Les Misipsters
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And this nifty bench with two backs and no seat:
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Instead of modifying a park bench so that homeless people can’t lay down on it, this one goes the opposite direction and makes it useless for anything other than sleeping. That’s interesting as hell.
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Yeah I was reading through that card and just going “check check check check…”
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It was a guerilla art installation by a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MCAD). It took the city a couple weeks to notice the bench was there. After the city removed it, it later returned as a permanent art installation.
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Yes! This is really a “bingoo” card.
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You are right that the important tragedy of gentrification is the destruction of the social fabric of existing poor communities.
But the banality of what displaces is the insult added to injury. One’s community and all the complex, meaningful, and actually valuable connections it contains must be dissolved so that there can be a dog bakery and another yoga studio, because people who are good at Illustrator or Python want to live here, and they love those things.
This is what the market has determined to be the best thing. Though so many must sacrifice so much, this is the incalculable bounty that capitalism promises: artisanal cupcakes.
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Ann Arbor nearly clears this board. 10 brewpubs is way light, though. Does a Bansky in Detroit count as “regional”?
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It sounds pretty much like DC as well. I had no idea that axe-throwing pubs were so popular as to be a cliche, though. We have (at least) one of those – never been, but the mixture of alcohol and axes seems a bit dangerous. I mean darts are already questionably safe.
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Portland, 100% of the squares. Some, in multiples. Also, I think the only nonstops out of the airport are to giant hubs like Dallas, Atlanta, O’Hare, Newark, etc.
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I really wish I knew how in all the discussions about how bad gentrification was, we got it so messed up that the act of making the neighborhood nicer and more livable was the problem, and not that we have a huge group of people who are so structurally de-invested in their communities that they rely on them being so crappy no one else wants to live there to be able to afford to be there… and that the structural de-investment (or bars from investment) was racially and ethnicity driven.
Just my two cents, but it seems like that’s the problem we should be trying to fix, so they can live in nice neighborhoods too, and be active in creating their neighborhoods into places that they want to live in instead of places where they can live…
(An idea? Cities should use eminent domain to buy neighborhoods of houses from slum lords. Then sell them to the residents at very cut rates with generous financing terms and find ways to help the residents refurbish and improve their homes, and getting grants to local non-profits to help teach the renters how to be home owners. Just a thought…)
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There’s the Cash For Your Warhol guy, but I think he technically lives in Cambridge.
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Yeah I always understood that to be a piece of art, deliberately placed there to force people to reflect on the inclusiveness of public spaces.
I’ve definitely sat in it when I was fucked up though.
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I was ticking off those items, briefly hopeful that my city was making a comeback, but then I realized it was mostly just the shitty points that were true, such as rents being completely unaffordable. That’s just because it’s in California. It seems the crazy donut and cupcake shops downtown didn’t survive, and the last band that “made it” was big in the '90s (and only in the '90s).
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Yeah, the boards’s got AA pegged pretty well. Downtown Detroit also fills it pretty good.
Up here in Flint e-scooters started showing up this week; scratching my head over that one. We have had a crepe shop for a couple years and I think we’re up to two breweries now. So, I think 2 points for Flint?
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Haven’t been anywhere other than New Center for a while. That part of Detroit is gentrifying like crazy. Soon, there will be a Plum Market on Amsterdam. And the Packard Plant has windows, of all things!
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I miss my town’s “regional Banksy”. But the boring normal people arrested Girafa for the crime of putting free art all over the South Bay without it being approved by the city or property owners. Laws are BORING!
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They kind of did talk about the displacement, but in a subtle way that would only be noticed with serious local context. The background image is from a set of developments that are basically the white hot center of Cleveland’s arguments about gentrification and displacement.
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Do we need to start a thread?
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