apologies for the late posting. gay shame has been focussing most of its energies on the AIDS eviction realtors caravan and die-in, and march 2007's lower polk neighbors meeting was quite an amazing load of steaming horse shit. another reason for the late posting was that its taken a while to figure out how to editorialize what happened at the last lower polk neighbors meeting without wanting to scream.
scream? ummm, maybe i should begin by addressing an obvious question: one of the other mary's here wonders why i still go to these meetings, since no one cares-- if caring is to be determined by measuring the amount of people taking action against lower polk neighbors. this question's been plaguing GAY SHAME's anti-gentrification campaign for the last four years-- she noted how i've stockpiled a cat-lady-like amount of scandalous information on this group. she observed this pattern where 1.) i go to one of their meetings and then 2.) return every time with some new unbelievable, traumatizing story. yet still i continue to go because, let's face it folks, by that identical unit of measurement it would appear that nobody really cares that much about anything else gay shame organizes around either. i feel that it's important that gay shame keeps tabs on the lower polk neighbors, and look for chances to agitate for empowerment here and in any situation where it's needed the most. in a lot of ways, the gentrification of polk street seems to be a done deal-- 10pm-3am starts to feel like a north beach annex for psychotic yuppies tearing carolyn abst's trees out of the sidewalk. in the worst case scenario (the worst case being if our efforts are not successful in leading to an effective intervention) i think it is still important that GAY SHAME for the record makes this violent gentrification process and its perpetrators visible-- san francisco's not very good at preserving these recent struggles. san francisco's elite appointed gavin newsom mayor on a platform that held something against people for being poor-- obviously, since we live in a capitalist society, gavin's wealth and privilege wouldn't exist if it weren't for that poverty in the first place. polk street feels like a frontline for a "cold" class war as the city is poised to quietly re-zone the tenderloin borrowing the model set by what happened with new york's time square under then mayor rudolph giuliani. (or perhaps even christopher columbus.)
thinking about giuliani and columbus, i've decided that this last lower polk neighbors meeting's signature motif was bookstores: good and bad. we're gonna start with the "good." the treasurer, poet jeanne powell, announced that three independent bookstores were closing in the area. first, in early 2006, acorn books closed its doors after 30 years. second: the woman who owned lifetime books at sacramento passed away in the hospital; according to jeanne, no prospective leaseholders had come forward to open another bookstore there. third, and rather ironically, jeanne powell was upset that rejoyce books was forced to close after a 200% rent increase. with all the tree-planting that jeanne collects donations for each month, this is exactly the sort of irreversible change she's paving the way for. struggling little charming bookstores can't afford to be in the sort of neighborhood that Lower Polk Neighbors is fighting to create.
i'm a little fuzzy on where jeanne stands on globalization. at previous meetings she would excitedly remind folks about the special Lower Polk Neighbors discount at Cala Foods. coincidentally, this cala foods is directly across the street from rejoyce books on California and Hyde. all one had to do is mention Lower Polk Neighbors at the checkout to have a whopping 10% of the sales go to the cause of gentrification. as far as globalization stances go, i might have questions about jeanne, but i think i'm pretty sure about anti-healthcare cala foods. hmm. i wonder: had rejoyce books offered a special lower polk neighbors discount, would it have helped them to afford their 200% rent increase? upon bearing the distressing news of the recent wave of bookstore closures, she urged people not to shop on Amazon. So it's okay to turn to big business for groceries, but not books? I don't think that the megacorporation that runs Cala Foods in addition to several other well-known grocery store chains-- and a few years ago successfully forged a deal with the all-too-ready-to-capitulate UFCW to fuck their union out of health care-- is hurting financially.
warning: tangential traumatizing side-note ahead:
during the police report at a previous meeting, treasurer jeanne powell expressed concern over the recent appearance on the streets of something she said had sent a shiver down her spine. apparently these were people whom she identifed as "ecuadoreans," and they had taken over the local drug trade. she said they were just mean-looking people-- she was concerned about them wandering the streets just a little too close to a nearby school. she asked captain dillon if he knew about them and captain dillon confirmed that the police were "aware of the ecuadoreans." mockingly, i raised my hand and asked if they perhaps had any ties to al qaeda. captain dillon replied that the police didn't believe they did. my sarcasm was completely lost on the room. i warned the reader about this paragraph for two reasons: one reason was because its content is likely to induce trauma. the second reason was that adding it might obscure the stated theme of "bookstores: good and bad" which i opened this entry with. over the course of writing i can see more clearly that the good/bad bookstore theme and this "equadorean" anecdote are linked by the repeated practice lower polk neighbors has of pathologizing, or more often criminalizing, difference. listening to the way jeanne talked, it felt as if she thought it was objectionable not just that they sold drugs, but also that they appeared to her to be from ecuador-- i'm unsure as to why anyone needed to know how she had chosen to locate them racially.
