All Things Profane and Sacred

I like my neighborhood a lot. Our next door neighbors on the right have lived in their house for over 30 years. There's a Russian family mid block, a passel of poor folks on our left, some white trash on the kitty corner, a few hip twenty somethings, and some upwardly mobile thirtysomethings. A sprawling hispanic family provides the soundtrack of our late afternoons and early evenings-in the soft evening it sounds like there's a carnival or some sort of community fair just down the street. To me, it feels a little bit like a Ray Bradbury story-the eternally drowsing block set in anytime, anyplace, USA, where kids play their secret games while the fireflies (sadly lacking in Oregon) flicker and adults talk in low voices over lemonades on the porch.

Then there's the bitch on the corner of the next block. She has some sort of vendetta against the Hispanic family, or any sort of music that she can hear whatsoever, at any time of the day. Apparently she complains to our next door neighbor (He's on some sort of neighborhood committee) daily. Since everyone but her enjoys the music, she probably won't get far, but god help her if we tangle. I'll fucking take her out.

There's been a lot of talk about gentrification over this way. Discussions about whether white folks moving back into traditionally black (i.e. poor) neighborhoods is good because it increases diversity, or bad because it prices most folks who were originally in the neighborhood out of their homes. I dunno about all that-it's a bit of both, I think.

The problem is that you take a traditionally poor black neighborhood, and some white folks, along with whoever else, move in to be somewhere diverse, where folks have a live and let live attitude and differences can be celebrated, yaddah, yaddah, let's all hold hands and sing "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore." Then, as neighborhoods whiten, they are more acceptable to people with the mentalilty that we all must be the same in a cookie cutter way, and anyone who steps outside of conformity must be punished. These people work day and night to sap the neighborhoods of their style and individuality. When conformity is established, rents and home values rise, making the neighborhood unpalatable to its original inhabitants, who move out, and more palatable to Nike executives in the burbs, who move in.

I'll try to enjoy my corner of Northeast Portland while I can. In less than five years, everything is going to be manicured and sanitized for your protection.