OAKLAND

I know there are homeless people and drug dealers and prostitutes in Oakland, and I know she's trying to humanize them and encourage others to do the same, but the effect of her words is basically the opposite, and she mischaracterizes Oakland the way the out-of-towners and Temescal/Rockridge people do (and that region is the district of the council member's office she works for, and with that in mind it seems gentrification was the word of the day.).

A lot of her suggestions are nice, but gentrification is a legal/structural problem, and it won't be solved or slowed through mindful behavior. No one is going to open their vanity business and do it mindfully, and even if they somehow manage to in their enterprising white liberal way, you've still got yet another white-owned vanity business in Temescal or wherever, and the property owner is still getting a nice chunk of rent and the values of that property and the surrounding properties are still gonna go up.

That Lost Weekend "comedy" is terrible.

Her good intentions make me feel moderately guilty for laughing at things like:

4. Pay your taxes, parking tickets and fines with the pleasure of knowing you are financially helping a beautiful, but struggling city. Be grateful if you are able pay them without too much difficulty.

I know. The commenters are 80 times more terrible than she is. She's probably not terrible at all.

oh I didn't read the comments. my other "favorite" was:

8. See all of Oakland’s problems as opportunities for growth, creative problem solving, and entrepreneurship. Refuse to complain about a problem unless you are willing to play an active part in the solution.

though some of the commenters are somewhat funny, like:
" If I want to start a boutique cat massage salon right next to your 50 year old business, and employ it with rich, white 20-something hipsters, I’ll do just that. And I’ll do it without an ounce of shame."

jesus I put quotes around comedy and now I feel like Whiney ptuh ptuh get it off

geez I got through about half the comments and had one of those "why am I doing this to myself?" moments of clarity

This has made the rounds over the weekend. I think you can call this "how to be a better neighbor" without using the gentrifier tag at all.

I mean, I never hassled any of the dealers who would park in front of my house all day, nor the occupants of the crackhouse next door. They all were more or less friendly people... but that doesn't mean I didn't want them gone, because of the health and safety dimension that their presence represented. So when the house was sold, gutted, rehabbed and rented, and those characters disappeared I don't really look at that as a net loss.

I guess I feel a little touchy about the gentrification tag. I moved from a rental in Adams Point to buying a house in the North Oakland birthplace of the Black Panthers. We did so because we knew we had a very small window in which we could afford a house in the bay area and wanted to find a residence/location that was at least going to hit some of the things we were after, and this was the place.

In the 3 years we've been there our street hasn't changed a lot but the progression of white hipsters to white hipsters with dogs to white couples with kids has been steady and growing. So I guess as one of those whites I don't know quite where my culpability lies with the gentrification question, but I can at least claim to be a reasonably good neighbor, and my neighbors themselves have all been cool with us, I think.

Good comments section on this one:

http://gigaom.com/2014/02/17/some-day-silicon-valley-will-move-north-heres-why-it-should-settle-in-oakland/

for posterity:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/fashion/oakland-california-brooklyn-by-the-bay.html?_r=0

and

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/4937-nyt-covers-oaklands-hipster-zombies

yes i chuckled yesterday imagining the reception out West

http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-gentrifiers-guide-getting-along

RIP Dorsey's Locker and Art's Crab Shak!

http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/05/06/two-old-school-oakland-restaurants-shutting-down/

I've only been to the entrance/bar side of Dorsey's locker, but Art's was great. Well, the food was decent and heavy and gut-busting, but the atmosphere - the wood paneling and booths and lighting and music - was great.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2015/09/exclusive-uber-oakland-sears-building.html

they had been talking about putting a market hall in on the ground floor there, but this sounds like they won't. that's a real bummer.

Room available: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/roo/5308220625.html

do you live there?

I'm sorry, I will never not find the "they" thing ridiculous

nah, i just got a kick out of the ad :[

I was wondering because they are literally my neighbors. They're very nice people and the ad is 100% accurate.

I'm sorry, I will never not find the "they" thing ridiculous

im with you but also A) who cares? let ppl be called whatever they want and B) we are old and antiquated.

my apology to your neighbors, i'm sure they're nice people

that was a weird shrinking of the world just there

yeah, I know I don't really care - unless I have to engage them in conversation and then I trip over my words and verb-noun agreements or remember to say things like "shiz"

xxp

Singular "they" is fine, but that ad is embarrassing, and the hippy punks who participate in these rental cooperatives usually seem pretty clueless to me. I interviewed with one (a hippy punk who belonged to a cooperative) for about an hour or so, and it was admirable, albeit in a white savior way, that she was leaning towards any poc single mothers who might apply, but she didn't see the implications of asking a single mother to share food, especially since the food she (the hippy punk) contributed was just bread and pastries donated from businesses and/or fished from dumpsters.