the point i'm trying to make is not just about jeanne powell-- i say this as i catch carolyn abst angrily doodling geodesic squares in the margins of the agenda handout. my point is that being so blinded by xenophobia has made them stupid-- so much so that they unwittingly sabotage themselves, ala rejoyce books. from going to these meetings for so long, i've realized that they're essentially stupid-- not just racist, classist and heterosexist. i make the distinction that racism, classism and heterosexism are not mere manifestations of stupidity, but coldly calculated systems of domination. i know this from watching how the police report operates during the meetings, how captain dillon relates to feverish owning-class gripes. captain dillon (sometimes referred to by the group as "our captain") helps create the myth of public consent to state terror by feeding off their irrational tree-planting capitalist morality play versus a faceless un-colonizable urban race/class/gender difference. carolynn abst's moral war with the marginalized resonates with middle american values-- she received a check for $200 from someone in the red states who read the recent Wall Street Journal article that predictably mischaracterized both her organization and gay shame's anti-gentrification campaign to gratify their readership. the state uses arrogant zealots like abst to do its own work for them, making a "trouble" neighborhood more palatable to the suburban tastes of empire. this was clear during the last meeting's discussion of transportation development happening on van ness avenue (the main street adjacent to polk)-- such a large-scale civic planning project only takes place hand-in-hand with goals to draw in big business more than willing to cop the 200% rent increase that rejoyce books couldn't. people at the meeting had numerous concerns as to the development-- it appeared that although they had so passionate a role in making the area viable through chasing out the marginal and powerless that ultimately they themselves were excluded from the city-level decisions which will have the greatest impact. let me just remind the reader that gay shame has never been pro-business-- unfortunately, places that sell alcohol or books tend to also be where some cultures happen under capitalism. these places also become targets in the culture war that lower polk neighbors is waging against the marginal and different, and finally against themselves. lower polk neighbors' moral unwillingness to accept difference and the innate connections between both "good" and "bad" bookstores is what will be its own eventual undoing.
wait, what other bookstore? when was i going to mention the "bad" bookstore? let me return to the aforementioned signature motif-- those at the meeting spoke ill of the new gay adult bookstore, polk gulch, which was mentioned in the previous blog entry. up until a certain inopportune power outage, the polk gulch was a "straight" adult bookstore called the lockerroom. the new rainbow flagged bondage awning says "polk gulch" in big letters, making an interesting contrast to john molloy's "polk money district" streetpost banners. the lockerroom was in an apartment building that recently made the papers because of a suspicious power outage fiasco involving the building's management company, asia inc. the "polk gulch" is in this building right across the street from carolyn abst and ron case's architecture firm, case/abst: this meeting people spoke about talking to the city attorney about polk gulch. they claimed that families in the apartment building were complaining about the presence of this new bookstore-- the families in the building didn't have a problem with the old one?
people at the meeting spoke of having "quality of life" issues with the bookstore (this language reminds me of new york under giuliani, and i gasped at their audacity of invoking such a legacy publically)-- it's always code for increased police presence, evictions and big business = gentrification. despite knowing better, i'm taken aback by how brazen this group is, especially since the only obvious difference from the previous adult bookstore was that this one is gay. it is only because of the assimilationist apathy of san francisco's mainstream gay community that lower polk neighbors was successful in bullying the last gay hustler bar (the rendezvous) out of the neighborhood about two and half years ago. is the neighborhood much better now that it has become a clone of violent straightboy stomping ground north beach? carolynn's $200 red state check would confirm that polk street has been sufficiently colonized to meet total suburban accommodation. lower polk neighbors continues the american tradition of crude and careerist owning-class gentrification gangsters in the manifest destiny vein of giuliani and columbus, righteously preying upon the most vulnerable and different, scared of any unfamiliar street culture that may interfere with their tacky and uninspired business goals.
