My community kinda has the opposite going on… Staid chains are getting replaced by ethnic stores. Instead of being an aerospace town, one of the top 10 employers is now a Cuban bakery. Most of the coffee needs seem to be supplied by mom-n-pop doughnut stores – there is a Starbucks going in somewhat nearby (in the spot of death where businesses seem to last ~1 yr). The city has been told repeatedly by Trader Joes that they do not consider us to be a TJ market, so I doubt that a Whole Foods would show up.
At the same time, some things never change – I believe that the manikins in the windows of this shop haven’t changed since the early 60’s (they must be the sole global supplier of matching family Hawaiian outfits, otherwise I don’t know how they have stayed in business so long).
There are parts of Melbourne with dead shopping strips that would love a Hipster Invasion. Or a Chinese takeover. Whatever puts some energy and money into the area.
Those are UM privatized housing…
Sometimes storeFRONTS are just that: fronts. The real business is not what they’re selling in the windows.
That’s what we always figure…
All I care is that half a mile away they are building another Torchy’s Tacos. I’m STOKED.
That’s certainly true where I live. My neighborhood is all hipster now but it wasn’t when I bought my house in 2006. Back then, there was a tacqueria (a bad one) and a McDonald’s and that was it. Now the tacqueria has changed hands (to a Mexican family that I love), there are five or six cafes within a half mile, and a beer garden. Now, half of these places cater to the hipster crowd (the tacqueria and at least one cafe doesn’t, maybe more) but no one wanted to open any restaurants around here until the neighborhood got an influx of money.
Either you misunderstood me, or you’ve equated black with poor.
I’m saying, even if the housing stock improves – which requires the ability to buy/rent more expensive housing – traditionally black neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago are STILL not seeing the influx of hipster retail to match.
There is some, which is a start, but almost all businesses are independently owned, and usually that means mom-&-pop stores. The only chains are fast food, and even then…think Harold’s Chicken Shack, not Chik-Fil-A.
So, I guess I’m saying that while gentrification has a lot of negative issues, it does also reveal some deep-seated prejudices. It’s really interesting to see where the line in the sand is still drawn.
When (for whatever reasons, good or bad) legal limits are placed upon the expansion of the housing stock, the result is a constituency of existing property holders who just looooove the fact that they own something the price of which can’t be undercut by new entrants to the market.
None of them, whether the owner of a dozen apartment blocks or of a single five-room condo, will vote for anything that reduces property “values”. And it’s the rare local government that will resist that, especially when a veneer of environmental or traffic concern can be slathered on top.
On our neighborhood’s Neighborhood app thingy, they are constantly frightened of homeless people. Terrified. With one guy even calling them “vermin”. We live in the outer suburbs, and we literally have two homeless people. Both of whom are very nice. And pretty much everyone here goes to one of two gigantic mega churches, and proudly displayed this fact. Which I find a bit ironic.
That said, I wish we had a Whole Foods. Our grocery stores are terrible. They gleefully put rotten food back after you give it to them. And none of them even have half an aisle of ethic ingredients. Also, the Whole Foods we sometimes go out of our way to go to (since they actually can butcher a pork chop, and you know it isn’t rotten) isn’t actually that much more expensive than the local Frys. Our grocery stores are truly dire here.
Curious to know which of the two ways you mean this: ethical, or ethnic? Or…
This is a point I wish more people recognized. Especially living where I live, driving north to the nearest Whole Foods SAVES me money, as opposed to shopping at the local grocery store. As long as I avoid asparagus infused water and instead concentrate on the bulk section, 365 brand, and sales/coupons, it adds up to a reasonable cost for good quality food.
This is why I don’t go to Costco! Its not cheaper!
And when they have sales on organic chicken, butchered for you, it is an amazing thing. So much cheaper than the packaged, shrink wrapped, stuff at our local store. I view Whole Foods as a necessary evil, since the quality and choice of food has actually declined in most normal grocery stores.
The 3 stores near our house have pretty much gotten rid of their butchers, all of their meat is prepackaged, oddly cut, and of dubious quality and high price. The produce sections are full of rotten food, which is very expensive, and staffed by people who don’t care. We throw away about half of our produce within a day or two of buying it, when we go to our local store. Which isn’t really cost savings. Meat is a bit better (if you can’t get over the fact that nothing is actually cut properly), but we still throw away a package a month, because once you cut the nitrogen sealed shrink wrap, it was bad all along.
Well played.
I don’t understand why people use “ethnic” in this context. Doesn’t everybody have an ethnicity?
In this context, non-white = ethnic.
Though hilariously, in my local market the “international food” section (Canadians have more polite ways of saying "ethnic) is the section where all the Newfoundland food products can be found. Which is fine, most NFLDers would prefer to not be part of Canada anyways. 
Because when you live in and next to a ghetto, it is traditionally poor folks who are black and vice versa.
The influx in my neighborhood isn’t all white but it is largely not black as black folks in the Bay Area aren’t really benefiting from the tech industry and aren’t employed in it (and I’m not saying I’m cool with that).
So I take it that you rent? I own my home. I’ve seen it be worth over $100,000 less than I paid for it for a period of years because of the Great Recession, trapping us in the investment, and then finally have it recover in the last two years. You bet I care about property value. I’ve got over $100,000 of my own money tied up in this building.
