“How dare other people change my property which isn’t mine!”
It’s a dysfunctional family that wants someone to pay to preserve a homestead, that you aren’t willing to invest in.
The older I get the less bothered I seem to be about some sorts of change. I get annoyed at things like all the new housing going in here in Seattle being crazy overpriced for what most people earn or the whole thing with zoning and growth in San Francisco… but regular gentrification/change of a neighborhood… evs.
The blue collar neighborhood urban residential I grew up in back in St. Louis still looks more or less the same but wow it changed. It is now called Little Bosnia and has the largest Bosnian population outside of Bosnia. And lots of little store fronts are way different. I probably never would have noticed had I lived there through the changes.
Here in seattle Capitol Hill is in a shift but when I look at historical photos the place I knew when I first moved here 20 years ago was not the same 20 years before that, and was something else even 20 years prior.
Heck the area I now live in isn’t the same as when we moved here near 20 years ago now. It has gone from having just a big old mall nearby to that getting major renovations, a community center and library going in, 2 new with a 3rd large apartment/retail spaces and it actually is kind of nice even if the traffic is a bit worse through the main intersection.
This is an excellent article. I always love these little slices of ATL history that drills down to the effects of these sort of changes on individual lives. What a wonderful woman Ms. Anna was!
I know a couple of people that live in that neighborhood. It’s in an incredibly convenient location - near to Decatur, Little 5 Points (the popular shopping district in Inman Park) and easy access to downtown.
This is a great song about gentrification - a bit over the top in places, but hilarious because it’s true.
My family has somehow managed to hold onto a great little house in Grant Park for almost a century. When my grandfather died, my aunt bought it so that my grandmother could keep living there, and to just keep it in the family. I love that place. Can’t imagine not having it as a “home base.”
My ancestral house in Texas was over 100 years old in the middle of no where - near Flatonia. It was in the heart of the Czech immigrant area. Dad and his siblings eventually sold it and the land as while it made an ok place to raise horses 100 years ago, only one sibling was still in Texas and no one really needed or wanted the land. But that’s really just the march of time.
I gagged a little…is that what it’s become? Granted I haven’t been there for over a decade, but back in the early '00s it was a hippie/anarchist/subversionist mecca. What’s there now, an Old Navy?
I’m starting to conclude that in the USA it is a fools errand. Areas where people are crying “gentrification” were occupied by a different minority two generations ago.
And here comes Dear Abby… A house is a long term investment and if the owner passes, there’s a reason the default move in probate court is to sell the house. Anita handled it just as a judge would have advised. There is no equitable way Anita could have handled the house to the satisfaction of all siblings and it doesn’t sound like any of them had the resources to fix it up. How do you “keep it in the family” when what was a single family is now the next generation of several families? And if one sibling put in more $$ to fix it even for sale, that turns into a family squabble after the house is sold. This is especially true of family homes and the loss of a parent - everyone feels a hugely emotional stake in it. Anita shouldn’t be made to feel bad. She did the right thing. Gentrification has nothing to do with it.
Sure, it’s still that to some extent but it was always also a shopping district, because it has shops there. 
Still lots of gutter punks asking for $$$, still lots of community members hanging around.
But the houses there are getting upgrades, there are more trendy restaurants (some of which are worth eating at - Folk Art is great, but it’s on N. Highland on the back side, so more Inman than L5Pts, I suppose), and from what I’ve heard the leases are rising on the shops there. Of course, I’m sure you heard about Criminal Records nearly going under (they didn’t, thank god). Wax-n-Facts is still the same, as is Variety, WRFG and Horizon theater, Crystal Blue, Junkman’s and the liquor store, and the coffee shop (Aurora)… and star bar, and the shoe store… Sevenanda, the feminist book store, the Yacht Club… Some of the shops there now are more expensive boutiques than they used to be and there is a stupid American Appearal where Acappella used to be on Euclid and a Starbucks on the side with Freedom Parkway. Plus, if you head on down moreland past the Dekalb Ave. overpass,there is a strip mall (where that old thrift store used to be on the left, you know where I mean), which might have an Old Navy.
So, it’s changed for sure, but not entirely and it still has the community feel about it.
Oh thank goodness. I would cry giant man tears if VP closed. Lots of good memories there.
Uh… people come and go and the world moves on. We can’t all dictate that when we die, they turn our homes into Presidential Libraries or museums to commemorate us. If a family is living there again, and they are happy and made a nice place for themselves, then the right thing is happening. Embrace change. It’s not like you have any other choice.
Yeah but you aren’t going to get shanked by a heroin junkie in an alleyway after stumbling out of Neighbors anymore.
I was born at Group Health on 15th and lived over by the now vastly gentrified area around the Elysian for many years. I don’t even really recognize Capitol Hill anymore when I visit Seattle.
Oh man, I love that guy. Political songs played on a klezmer accordion. If you ever get a chance to see him, take someone with you but don’t tell them what to expect.
kinda half and half.
the only chains are an American Apparel, Bang On, and I guess there’s a Starbucks right on the edge. Many of the indie anchors are still there: Star Bar, Variety Playhouse, 7 Stages, Outback Bikes, Junkman’s Daughter, Little 5 Pizza, Yacht Club, Stratosphere, Brewhouse, Vortex, Sevananda are all still there. There’s still the little flea markets where you can get Egyptian musk and knit tams. There’s still a bunch of hobos on the point panhandling and I assume you can still cop there.
But as fashions have changed, so has what’s offered. There’s boutique fashions and expensive handbags now, too.
It’s a lot the same, just the times have changed. What was edgy in the 90s and before is firmly established. The edge moved over to East Atlanta in the '00s anyway, but EA is established now, too. Castlebury Hill transformed from galleries and where I’d DJ an illegal club to huge new developments and coffeeshops in literally just a couple years.
Bunch of corporate sellouts!
If you haven’t had the pleasure; hell hath no irrational-but-furious-insanity quite like siblings settling a combination of financial interests and interpersonal dysfunction through vicious spats about inherited objects after one or both of their parents have died.
It’s a fantastic situation because(at least in some cases) the value involved is enough to motivate mere avarice; but the items involved are also imbued with assorted sentimental values that make them great proxies for attaching various strong and generally poorly understood emotional issues related to perceived family dynamics to.
Agreed. That’s exactly what I thought when I was reading it. Unless all the siblings can agree and make it legal the best thing for everyone involved is to sell it. Eh, I’m an only child so it doesn’t matter to me.
said no one in that article, ever.
If you feel the need to do some white privilege crusading, you should join the dogpile discussing the article on ycombinator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11311089
