Viva Gentrification!

*This has been a recurring theme recently. It came to a head a few weeks ago with the East Austin piñata store story. The owners and their business were allegedly evicted from their building to make room for a SXSW related event. But there have been other stories as well, stories that have reported on the effect of gentrification on the Latino community – in San Jose, in Los Angeles … I think this is a worthy discussion, andthis piece is a worthy place to begin. VL

By Héctor Tobar, New York Times 

LOS ANGELES — FOR years, our family journeys have taken us from our hillside home, in the multiethnic Mount Washington district of northeast Los Angeles, into the flatlands of the Latino barrios that surround it.

My wife, Virginia Espino, who is Mexican-American, knows these neighborhoods well, especially the community called Highland Park. She grew up there in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was still integrated, before “white flight” was complete. In the decades that followed, Spanish-language ads took over the billboards, and the complexions of the locals became almost exclusively cinnamon and café con leche.

The barrio has its charms. And also its pockets of highly visible urban dysfunction, including a brick tenement where groups of young men gather. Police cruisers aggressively patrol against alleged neighborhood ne’er-do-wells, who are often arrested in full public view.

But today in Highland Park there are more open houses than street vendors. There’s a vegan restaurant, alongside a very un-vegan fleet of taco trucks. The local bodega sells not just homemade salsa and cards for cheap phone calls to Guatemala, but also espressos and overpriced Pinot Noir in bottles that have corks instead of twist-off caps.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy of Google Maps]