Fuck solutions, I think gentrification is great. It's a clear example of the strong and intelligent surviving and the weak being eliminated.
You live in a country of opportunity. If you're not doing wverything you can and striving to become successful then you are a waste of flesh and deserve to be forced out of your crummy apartment, give it to someone who has worker harder than you and deserves it.

At 9/16/15 12:11 AM, vannila-guerilla wrote: Okay, I'm stopping you right here, because that's a bullshit answer. People have somewhere else to go if they can't afford it. In a country physically as large as the United States, where people move all the time, there is always somewhere else to call "home." I've been everywhere from Tucson to Peoria, Il to Charleston, SC. I know this is true.

It sounds more like you don't know your roots and don't know where the fuck to go. Wherever your home state is should be your primary residence. You choose the place within the state.

Also moving all the time is not good for you. You should move into any place expecting it to be your last.

At 9/16/15 12:23 AM, GoryBlizzard wrote: Also moving all the time is not good for you. You should move into any place expecting it to be your last.

Having moved a lot in my life, I do sort of agree with this.

Thing is, there are a shit load of NYC tech jobs. Obviously that's going to draw people in.

At 9/16/15 12:27 AM, BrenTheMan wrote: Having moved a lot in my life, I do sort of agree with this.

Thing is, there are a shit load of NYC tech jobs. Obviously that's going to draw people in.

I have noticed that a lot of outsiders work in the tech industry. In general, they have had completely different experiences growing up than me and were dealt a good hand to begin with. Also many of these jobs are for companies that serve big business clients, cater to hipsters and/or are startups destined to fail, or could have been done at home without moving anywhere.

There is a lot more to this issue than you think. I've lived in SF since 1994 and I know what it's like to have the city you grew up in rapidly transform and become gentrified by overpaid hipsters. Everyone in my neighborhood is feeling it right now.

However, I don't think that encouraging urban decay and crime is a good solution. Sure, it'll drive the land values back down and might scare the hipsters out of the city, but you're just trading one problem for another. I don't want to live in a crime-ridden poverty-stricken shithole and I can't think of too many original SF residents that would want to either. Most of us have spent our entire lives trying to get OUT of the ghetto, or at least make the ghetto a nicer place for us to live in.

All these new big tech companies are getting huge tax breaks (i.e. Twitter) and importing their work force from outside the city. The city's leaders view these companies as a cash cow, bringing wealthy residents to the city and therefore more money into their pockets. They create incentives for these companies to set up shop here knowing that it'll bring more money to the city in the long run.

The San Francisco Community College District is headed by a corrupt Board of Trustees who have mismanaged the district's budget for years, leading to City College of San Francisco almost losing their accreditation. Our public schools are a joke and do very little to prepare city youth for college and help them obtain the education they need to compete with workers that companies like Twitter have been importing from Silicon Valley. Consequently, these big tech companies do not want to hire people from the city, and so our population is being displaced by workers from out of town.

I think that the best solution is to stop giving tax breaks to these big tech companies and improve our local education system. We need to make our schools more accessible and more efficient. We should focus on making our local work force more competitive so that these companies will be more likely to hire locals than import workers from out of town. If the locals are skilled enough, these tech companies won't need to look outside the city to hire new employees, and the money will be kept within our communities instead of going to these hipsters from out of town.

Regarding op.

One of the things I like about Memphis is how gentrification resistant it is. We have a bad problem with people from Nashville trying to colonize the music scene. Apparently Nashville has a big problem with people who are racist from NY and CA moving there because they hear they can be openly racist there, which is true, Nashville is very openly racist, I mean hell, racism is the second leading industry in Nashville behind country music. Many of the people in Nashville live there because they were run out of Memphis in the post-Civil Rights Era for being openly racist. Even if you are white, if you are in Nashville and they find out you are from Memphis, they will openly discriminate against you, because they feel that white people who did not join in the White Flight from Memphis are race traitors.

