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.

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.

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.

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.

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.