We have “the conversation” every couple of days, the
how-to-save-our-city discussion. Standing on the diverse,
inner-city street on which my “reluctant socialist” girlfriend
lives, we watch as earnest neo-bohemians transform a squalid
commercial district into something so hip most people have never
even heard of it. The excitement is palpable, but my girlfriend
is ambivalent. There is, after all, such a thing as too much
kitsch, too many chic coffeehouses featuring exotic shade-grown
organic coffees. We haven’t reached that point, she says. There
are still plenty of immigrant businesses and boarded up
storefronts, but we both know where this is going.
Take a peek behind the boarded up storefronts and the plywood
Spanish-language signs and you stumble upon traces of a former
grandeur. Few, if any, of the neighbors remember a time when the
strip was home to department stores, bakeries, groceries, barber
shops, shoe stores, tailors, jewelers, and confectioneries —
when a palatial dance hall, a bowling alley and a roller skating
rink all stood within strolling distance. The turn-of-the-century
tradesmen and merchants who built this neighborhood saw to it
that it housed everything a city-dweller could want, all within a
two or three block radius.
By the 1960s and '70s, however, the suburbs called, and the
merchants closed up shop en masse. In their wake came
first-generation immigrants from Latin America and Asia, followed
in rapid succession by rent-to-own and check cashing operators
who cater to (some might say prey upon) low-income people. And
the ornate, Spanish renaissance-style Cinderella Theater, one of
many local neighborhood theaters, became home to a dingy Mexican
restaurant and an income tax shop.
Nearly all of the neighborhood’s current residents arrived after
the late 1970s, when the strip already resembled a war zone with
lots of nighttime gunfire, but little worth fighting for. Besides
the half dozen Hispanic shopkeepers and restaurateurs, today’s
new entrepreneurs are in the main gays, lesbians, neo-bohemians
and artists, who together form loose associations helpful in
founding quirky businesses and co-ops that cater to people much
like themselves: young, hip, educated, and childless.
These are Richard Florida’s children. Florida, author of several
hit books about the so-called creative class, is the poster boy
for urban regeneration, but regeneration with a difference. After
all, one more volume that suggests American cities need to invest
in education and training would be about as welcome as another
phone book. Florida’s innovation in thought was to identify what
he calls the “bohemian effect”: that in order to thrive a city
needed a certain percentage of creative people, and that cities
that want to be successful will do all they can to attract and
retain them. According to Florida, the way ahead is not by
mending the unfixable public schools or even by strengthening the
family. Rather the city’s salvation requires attracting
flamboyant gays, neo-bohemians, and eccentric artists with
liberal arts degrees and lots of tattoos. People who would be
anathema in the suburbs. It seemed to make sense. Unlike solid
upper and middle class businessmen, creative types were willing
to go into these often dangerous, but quaint old neighborhoods,
and roll up their sleeves and make something fun and interesting
come out of it. Sure, immigrants and minorities were willing to
work too. They just weren’t very fun or interesting.
Those readers who are also parents may not be surprised by what
happened next. Recently some of Florida’s children have begun to
rebel. In fact, more and more of Florida’s one-time pupils now
regard their former master as the Godfather of Gentrification, an
elitist with no use for Ordinary Joes: plumbers, barbers,
sandpaper salesmen, folks who maybe didn’t earn a BA in
environmental studies from Sweet Briar.
In a recent interview with the Toronto Star Florida
fired back, defending his championing of creative work to the
exclusion of ordinary jobs: “Those are the equivalent of the
point-of-entry jobs my dad had, in a factory. And those jobs pay
horribly. They’re horribly insecure.” Any fan of Tom Wolfe knows
that elitism knows no political stripe; perhaps what’s surprising
is that the Left is finally calling itself on it.
IT’S HARD NOT to be excited about the transformation of the
nearby strip. Every month or two finds a new record shop, yoga
studio, ethnic restaurant, or coffeehouse so cool you can imagine
Jeff Tweedy stopping by for a cup. We walk past a shop called
Cranky Yellow. Here is a fine example of the creative class at
its most inane: a shop that sells “kitschy crap glued to other
crap.” Cool, yes, but one wonders what the neighbors — mostly
frazzled single-mothers, some working multiple jobs, some not
working at all — think of Cranky Yellow and the printing coop
next door, and the numerous art galleries. Likely they wonder
when these strange-looking young folks are going to open
something useful like a Laundromat, an auto repair shop, a bank
or a grocery where everyone can afford to shop. Meanwhile I am
left to wonder whether the real focus of this ultra-liberal
creative class, with its community gardens and its locally grown
produce co-ops and its grandiose idea of itself as urban savior
— is really the city and the common good — or just its own
artsy enclave.
My girlfriend tells me she is all about balance. She favors a
more “holistic” neighborhood, with equal parts poor, working
class, immigrant, minority, and bohemian. She worries about
gentrification. To me that seems unlikely. There are only so many
neo-bohemians and gays, and most have already settled in the
already regenerated neighborhoods — those near to parks, and
those with the quaintest architecture. Besides the city will soon
reach maximum occupancy for florists and other creative types.
Perhaps at that point our urban gurus will finally pay attention
to the plain people, and not just when they need an oil change or
their pipes flushed.