At 9/16/15 12:52 AM, DJ-Ri wrote: There is a lot more to this issue than you think. I've lived in SF since 1994 and I know what it's like to have the city you grew up in rapidly transform and become gentrified by overpaid hipsters. Everyone in my neighborhood is feeling it right now.

SF is the only place that has higher rents, on average, than NYC as far as I know, so we're pretty much in the same boat. I actually reference it a lot when talking about gentrification with other natives that share my sentiments.

However, I don't think that encouraging urban decay and crime is a good solution. Sure, it'll drive the land values back down and might scare the hipsters out of the city, but you're just trading one problem for another. I don't want to live in a crime-ridden poverty-stricken shithole and I can't think of too many original SF residents that would want to either. Most of us have spent our entire lives trying to get OUT of the ghetto, or at least make the ghetto a nicer place for us to live in.

It's hard to figure out what else to do, except make everyone originally from the city or state to adopt a more territorial attitude and reject non-natives until they actually get the message. These attitudes are more widespread around the world than the are in the US. The US and many of the cities within it prides itself in being hugely open melting pots. Encouraging widespread domestic migration and immigration is what created a lot of the problems we have now. However, changing these attitudes could take years. I'm an impatient person and rapid urban decay gets me the desired results faster.

All these new big tech companies are getting huge tax breaks (i.e. Twitter) and importing their work force from outside the city. The city's leaders view these companies as a cash cow, bringing wealthy residents to the city and therefore more money into their pockets. They create incentives for these companies to set up shop here knowing that it'll bring more money to the city in the long run.

This is exactly the issue here too.

The San Francisco Community College District is headed by a corrupt Board of Trustees who have mismanaged the district's budget for years, leading to City College of San Francisco almost losing their accreditation. Our public schools are a joke and do very little to prepare city youth for college and help them obtain the education they need to compete with workers that companies like Twitter have been importing from Silicon Valley. Consequently, these big tech companies do not want to hire people from the city, and so our population is being displaced by workers from out of town.

I'm all for schools that have people graduate with not only HS diplomas but Associate's Degrees as well. In NYC, examples of these are P-Tech and Bard College High School. A lot of tech companies look for graduates of such schools and hire them right after graduation. That's the kind of opportunity I wish I had. I only got 8 college credits while in high school. Education there is all for free with no tuition. Anyone that wants to go on for a Bachelor's Degree can if they can afford it.

I think that the best solution is to stop giving tax breaks to these big tech companies and improve our local education system. We need to make our schools more accessible and more efficient. We should focus on making our local work force more competitive so that these companies will be more likely to hire locals than import workers from out of town. If the locals are skilled enough, these tech companies won't need to look outside the city to hire new employees, and the money will be kept within our communities instead of going to these hipsters from out of town.

I'm okay with this and have brought it up in the past, but I want that to be combined with more territorial attitudes among locals there, here and in other cities. Basically take a few pages from the self-deportation playbook: if you can't get housing or a job, you'll leave and go back to where you came from. I just think urban decay gets faster results, but obviously opinions differ widely here.

I apologize if this has been said but the solution, in my opinion, kill whites.

At 7/25/14 05:07 PM, GoryBlizzard wrote: greedy executives that come here are just opportunists that are willing to bounce from state to state. If someone else wants them, fine, but they'll soon find out there will be consequences.

Funny. That's exactly the way I feel about New Yorkers who come to my state, but only New Yorkers. I haven't really seen this in Americans except from people specifically from New York. Sometimes there are greedy foreigners (from other countries) but not near as bad as the greedy New Yorkers.

It'll always be some greedy New Yorker who comes here because it's cheaper to run things here, thinking they could make huge profits, charging way too much the local people just won't pay, and then being angry when they don't make the same kinds of money they used to make in New York and getting mad at their customers for not paying/buying more. Well guess what? Yeah it's cheaper to run a business here than in New York but also you can't charge as much for stuff and you won't make as much money either, so you better structure your business with that in mind, and not just expect oh come to the south and reduce your business expenses but also retain the same profits with no drawbacks.

