Great piece by Noah Bierman in today's Globe about the Davis Square Tiles Project, which tracks down the kids who made the tile art on the walls of the Davis Square T station back in 1983. Turns out, they have conflicted feelings about the way the neighborhood has changed from a working class redoubt to a den of hipsters. (A few of the grown-up artists, including a guy who lives in Brooklyn, have gentrified neighborhoods of their own.) The Globe bothered to include a link, for once, and it looks like the traffic has crashed the project's site. Still, good piece. [Globe]
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Results tagged “gentrification”
So we weren't the only ones who were ticked at a woman's comment about South End wait staff and how they handle children eating in their restaurant. Let's reflect on what the woman said:
While waiting for the bus at Mass Ave and Washington Street in the South End, we used to always wonder why an entrepreneur never converted the former Alexandra Hotel into high-end condos. It wasn't for the lack of effort.
-- When the homeless meet gentrification, the homeless get treated like shit. Shocker. [Boston Globe]
The Globe got misty-eyed today over the closing of Liquor Land in Roxbury, which will soon become a CVS. Liquor Land's demise is a plus-minus kind of story. The people who actually live in the neighborhood might be happy at the thought of one less liquor store and the arrival of a pharmacy. Others are saying it's gentrification. Alas, the liquor store's neighbors never get to decide what they want within walking distance, do...
MC Slim JB at Boston Magazine just did a piece about the wave of gentrification in the South End. People with obscenely expensive tastes are either moving in or visiting too much, and the prices are going up. Not only do the new residents like to throw money around, but they also look tacky doing it. One woman quoted in the piece proclaims, "The only cool people [at the Beehive] are the bartenders—half the...
Pat Purcell, publisher of the Herald, has sold the Herald building and its land in the South End to a development group of which he is a part. Obviously the money-making potential of the paper pales in comparison to high-rent apartments and office space. The Globe labels Purcell's move as an "effort to transform Herald assets into cash and to streamline the tabloid's operations." If we translate that phrase, it might mean that Purcell is...
Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic...
Zooming in on the South End/Roxbury in Google Maps something interesting showed up: the gentrification line. The high resolution images are in their satellite database for all of Downtown and Back Bay. Most of the South End is included, but once you cross over Mass Ave, into what we generally accept as Roxbury, things aren't quite as clear, they aren't as green either. Back in January the Globe ran a piece called "Breaching Mass...
Current Diesel employee Steve sends in a photo snapped from inside the new space at 11 Bow as they start the renovations. It looks a lot like an album cover for some hot new band. More photos of the new space available from his Flickr stream.
The Littlest Bar shuttered the doors last year after a prolonged closing. What remains in the Littlest spot is a gutted construction site (though you can still see the mirror behind the bar and wood paneling) for a set of upscale condos being constructed at the downtown location. On January 30 Tir na nOg in Somerville will be the latest Irish bar casualty to gentrification in the area. The Brendan Beehan may now be able to claim the title as the smallest Irish pub in Boston metro.
Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Londonist wants you to know where to...
What's going on this week? Everyone is moving. Hipsters are swapping apartments in Allston. Scenesters are invading Cambridgeport. Undergrads and grad students are making their way into the new rental for September. The lucky ones have renewed their lease (or are keeping up with payments on the mortgage). The music you'll be hearing is blaring from the cab of the U-Haul and out of the windows of that f*ing third floor walk-up you offered...
We’re almost positive that most days we can get from Harvard Station to Central Square faster than the Red Line can make it. We’re not even going to talk about where and how often you can beat the Green Line at its own game, inbound or outbound. We’ve proven on more than one occasion that we can travel faster than the 39 Bus between James’ Gate and Sweet Finnish in JP (it usually overtakes us...
Over the last week patrons and outsiders have been taking note of the imminent closure of the Waltham Taven in the South End. The closure was forecasted in the Boston Globe and then solidified when the Licensing Board met and ordered the bar closed. Bostonist will be honest, we aren’t surprised to hear reports of “shady goings on” at the Waltham Tavern, substantiated or not. We’ve walked by the dive a hundred times, and admittedly...
Nothing these days is quite so good at provoking strong emotions about gentrification as that ugly, forced sobriquet that realtors have tried to foist on East Boston: "EaBo." To begin with, Bostonist can't decide if it sounds more like a person with a head cold talking about a certain sub-genre of music, or the name of a character from the movie Friday. But beyond that, "EaBo" embodies, for some, everything bad about high-rent outsiders coming in to ruin classic, old-timey Boston neighborhoods. On the other hand, for developers and their ilk, "EaBo" gives name to hopes of cashing in on the next big thing. This is also true, we learn from today's Globe, of restaurateurs.
If you’re an astute reader of the postings here you’ll know that Bostonist packed up our things and moved to the other side of the tracks back in September. After a good bit of time living in Egleston Square our landlord decided to sell our triple-decker apartment building as affordable condos. They were priced affordably by Boston standards, not, unfortunately, by Bostonist standards. While living there we told our mother we were living in Jamaica Plain, we told her to address letters there but make sure to use the zip code 02119. We knew, as the USPS knew, 02119 really meant Roxbury. Before we left our little neighborhood with Dominican flavor we were sitting out on our neighbor’s deck enjoying a nice summer BBQ one evening, just as dusk was turning to night. We heard some gun shots. A 14 year old and 17 year old had been non-fatally shot, one was the target the other was apparently recipient of stray retaliation fire. Incidents like this didn't prompt our departure, rather it was the 1-hour commute and the notice of impending sale.
Bostonist learned from today's Globe that Boston City Councilman Paul Scapicchio (about whom some unrelated, but interesting, news here) wants to change the rules regarding affordable housing lotteries to give priority to neighborhood residents. In the past, similar rules were rejected on the (probably correct, we suspect) theory that favoring neighborhood residents would perpetuate racial segregation (because new housing in, say, a mostly white neighborhood would end up going mostly to white people). But Scapicchio and others are backing the move now because, Scapicchio says, the problem of racial segregation in Boston has been supplanted by gentrification. To this, Bostonist can only say, unironically, "Really?"
Somerville already has hipster hangouts, soaring home prices, and soon, the Green Line. So what's the next knot to tie in the scout kerchief of gentrification? Why a farmers' market of course! This Saturday, forced from our un-air-conditioned home by the sweltering heat, Bostonist stumbled upon the debut of this market, presented to the people of Somerville with much fanfare by Mayor Curtatone, Alderman Provost, and other city notables. In fairness, neighborhood evolution is inevitable,...
If you have a pulse and have lived in the Boston area for any significant period of time, it's hard to miss the fact that things are changing. As the powers-that-be taut "New Boston" initiatives, revitalization efforts have been focused on our urban centers with the effect of -- whether intentionally or not -- accelerating gentrification in once neglected neighborhoods like Roxbury, Charlestown, or Dorchester.
It looks like the Curtatone family is trying to install a little dynasty up in Somerville. According to a piece on The Somerville News blog, Mayor Joe Curtatone's sister Maria Curtatone is throwing her hat in the ring for the State Senate seat held by the late Charlie Shannon. While common sense would seem to suggest that it's good timing to run for a Senate seat in a district which encompasses much of the city that your brother is a popular mayor (and with whom you share a name), this announcement may actually signify some deepening divisions among "old time" political circles in Somerville.
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