The reason why these cooperatives are usually homogeneous with regard to class and social background is because the binding agent of these households is lifestyle and shared cultural experiences, not social justice. I've read a couple of sociological papers about cooperatives - one a case study and the other a more general overview - and they suggest that more heterogeneous mixes lead to confusion, mistrust, and dissolution.

In one (Davis, CA?) co-op, one plant of three was dedicated to small low income families, especially single mothers, while the other two plants were composed of the mostly white, college-educated, middle class people you usually would expect at such an endeavor. The plant for small families was rife with structural problems, and there were significant cultural differences in regard to what should be the reaction to those problems (holes in walls, leaking ceiling, etc.). The low income people who lived there thought these problems were a big deal; the middle class people who didn't thought it wasn't a big deal. While the single-occupant people in the other plants might have had similar problems (although the building and renovation history of the three plants suggests that they didn't), they have different reactions to risk, most likely because they don't face the housing insecurity that the low income families do. If their room leaks? Big deal. They can move to market rate housing, and a survey showed that they weren't at the coop for its low cost, but ostensibly for the values attached to living there. The low income families, however, needed the below market rate housing that the coop provided.

In addition to differing perceptions of risk, the people on the board and belonging to other governing structures of the coop didn't see themselves as authority figures, which led to a lot of conflicts with the low income families who clearly saw them as such. The two groups also had very different communication norms for conflict resolution, and the expectation was that the low income families would conform their communication style to the norms of the middle class single-occupant people.

tl;dr coops are usually kinda dumb vanity projects

think you could've chosen a better word than 'ridiculous'? maybe a word that's a bit less condescending? especially when it's YOUR problem that you don't know how to be thoughtful or articulate when talking about someone who is genderqueer.

a lot of commune-activist stuff sounds like a pose to me, but that ad makes those people sound super genuine and really nice. not my scene, but nothing wrong with people trying to make a community a better place for everyone.

just1n3 otm

^^^ yes

xxp bryce otm. Also, Whiney would have a field day with all the impressively stereotypical lifestyle signifiers

Honestly, fuck those people so much. As a local and resident of that same neighborhood for over 30 years, their whole philosophy is condescending nonsense that is actually pretty harmful. You can't participate in the hyper-gentrification that's taken place in the area, then pretend to give two shits about the people and local culture you helped displace to the same suburban hell you escaped from. Owning your privilege and status as a racist and inviting a single mother of color who probably grew up in the neighborhood, to come join their vanity project/social experiment to absolve themselves of guilt is simple-minded at best and grossly insulting at its worst.

^^^

The ppl with the ad didn't invite any single mothers to join their co-op. It pains me to hear someone say "fuck these people so much." They're very sweet kids.

The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

The listing mentions that they're interested in their role in power, anti-racist struggles, privilege and oppression pretty early on and they pride themselves on their participation in local activism. Their preemptive apology to minority applicants better damn well include single mothers if they're as concerned about these issues as they claim. Otherwise, the entire thing comes off as some really distasteful posing.

whatever. I don't care to argue with you. I hope we are friends should we ever meet.

I know 2 of these people.

One is a carpenter and another works with prisoners and there are seven ppl in one house - not exactly tech assholes busting down historic neighborhoods and destroying communities.

I wish I was the kind of person, like these people, with the guts and character to actually be attempting to effect positive change in a city.

Geez, from my limited experience (18 years in Oakland), that neighborhood, and North Oakland in general, is the most politically sensitive spot in the city. The panthers had a base there, then Bey and the black muslims ... If their co-op were in Adams Point or the Laurel or Jingletown, I feel like it wouldn't provoke the same reaction from longer term residents like Cousin Slappy.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tech-coliving-20160224-story.html

from the article above:
Aside from the food program, which lowers the cost of groceries, Standish and Provan said residents also get access to appliances and facilities uncommon in shared apartments — at Euclid Manor those include West Elm furnishings, a grand piano, a Vitamix and a cafe-grade coffee machine. The Canopy has a soundstage, a woodworking studio, and large living rooms with projectors and musical instruments.

But what tenants are really paying for is the "community," Standish said. "Living as family, basically."

Also Bryce, if you are reading this, I hope you had a good birthday. Sorry I missed it.

It's ok. I wanted to go to the quilt show, but there was no time after work. Even got to dinner a little late.

We'll do early April after I finish PACT.

My theory is that housing co-ops are usually about creating a simulacra of the traditional family unit, with attendant factional squabbling, board game nights, family dinners, and authority figures (eg board of directors, "house mom," the lease holder, etc.).

have they posted the police chief job on craigslist yet?

https://twitter.com/aurabogado/status/744016698731290624

whole thing is like a bad Ellroy novel

was going to start a thread about this. so fucked up.

In the last eight days we've lost three nba finals games and three police chiefs

thing is, you see shit like this go down & the only problem that gets "addressed" is the problem that is public, so they hack away at whoever's in the open while everything below ground stays exactly the way it is.

Maybe the only way to fire a cop in Oakland is to make em police chief first