It won't be long after that they go out of business and move on, but there will be others like them. They're rude, they're greedy, they have the absolute worst accents, and they don't tend to do too well around here for very long anyway before they realize they aren't going to make all that money like those dollar signs in their imagination land. And so they go out of business because no one wants them around and people vote with their wallets.

So how about this, Gory ... how about if we keep outsiders out of New York but we also keep New Yorkers in New York? Deal?

At 7/14/14 01:20 AM, ToddM wrote: Just fucking leave the city and go upstate. I hear its cheap and they have all of what you want in urban decay and despair. Such as Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.

Hey fuck you buddy.

-sent from my iBox

At 9/16/15 10:06 PM, NeonSpider wrote: So how about this, Gory ... how about if we keep outsiders out of New York but we also keep New Yorkers in New York? Deal?

That's what I've been advocating the whole time. Keep everyone in their home states or countries. Slam the breaks on domestic migration. I don't think it's good when other New Yorkers leave either. One way or another, they usually find themselves back or wanting to come back eventually.

At 9/27/15 04:55 PM, yurgenburgen wrote: related somewhat: Shoreditch Cereal Killer Cafe targeted by anti-gentrification protesters

I'm glad you posted that. Obviously you know where my sympathies lie. Hint: not with the owners.

What surprises me is that the fro yo shops, hipster coffee shops and overpriced vegan places here have not seen this kind of protesting. It's long overdue. Because let's think about it: where have all of our past peaceful anti-gentrification protests gotten us? Nowhere. We're still experiencing gentrification, or as the big wigs prefer to say, "a renaissance." The luxury condo boom continues and previously untouched, once-scary neighborhoods have properties that are being snagged by deep-pocketed investors and Wall Street prognosticators. It's despicable. I'm beyond incensed right now just thinking about this.

From the article:

"The cafe, which opened in December, was open as usual on Sunday morning, with queues of customers paying up to £4.40 for a bowl of cereal."

That's completely unacceptable and there is no excuse for that.

I hope there are some Londoners here that can offer further insight, especially if you've been to this place. If the owners of this so-called Cereal Killer Cafe can't take a little cereal killing of their own, too bad. They seem so worried about their physical safety without any regard for the long term safety of the many little local guys that have been barely scraping by forever.

At 9/27/15 05:37 PM, GoryBlizzard wrote: "The cafe, which opened in December, was open as usual on Sunday morning, with queues of customers paying up to £4.40 for a bowl of cereal."

That's completely unacceptable and there is no excuse for that.

Why is that unacceptable?

At 9/27/15 06:02 PM, FinaLee wrote: Why is that unacceptable?

It is, to my knowledge, well above the standard going rate for that area. Again, this is where local insight would be beneficial.

In the meantime, enjoy your $20 small cup of frozen yogurt.

We could artificially stunt economic growth and just sh*t up all of the neighborhoods so large, job-creating companies will go somewhere else.

That would stop gentrification really quickly.

At 9/27/15 06:06 PM, GoryBlizzard wrote: It is, to my knowledge, well above the standard going rate for that area. Again, this is where local insight would be beneficial.

In the meantime, enjoy your $20 small cup of frozen yogurt.

$20 is much too high for me to spend on a cup of frozen yogurt. It would be better spent at Costco in bulk. Of course, as long as it's Greek yogurt. That stuff is delicious. What was I saying?

Oh yeah, supply and demand. Specifically, the law of demand. If the company isn't selling enough of their product, then they will lower their prices. I don't know why there needs to be a violent protest involved over that. Overkill would be an understatement. No local insight required.

Also, this group has more than likely hurt your movement more than helped it. Picture this: "small business owned by two brothers attacked by anarchist group touting class war." Martyrs for sure.

At 9/27/15 07:01 PM, FinaLee wrote: Oh yeah, supply and demand. Specifically, the law of demand. If the company isn't selling enough of their product, then they will lower their prices. I don't know why there needs to be a violent protest involved over that. Overkill would be an understatement. No local insight required.

