In my entry about the King Street West cafe called “Journo”, I mentioned that I’d write about gentrification, Starbucks and its malcontents and “coffee coding”. I still plan to do that, but thought that I should post an entry that’s been sitting in draft form for far too long. I think it makes a decent introduction to what I’ll eventually be talking about.
Those of you who frequent the “West Queen West” area of Accordion City are probably familiar with the “Drake, you ho” graffito on the nearby still-under-construction Starbucks from late November:
For those of you not familiar with the area, the “Drake” being referred to is the Drake Hotel,
a former flophouse hotel that underwent — with a lot of money — a
metamorphosis into a hip boutique hotel that’s attracted a “beautiful
people” crowd to a neighbourhood that used to be known for crack
dealers, real honest-to-goodness actual-not-metaphorical hos and bums who emanated a stench that carried a far greater distance thanyou might imagine.
The
Drake’s renovation has inspired the Gladstone Hotel,
a stone’s throw away, to also become a boutique hotel too — from one that wasn’t as outright awful as the Drake used to be, to one not quite on par with the Drake. The Gladstone, for
those who don’t know, is home to a popular karaoke venue where
slum-dwellers and slummers
intersect. Other businesses, either inspired by the neighbourhood’s sea
change, are moving in or moving up — witness places like Lot 16 Bar and the Beaver Cafe. Starbucks is the first yuppie chain to set foot in the area, and it may not be the last.
I grew up in Toronto and remember what the neighbourhood was like back in
the 1980s: sheer, don’t-go-there-at-night crap. My sister’s boyfriend
lived within falling distance of the old “Video Time” sign near Queen
and Dovercourt, and while waiting for him to let her in, often put up
with propositioning from johns and sleazy dealers. The neighbourhood,
Parkdale, was often known by its nickname, “Crackdale”
In the area, around the time
I started playing accordion — the spring of ’99 — I got into a fight with some street urchin
who first spat at me for being a “chink taking away our jobs” and then
tried to make off with my bike. I nailed him in the right temple with
my Kryptonite lock (for the bike theft) and when he hit the pavement,
kicked him in the face (partly for the slur, and partly to make sure he stayed down).
I also corrected him: “I’m a flip, not a chink. You wanna be a racist, get your terms right.”
Needless to say, having had these experiences, working right by the
neighbourhood (Tucows is a hop, skip and a jump south) and being on my particular rung of
the socio-economic ladder, I’m a big fan of the clean-up. The
graffito’s author, less so.
A roughly analogous neighbourhood in the New York City area, Brooklyn’s
Williamsburg, is undergoing an incursion by another chain: Subway.
Here’s a poster that’s been popping up in the area:
For more, see Curbed’s entry, Daily Dose of Corporate Hate: Subway in the ‘Burg.
6 replies on “To Be Discussed Later: "Gentrification, Urban Renewal…Po-TAY-to, PO-TAH-to"”
I’m glad the kryptonite lock was useful for something, since it is known for the high rate of bike thefts, apparently you can open it with a Bic pen.
while I agree with much of what you are saying, I think that the big question here is what kind of vision we have for our neighbourhoods?
We don’t want dealers on their blocks, nor do we want it to turn into yet another gap-starbucks generic strip that you see all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.
But we need to do something more positive than pointing fingers when the gentrification doesn’t match our vision. What do you think people should do?
Actually, the questions you ask are all those that I will be asking — and doing my level best to provide some possible answers to — in this series of posts.
Hey Joey,
You may want to check out this article by Joe Clarke
about Starbucks coming to Leslieville.
Its well written and he takes an interesting, fairly positive view of Starbucks. Many of his points, I agree with.
siobhan
It’s a free country. If you have a better idea for a business, start one. The graffiti artists are probably the same people that complain about the poor and hating the rich while doing nothing to change the situation. They’re just complainers.
I don’t think the Williamsbsurg example is really analogous. W. Queen W. is still in early stages of renewal, while Williamsburg is by now pretty thoroughly gentrified and well stocked with heavily moneyed condo-owners. Their heroic struggle against Subway is a war by the gentrified Williamsburg (as chic enclave) against turning it into a runofthemill neighborhood that would allow people with little money and bad fashion sense in (subway customers). West Queen West is still early enough in the process to be siding with the economically challenged rather than against them. This is purely accidental of course. It’s not as though the anti-gentrification crowd in these heroic struggles have any authentic concern for the underclass–they just think they’re gritty styled neighborhoods make a great accessory to their hip wardrobes and lifestyles. The economically secure, if not well-off, hipster class is just as happy to boot out the locals as the condo-buyers. Sure, everybody wants to get rid of the dealers, but the dirty secret is that deep down, you just want the neighborhood, not the icky poor people who produce demand for dealers. You know, those hilarious people that, say, eat at subway, or shop at dollar stores and walmart?