Notes from February LPN Meeting

This meeting was very stressful. Actually, every meeting is stressful. A woman named Linda had a breakdown during the police report, and though she requested that her comments be stricken from the meeting's minutes, i found what she said too important to ignore-- and besides, this is not the minutes.

She spoke mostly about issues concerning the elderly: she said that people in her building get assaulted ("the women in my building get beaten") and that the police don't help. A lot of what she said became unclear-- one thing she talked about felt similar to something she'd said a while back about the police assisting a corrupt landlord in an eviction in her building-- her point was that was the one time she'd ever seen them.

The most depressing were two direct quotes, and I'm mentioning them to illustrate the complex issues behind what appears to be driving Lower Polk Neighbors as a whole: regarding the police officers doing their job of ridding the undesirables from the neighborhood, "it's not like we expect you to shoot them, we expect them to act like men," and "conflict resolution doesn't work on sociopaths." Linda doesn't own any businesses in the neighborhood, or have any big real estate investments, yet she seems to be ardently committed to the goals of the group.

After the outburst, in a bit of nice PR, Captain Dillon offered to speak with Linda. I managed to pry her away from him and to get some information about some weird gay architecture appreciation thing. What is also depressing is the apparent desperation people have for participating in these types of overtly gentrification-minded neighborhood groups, and realizing, or not-realizing, or choosing to not realize that everything they're doing puts them next on the list for removal. Linda appears to be a long time resident, and probably has some rent control where she lives. San Francisco loves to evict elderly rent-control tenants. They're always the first to go.

I got on Captain Dillon's case during the police report since every month he mentions a shooting that happens all the way across town-- this time it was something about some homicide in the Haight. These meetings are about Polk Street. For someone who isn't paying attention, and doesn't know that Captain Dillon is from Northern Station, and that Northern Station covers a large amount of area outside of the Polk Street neighborhood, they'll think that homicides happened in the neighborhood. The Lower Polk Neighbors needs this sort of crime hysteria in order to justify their gentrification campaign. I didn't give Dillon the full read, but made a proposal (i've never heard anyone use consensus process at the meetings, and appreciated the absurdity of going there with it) that Captain Dillon's crime report be limited to the neighborhood.

Something else that was really cute on the sly was something that Architect Diva Carolyn Abst and Captain Dillon exchanged in semi-sotto in front of the whole group about the liquor store on Post and Polk. This is a big one, and it was cute how the Abst-Dillon exchange went, mostly unnoticed by half the room. They mentioned the liquor store by address alone. The liquor store is located on what is probably the last battlefield for Lower Polk Neighbors vs. Street Culture. This corner used to be part of the hustler block, but then something changed and it became more of a drug block. People congregated in front of the liquor store always-- on Post two doors down is the last tranny bar Divas. The liquor is right next to an adult bookstore, the Lockerroom.

About 2-3 months ago, something wacky happened on this block. The apartment building that the liquor store was on the ground floor of lost all its power. Apparently this is due to the negligence of the property owner. Allegedly, because of this, the liquor store was boarded up. The Lockerroom was also shuttered. It's also important to notice that all this is directly across the street from Carolyn Abst's office. Though the entire building was dark, and PGE had begun tearing up the sidewalk, the cigarette store on the alley still seemed to have electricity and was open for business. It's all very suspicious. I have friends who have stayed in that building who said that trannies turned tricks there, but I've never been inside myself. It feels like a very convenient land grab. At last month's Lower Polk Neighbors meeting, they mentioned that the building's management company had to relocate everyone living there to hotels temporarily-- I assumed that this effectively meant they were evicted. It's a big local news story now-- when I went by there I saw someone who I took to be a resident coming out of the building, and the sidewalk had been all sewed back up. The strangest thing was that the Lockerroom was now the Polk Gulch-- an annexation by the company that owns Folsom Gulch, with a big rainbow flag on their awning. I couldn't figure out if they were in opposition to or awkward alliance with the new lovely sterile lamp post banners that say "Polk Business District."

The cute Abst-Dillon love banter was quite terse: "I hope it stays closed," "Yeah we hope it stays closed too." HOW SWEET!! GO TEAM! This is what Lower Polk Neighbors does best-- it gives us pure, shameless hatred of the most vulnerable from only the most respected members of society. It's such moments that keep me coming to meetings. It's the same self-righteous hatred of the poor that got Gavin Newsom elected, and it's just as ironic. Gavin targeted people's General Assistance checks for insane reductions on the grounds that poor people just buy drugs with them-- Gavin owns wineries and a recent scandal found him copping to alcoholism. Aw. Rich people buy drugs too, they just don't get arrested for it. Similarly, Carolyn and her cop buddy want to target a liquor store, but at the same time Myles O'Reilly, who owns two pubs (you know, one of them that he opened on Polk cost $6 million), is a Lower Polk Neighbors member.

And similarly, with further irony (this was the coup de grace that opened the meeting), three representatives from John Barley Corn Pub came asking Lower Polk Neighbors to support their campaign to keep their bar open-- heart pounding in my chest, I got really brave and asked them if they felt it was a little weird coming to asking this group for help, since Lower Polk Neighbors has done more to remove local bars from the neighborhood-- Rendezvous, The Giraffe, Reflections. I pointed the only apparent difference between these bars and the Barley Corn is that they were queer. Carolyn Abst who was sitting across from me went "Pfft!" haughtily when she heard that one.