This particular protest is about way more than just one random business selling overpriced cereal. It's about thousands, perhaps millions, of poor people, who've lived where they have lived forever, not being able to keep roofs above their heads in that part of east London. Their community is being changed to favor wealthy yuppie newcomers and the mere existence of this place is one of many that is part of an ongoing pattern of negative changes. If you've lived in one place all your life or for a very long time, you shouldn't go out without a fight. Being kicked out of my own home is something that I take very personally, as I should. There is very little protection for people like me. The fact is that developers and successful business owners are usually very rich. They don't care about the communities they set foot in and who they're hurting as a result of their projects. All that matters to them is making more money when they already have enough. I just don't understand this general mentality of the rich because most of them just don't seem to know when enough is enough. This "show me the money" kind of thinking hurts countless people, especially in my area.

Also, this group has more than likely hurt your movement more than helped it. Picture this: "small business owned by two brothers attacked by anarchist group touting class war." Martyrs for sure.

This small business isn't like your local bodega, pizzeria or Chinese restaurant selling average everyday stuff at average everyday prices. Their prices are above the mean and their regular clientele generally are the very people responsible for the gentrification of not only that area but London in general. It's a completely appropriate target for this kind of event.

At 9/27/15 07:45 PM, GoryBlizzard wrote: This particular protest is about way more than just one random business selling overpriced cereal. It's about thousands, perhaps millions, of poor people, who've lived where they have lived forever, not being able to keep roofs above their heads in that part of east London.

Not too many people are going to see it that way outside of your movement. I would even go as far to say that a good number of people within the group think there are bigger fish to fry. Regardless, attacking a small business is generally a big no-no for rallying people together for a cause. Violent revolutions themselves require much more extreme conditions in order to appear attractive to middle/lower class people, conditions which your state is still far from.

If you've lived in one place all your life or for a very long time, you shouldn't go out without a fight.

Who is doing the fighting though, brother? The people of the state certainly don't want to keep criminals, of which sadly your movement comprises a notable portion of.

I just don't understand this general mentality of the rich because most of them just don't seem to know when enough is enough. This "show me the money" kind of thinking hurts countless people, especially in my area.

How about you claim that people like me have no idea what it's like to live in one area your whole life and see it change for the worse, and I can claim that you have no idea what it's like to be associated with an ethical business that runs on a relatively sound moral platform, and be attacked based on misdirected anger. That way, we can both pretend to have our own little Vietnam. :3

This small business isn't like your local bodega, pizzeria or Chinese restaurant selling average everyday stuff at average everyday prices. Their prices are above the mean and their regular clientele generally are the very people responsible for the gentrification of not only that area but London in general. It's a completely appropriate target for this kind of event.

Mmhm. Death to the bourgeoisie, right? I don't often make tsks at people over political differences, but you sir deserve two of mine.

Tsk, tsk.

At 9/27/15 08:24 PM, FinaLee wrote: Not too many people are going to see it that way outside of your movement. I would even go as far to say that a good number of people within the group think there are bigger fish to fry. Regardless, attacking a small business is generally a big no-no for rallying people together for a cause. Violent revolutions themselves require much more extreme conditions in order to appear attractive to middle/lower class people, conditions which your state is still far from.

How much more extreme can it get when you see luxury condos after luxury condos being built and you can barely recognize your old neighborhood from 10 or even 5 years ago? Rents can't keep skyrocketing forever. At some point they should just be frozen, to be fair to poorer people on fixed incomes. Here, we've already identified specific reasons for the rising rents and we would be remiss not to do anything about it.

Who is doing the fighting though, brother? The people of the state certainly don't want to keep criminals, of which sadly your movement comprises a notable portion of.

Almost every lower class local is fighting for their lives. For you or anyone else to shamelessly write them off as criminals simply because they don't make a lot of money is unconscionable. And gentrification is naturally criminal in itself. It seeks to annihilate everyone but the super rich from given areas, when really the super rich should be the ones annihilated from everywhere. All wealth needs to be evenly spread out. Pretty much the only viable option at this point is to make sure that the conditions in currently desirable areas are far less desirable. The more crime we have, the better. 2 wrongs sometimes do make a right.

