The Mission District

“I grew up in the Mission District!”

My mother would brag about this every now and then, both seeking street cred and scolding our spoiled ways.  It was true too, she was the only child of a single mother, and in those days there was no welfare, not that my grandmother would have ever accepted it; they lived on what her mother brought home, long before the days when women could get a decent job.  It wasn’t a fun neighborhood even then, it was a place you only lived if you were poor, and they were quite poor.  Of course when she would complain about where she grew up, my dad, who was born in the Bronx and grew up in New York City, would tell her, “I wish I grew up in as good a neighborhood as you!”

Back then The Mission District was white poor.  Then it became black poor.  Then it became Hispanic poor.  The people changed, not the neighborhood.  But with this current influx of techies the poor are being driven out and the neighborhood is rapidly transforming.

I visited a friend of mine in the Mission District the other day.  No, she’s not one of the new techies who have decided it is a cool edgy neighborhood to live in, she’s lived there for years in a private/public housing project where the city helped her buy her condo.  The irony is that these techies are driving up the prices in the neighborhood and her condo now puts her in the top 20% richest people in the world even though she has very little income. 

My friend’s daughter went to study down in The Mission what she called ‘Integrated Studies’ about what makes a community.  She bemoaned how the neighborhood is losing its Hispanic character.  Is a neighborhood entitled to maintain a certain ethnic character?  Didn’t Jimmy Carter get in trouble for suggesting that?  Is one character better than another?  One wouldn’t claim that a white neighborhood should maintain its white character, but it’s perfectly acceptable to claim that a Hispanic neighborhood should be able to maintain its Hispanic character.  And it’s not like there’s a shortage of Hispanic neighborhoods in California, the state is not only not majority white, it’s not even plurality white, it is plurality Hispanic.  How odd for the dominant ethnic group to claim it has some sort of right to a neighborhood.  How un-American actually.

I remember the 60’s and 70’s when the media complained that the (white) middle class was leaving the cities.  Now the middle class is returning and the media is complaining again.

Where will the poor go?

Gasp!  The green and leafy suburbs?  Oh no!  A fate worse than death!

Protestors picket and sometimes attack the busses sent up to San Francisco to pick up the techie employees.  This takes thousands of cars off the road every day, easing the commute and congestion for everyone else.  It is paid for by the companies themselves, not even by tax dollars.  The busses are a symbol of change the community organizers don’t like.  Hmm, liberals who don’t want change, doesn’t that make them conservatives?  So hard to tell the difference these days.

But it’s not just a techie white influx, it’s Chinese and Indian as well.  I am particularly tickled when I see lily white, supposedly liberal, labor leaders protesting the busses carrying all of those Asian techies.  Dudes, you look kind of racist.

Most of these Asian kids spent their lives studying their asses off under the harsh tutelage of their parents in countries where you are up against a billion people scrambling to survive, so you had better get a fucking skill or you will spend the rest of your life stitching clothes together for fat Americans to wear while they try and work off the kilos at the gym from those supersized American meals they eat in front of their supersized flat screen TVs.  The hard work finally pays off and they get a job in a country that is so rich that the native born kids actually get degrees for studying how poor people live.  Imagine their surprise when they learn this, they spent all their lives studying how not to be a poor person.  Then to top it off, along come these entrenched labor and neighborhood leaders protesting their ‘wealth’ and how they’re changing the city.

It reminds me of the old videos of Dan White, the conservative former policeman and city Supervisor who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, talking to the press and complaining of ‘outsiders changing the city’.  I’ve literally heard and seen those exact words numerous times from outraged San Francisco liberals.  Back then it meant gays and minorities, today it means, well, Techie gays and minorities.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

After the visit with my friend I walked back to BART and I could tell that The Mission has changed in just the last couple of years.  More trendy taquerias rather than run down authentic taquerias.  More trendy noodle bars rather than authentic ramshackle noodle bars.  And really, to be truthful, much more clean, well-lighted, and safe looking as well.

However as I passed a massage parlor I got a true shock.  Yes, yes, I know, there’s lots of massage parlors down there.  They get closed down and open with new management a few weeks later.  But this was not one of these, it was a LEGITIMATE massage parlor.  The front door is left open and you can see inside and observe the tables with an emphasis on foot massages.  Chinese men in black pajamas, not Asian sex slaves in lingerie, vigorously buffed the clientele. 

What is becoming of The Mission District?

Oh, mom, you’d hardly recognize the place.