to this list) who lack power. The law is quite often not on their side or used in violent ways against them. Marriage in of itself isn’t a problem, but it feels linked to the ways that society and the state have legitimized certain upstanding and sterile versions of gayness while leaving (or forcing) out groups already on the margins.
7 | Wagnerian
Well… I’m really bored with ‘queer radical’ tropes about assimilation. I think it’s a non issue. Where I’m coming from is that I have gay parents who were active in 70s gay liberation and anti Vietnam War movements. They’ve been married twice. They never held anyone back. I get pissed off when people say or infer that that my ‘rents are just normal wanna-bees. It’s simply not true.
And not everyone is a freak. Non-freaks deserve equal treatment as well.
If there was equal treatment under the law for everyone then we wouldn’t have to worry about who the law benefits. Equal marriage is a step in the right direction.
My point was that forces much larger than the non-issue of assimilation and marriage equality are behind gentrification. To just pull marriage out of ones ass as a culprit doesn’t help anything. Society has not really legitimatized gay anything yet. That’s what I’m seeing.
I don’t know what the new census is going to say, but the last census showed that the ethnic make-up of the mission had not changed at all after a half decade of gentrification. Something to think about. In that sense I think marginal people of all colors are more vulnerable a group than merely ‘people of color’.
9 | Ivan
Actually, the larger point that I’m trying to make is in some ways much smaller than that, or rather, at a micro-level.
Rather than meaning questions of assimilationism vs. radical leftist politics (as much as I find myself on the latter part of the spectrum), I am making a point about local politics, right now.
In a way, the dee-queering and gentrification of the Tenderloin and the Polk have to do with much more specific local politics. The gay denizens of the Castro are not willing to fight for the rights of the people in the “wrong” kind of gay spaces.
Not all marriage is assimilationist, let’s take that for a second (even though all marriage is not radical, let’s admit that too), but jumping from that premise, a MOVEMENT to gain marriage access is inherently conservative, that’s in some ways inevitable.
I think the point here is that the larger movement for gay marriage/dadt has made other forms of queerness easier targets in several places.
Also, as many people have shown, marriage hardly means “equal treatment under the law.” I would like to see that discourse be amended so that we don’t create a figure in which marriage somehow magically erases all the forms of inequality people have to deal with.
A little rambly, I’m running late to something but I wanted to respond. Apologies.
11 | Wagnerian
Marriage does not solve all problems of inequity. No one claims it does.
12 | Lil Miss Hot Mess
Thanks, Ivan, for your comments. I think they’re really helpful. And, thanks, Wagnerian for your push-back.
Without drawing this conversation out too long, I just want to add that I deliberately didn’t use the term “assimilation” because I think it can be a slippery slope. Yes, I do think there’s a cultural dimension to assimilation that often results in a shift in gay/queer culture and that concerns me. Not that all forms of assimilation or change are necessarily to be mourned, but they’re questionable or problematic at least. And I don’t think it’s all about individuals, but rather movements that lead to cultural and political shifts.
But, as I was hoping to say here (and I think Ivan is too), there are political consequences when gays push so hard to gain access to a set of rights/privileges, which I would maybe call “political” assimilation. It’s assimilation towards a more privileged class. One of those consequences is that it further marginalizes people within and outside of that community, in this case, the more freaky, genderfucked, poor, etc queers. Many prominent gays have said things like “once we win marriage and the military, we can pack up and go home.” And that’s the sort of attitude that scares me.
And just to step back: I don’t think the marriage movement is in any way the sole cause of gentrification in this instance. (And I don’t think it should be the mian point of this conversation. Not at this moment anyway.) But it feels certainly related, and it’s crucial to be critical of the ways that the interests of the wealthy and powerful — be they gay or straight — act together to decide who is worthy and who is not.
13 | Lil Miss Hot Mess
PS: and thanks to Monistat (hey girl!), Angelique, and John for your support!
14 | Ivan
Thanks lmhm, and yes, I am trying to think of larger political consequences at the micro-level. I also agree with your last paragraph in the sense that no, gay marriage is not the sole cause of gentrification, if anything, within the context of SF it has been used as a distraction.
The real enemy here are the gentrifying forces that have pushed people out of their neighborhoods, and I think it is particularly personal and painful here because we really cared and loved Charlie Horse.
I think it’s important at this point to note all the public responses that are coming out toward Charlie Horse. It was a public space that we all deeply love and that will miss immensely because it feels like it was yanked away so soon. However, I am also proud and happy to know that Anna’s decision was deeply ethical, and that even though I only stood at the front of the stage for a few months (since I moved), the reason why it’s gone now has to do with Anna resisting the show she worked so hard for become forced to be tamed down.
15 | Bob
I think that while your plea is obviously impassioned – its way off the mark.
A greedy developer built the apartment you get to “slum” in.
the polk merchants association is representing gentrifying yuppies? Where are all these new homes in the area supposedly occupied by new to the nabe noise hating white people? There has been practically zero new construction in the area relative to DT.
Do the existing neighbors (who have probably been there, rent protected for decades) have a legitimate bone to pick with the cinch?
Why is it so easy for complaining people to shut down a bar in SF?
I just fail to see how a the generic SF script for complaining:
rich
yuppie
marina
white
greedy
developer
gets to apply in this situation.
Ive lived in the neighborhood for 11+ years – and there has been no massive wave of evil yuppie gentrification.
16 | Judly Justright
Perhaps thinking ahead and adding adequate soundproofing might have been a better plan than just blasting your neighbors with sound until they riot?
17 | This was about people dying « Lil Miss Hot Mess
[...] still feeling a bit in the middle of the conversation around Charlie Horse, the Polk, gentrification, queers, and all that other good stuff, but I also [...]
18 | Lil Miss Hot Mess
Yes, Ivan: thanks for reminding us of Anna’s principles. Since I first wrote this piece, she put out more info including the fact that she was asked to take a “break” but decided to end it, and there’s talk about that being in the face of possible changes.
Bob: I’ll admit that I don’t live in the Polk, and I don’t know all of the details about its development. But there are certainly larger trends in this city of displacement, and “development” takes many forms, not only condos/homes, but also businesses catering to a wealthier crowd (which is apparent to me in the Tenderloin especially). And I do know that it is full of straight people (Marina girls or whomever) who likely don’t live there, and who certainly don’t represent the demographics of people who have historically lived there. I think this is an aspect of gentrification.
Judly: Agreed to an extent, but I think that misses the point. Enforcement is always selective, and often serves the interest of those in power. In this case, I read noise complaints as just an excuse to further an agenda.
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