How about you claim that people like me have no idea what it's like to live in one area your whole life and see it change for the worse, and I can claim that you have no idea what it's like to be associated with an ethical business that runs on a relatively sound moral platform, and be attacked based on misdirected anger. That way, we can both pretend to have our own little Vietnam. :3

People that vastly overcharge for food (or any product, more generally) when their prices are compared to similar establishments have very questionable ethics at best, and deserve whatever comes to them. These guys got their just desserts, and I hope there's more to come.

Mmhm. Death to the bourgeoisie, right? I don't often make tsks at people over political differences, but you sir deserve two of mine.

Tsk, tsk.

This isn't merely a political issue for me--it's something that I take very very personally and is constantly on my mind. I watch who my friends are, and I don't hang around with people whose livings primarily depend on luxury real estate, or hipster fro yo or vegan shops.

When the OP is now using crime in order to combat gentrification, that's when it has gotten to the point where the argument has become totally pointless in addition to asinine and selfish. I don't give a rat's ass if you really are against progress, but to say that crime is a good thing, now I know that you are fucking idiotic. I guess apparently you can stand to have 2200 murders and untold levels or rapes, robberies and crack pipes but not a bunch of hipster folks who want to move in to a city and actually improve it, real good logic there.

At 9/27/15 10:53 PM, orangebomb wrote: When the OP is now using crime in order to combat gentrification, that's when it has gotten to the point where the argument has become totally pointless in addition to asinine and selfish. I don't give a rat's ass if you really are against progress, but to say that crime is a good thing, now I know that you are fucking idiotic. I guess apparently you can stand to have 2200 murders and untold levels or rapes, robberies and crack pipes but not a bunch of hipster folks who want to move in to a city and actually improve it, real good logic there.

Now? That was his argument to begin with:

"Let’s not forget the even wilder ‘70s and ‘80s which I was not even around for. Today, the images of rampant subway graffiti, prostitution and porn shops in Times Square, regular muggings and assaults, and “No radio” signs that many drivers put on their windshields to avoid break-ins have all but faded from the public consciousness. Why not bring those days back?"

That was from the first post in this thread.

At 9/27/15 11:16 PM, Bit wrote: That was from the first post in this thread.

Yes, I know that. But I do believe this is the first time that he actually said that crime is a good thing to counter gentrification and how two wrongs can make a right. Even if it somehow isn't, {I'm not going to re-read 5 pages of his asinine microwave communism and appeal to the lowest common denominator of populism without getting a headache} I'm sure that everyone with more than a few brain cells knows that he's at the very least deluded with an informal fallacy of gentrification.

I'm going through that right now, though it's not condos. It's people who want more land for their buck, and don't mind commuting. All this good farmland is being plowed under, non-indigenous plants are being introduced, and only babies are made...

Solution? There is none, it's Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. There's no middle-class anymore, so who can afford to live close to the money centers of the globe?

There's too much cheap labor in the US, a lot of our manufacturing base has been lost or sold overseas. And that impacted medical insurance, as the disposable servants were no longer offered medical insurance, as a common incentive and investment in their worker's health (not to mention defray state disability/ workman's comp insurance).

The socialist snowball has become an avalanche, from which we are doomed as a nation. The Red Menace is now.

Ugh, it’s been rough lately, but some of you might not be aware of how rough.

As I’ve said repeatedly, booms are usually (and almost inevitably) followed by busts and vice versa. But my patience is wearing thinner every day. I made this thread 2 years ago and I was hoping that by late 2016, I’d see a bit more progress towards a massive crime wave, as opposed to the real estate boom continuing and at an even more rapid pace. This boom hasn’t busted anywhere near fast enough. If you are totally apathetic when it comes to how to properly deal with putting out the gentrification-induced fire in our real estate market, then you disgust me. If it’s because you lack knowledge, I’ll be more than happy to educate you. If it’s because you’re a gentrifier, you already know what I want you to do, and it isn’t good.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: it’s no secret that the bourgeoise have always had a presence in NYC one way or another. It was wrong over 100 years ago, and it’s even more wrong today. The rate at which they are harassing established natives and gobbling up vacant property for their own financial or personal gain is faster than ever. Far too much money is being spent on expanding the NYPD and thus expanding the reach of the ruling class.

