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Gay people have no problems with black people. In this way they move into some areas first that others won't go to. It is true many black people are homophobic and it was the black turn out in California for Obama that was blamed for the fail of a gay rights initiative. I forgot what if it was prop 8 or prop 2 or whatever but it doesn't matter.
The thing is when you move into a crime infested area you aren't really concerned if the guy robbing you is homophobic or not. I would be more worried about being white first. But yes for sure homophobia is common in the black community unfortunately. As a gay person I would much rather that blacks started to actually respect each other first. Maybe when they can live peacefully amongst themselves they will come around to respecting other people and their differences. Homophobia in the black community is the least of their problems unless of course you happen to be gay and black.
You also don't have to proclaim being gay so unless you are naturally flamingos fabulous and flamboyant you really have much bigger problems to worry about. Autocorrect turned a word into flamingos but it actually fits so I will leave it.
I would worry more about if I am going to get ganked for my groceries walking around more. Wheni was young and lived in the hood I couldn't leave the corner store with my potato chips if certain types were lurking outside. They would just take it off you. I would often times have to turn back and wait until the coast was clear.
I guess if I were going to rehab a house somewhere like inner Detroit construction theft would be what I worry about.
Living around Americans of the lower socio-economic class, has usually
been pretty gross and challenging for me, so gay or whatever, I try steer clear.
You're not paying attention. We're talking about gentrification; one usually must have at least a little money to gentrify a neighborhood. It's my experience s that most people who are gentrifying an area are pretty well educated, too.
Your post's thinly veiled attempt to label gay people as a "lower socioeconomic class" fails on so many counts. Talk about gross.
Nah- in larger cities it was typically a trend 40 decades ago for two important reasons- gays/lesbians typically are not locked into housing choices by the need to consider public schools and often they wanted to go to areas without nosey neighbors/policing/HOA-club like hierarchies. So the previously developed and well located poorer or forgotten areas held sway. They headed to these areas before they were wealthy.
A lot of those SoHo artists were in fact gay or in very gay friendly industries.
They may have led to the bohemian scene developing, however it was the big corporations that took over and put all the expensive shops in SoHo.
The gentrification in many cities can be traced back to the 1980's and the young upwardly mobile professionals known as yuppies, and today you have the hipsters.
In terms of some areas such as the Hudson Good Yards in NYC or London schemes such as Canary Wharf, Battersea/Nine Elms, Kings Cross, Smithfield etc, it was a case of using derelict former industrial docks and empty warehouses.
A growing tech sector can also help gentrify an area, the Silicon Roundabout at St Luke's and Hackney Road in East London being a case in point, whilst Kings Cross is another that has been helped by investment from the tech sector.
Film productions also helped make areas fashionable, in London films such as 'The Crying Game' helped make Hoxton and Shoreditch a lot more fashionable. The film 'Notting Hill' did the same in relation to the Notting Hill area, Bridget Jones lived near Borough Market in the initial film, and there are other such examples.
Another cause of gentrification can be improved travel links, and London't new Crossrail system will see demand in new areas, such as Woolwich or even some commuter districts outside of London. The same is true of the Oak Common interchange, which is currently under construction.
It should therefore be noted that whilst bohemian communities including gays may help make an area fashionable, in the end it's the money men who cotton on to this, and start the gentrification process, it also should be noted that areas other areas can be gentrified for other reasons, and that anywhere with high land and property prices surrounding it can be subject to gentrification regardless of the community, and this can include even former industrial land.
Last edited by Brave New World; 09-06-2022 at 04:54 AM..
Gentrification happens in phases. It is/was often started by gay people, because they usually didn't have children to worry about. The scenario I have in my head is that an old, formerly upper-class neighborhood, with grand old victorian homes that have been converted to flop-houses and/or abandoned, is discovered. Gay people with some money and no dependents move in and restore some of these houses. As more people discover the neighborhood and move in, the crime rate goes down, and so more people feel comfortable moving in. I call this revitalization, not gentrification. But eventually, the neighborhood becomes so stable and popular that real estate developers notice it. They come in, buy the restored victorian mansions and replace them with mid-rise condos. The local mom and pop shops are bought by large corporations and are replaced with national franchises. This latter phase is what I call gentrification.
Gentrification starts a lot of times with artists. Visual artists, theatre types, and musicians, especially, are the ones who most need big space that’s cheap, urban, and without bougie complaining neighbors. They are the real beginning of gentrification, and they aren’t necessarily gay, though they might be. But they are usually not hostile to gays. That’s why the SECOND big group to change a neighborhood would be gay.
Looking for an up-and-coming neighborhood? Follow the artists! By the time gay folks move in and start opening trendy restaurants, boutiques, local galleries, and the like, real estate will have already gotten too high for most folks.
It would be interesting to know which of the world's charming old neighborhoods was first reclaimed by Gay people. Maybe some corner of Paris? Or maybe, thousands of years ago, some district of Athens, which had fallen into disrepute?
The first area which fits the Original Post's description, of which I'm aware, was New Orleans' French Quarter. It hadn't been French, for many decades. My biological father's people had taken-over the French Quarter. It was filled with murderous thugs, about like him.
I was reading about one of the first Gay men to buy a house there. He braved all sorts of horrors, including a home invasion, during which he sustained life-changing injuries, during the hours when men about like my "Real Daddy" tortured him - trying to get him to reveal where he was "hiding the money"(he had none, of course, which was why he was redoing a house in The Quarter). I wish I'd bookmarked the article. This was, I believe, in the early 1930s. He, and many others, were brave, and heroic. We owe the preservation of that district, to them.
San Francisco's famous 'Painted Ladies' (wooden Victorian row houses), would not have survived, if not for Gay men. For that matter, would the Bay Area have become, arguably, the Richest Place on Earth, if not for the century of pioneering wrought by Gay men? Great enterprises thrive there, because it's easy to get great labor there. The best labor, moves to the most wonderful places. Gay men made the Bay Area wonderful.
Did von Gloeden and his pals make Taormina fashionable, again? My own relatives had little appreciation for the old villas and palazzi they came to own, there, and would have succeeded in 'Demolition by Neglect', if not for neighboring structures' being made desirable, once more, by mostly-Gay preservationists.
Over the millennia, how many Gay men created heavens-on-earth, like Palazzo Santa Croce (an old Cardinal's retreat, which two designers made beyond-perfect https://www.google.com/search?q=pala...=firefox-b-1-d ), and continued, in wave-after-wave, to keep Positano the magical place it is?
Natchez would be nothing, if not for influx-after-influx of Gay men - from the Great Depression, onward.
I wonder if anyone has written an encyclopedic survey of Gay Gentrification and preservation of the world's architectural heritage.
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 10-09-2022 at 07:14 PM..
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