Pop quiz: does it make sense to anyone that there are a little under 14,000 FBI agents with criminal jurisdiction in the entire US while there are about 36,000 NYPD officers for the five boroughs alone? Anyone? Anyone? If you say no, you’re correct. If you say yes, come the fuck over here, because not only do I have harsh words for you--I’ve got hollow point bullets.

I’m a super nice guy who is very reliable and willing to bend over backwards for anyone I like at any time of the day. Like a good number of us, I have friends, continue to make new ones and am part of certain social circles. However, when I constantly have to fear about being thrown out of a place I’m from and grew up in, and know that it’s just a small part of a massive systemic issue, that’s when my blood boils. When I have additional fear that my closest friends and family members are facing displacement to no fault of their own, my blood boils even more. And this goes well beyond just NY’s borders too. Many non-violent alternatives to curbing gentrification and putting an end to capitalism altogether take a long time and would require a complete unrealistic cultural change. A culture and economy founded on the basis of constant sharing and caring, if you will. If you think my ideas are radical and unrealistic, that is even more so, but only as I see it.

Our options are so limited now, and it’s really sad. But in any event, there is a whole world beyond NYC and NY State and if any big or small communities are being gentrified at a rapid rate, then I think it's worth debating solutions. Crime waves really do help more than most people realize. Here's a starter question: when will we go back to the '70s...without actually going back to the '70s?

move.

At 8/29/16 09:16 PM, GoryBlizzard wrote:

it’s no secret that the bourgeoise have always had a presence in NYC one way or another. It was wrong over 100 years ago, and it’s even more wrong today.

You really are a sociopathic, incestuously exclusionary, self- aggrandising, pollution huffing, pop up shopping, dive bar slumming Lou Reed wannabe motherfucker.

At 8/29/16 09:37 PM, stafffighter wrote: You really are a sociopathic, incestuously exclusionary, self- aggrandising, pollution huffing, pop up shopping, dive bar slumming Lou Reed wannabe motherfucker.

I had a hipster on the train say almost the exact same thing to me last week, and the conversation started over a comment she made to me about my "Arrest Bush" shirt.

Honestly, this boggles my mind why this thread hasn't been locked already. I'm normally not one to call for threads to be axed, but this isn't going anywhere, and since few folks either care or makes a joke out of this and the OP seems to be so delusional on his bitchfit on so many levels, it's headache inducing just to read it without him not only not budging, let alone hearing the other side, but is advocating criminal behavior and rather stupid economic policies that has proven to be a massive failure wherever it's been implemented (read: Venezuela) with a few exceptions, and even they have a ton of caveats.

Ok, against my better judgement, I will leave the OP with some advice. It's best when to know when to fold before you dig yourself too deep in a hole, even deeper than you already are now. I get that you are trying to defend your home and stuff, which is great and all, but you can't stop progress just because you don't like what's being made. Hey, I'm not a fan of a lot of the things myself, but I'm not going to stop them if it means that it would better the community, and considering that New York was rivaling that of 3rd world hellholes in terms of murders and crimes, the numbers speak for itself. This isn't a fight you can't win, you either adapt or you will be left behind, and it seems like you're content falling behind of the waves of nostalgia and a Sesame Street level of how things actually go down.

At 8/29/16 09:50 PM, GoryBlizzard wrote:

At 8/29/16 09:37 PM, stafffighter wrote: You really are a sociopathic, incestuously exclusionary, self- aggrandising, pollution huffing, pop up shopping, dive bar slumming Lou Reed wannabe motherfucker.

I had a hipster on the train say almost the exact same thing to me last week, and the conversation started over a comment she made to me about my "Arrest Bush" shirt.

And then just to prove her wrong you put your cigarette out on the sidewalk and broke into the opening number from Rent