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cabbie
Posts:58
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| 08/25/2008 8:20 AM |
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Do any regular posters have details of what Hillcrest used to be like before it became "sassy"? According to my sources (retired black straight navy guys) it was really bad....they reference City Heights & Encanto...so what's next to gentrify in the SD metro area???
Speaking of Encanto....I heard Ronald Regan lived there as a kid....... |
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78TTop
Posts:88
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| 08/25/2008 8:40 AM |
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| Ronald Regan grew up in Illinois. |
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sleepybear
Posts:116
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| 08/25/2008 8:59 AM |
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| Reagan must have grown up in Frank Baum's Emerald City. |
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92101Resident
Posts:140
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| 08/25/2008 9:30 AM |
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Posted By cabbie on 08/25/2008 8:20 AM
Speaking of Encanto....I heard Ronald Regan lived there as a kid.......
Did you read that in a some real estate ad? Also did you know that Queen of England grew up in Lakeside?
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UnsureBuyer
Posts:211
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| 08/25/2008 11:12 AM |
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There are different reasons for gentrification of a neighborhood. With Hillcrest, gay people made it more upscale. I remember as a kid (I was born and raised in San Diego), Hillcrest was kind of like today's run down part of North Park. It had some gay people and old people. My parents owned a duplex there (rented it out).
Is Encanto really SD metro? I thought it was more burby. I always heard that North Park is "up and coming" but when I drive through the area, I don't really see anything as nice as Hillcrest or Downtown (restaurants, shops, etc).
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Horst
Posts:33
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| 08/25/2008 11:15 AM |
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Probably Golden Hill - 92102 area. It's close to Downtown, has some historical relevance, etc., etc. Good for people who want to be close to downtown but don't want to live in a condo.
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LoonyQT
Posts:894
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| 08/25/2008 12:22 PM |
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| I'd say N. Park & Golden Hill will clean up next... |
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Brian
Posts:2210
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| 08/25/2008 12:56 PM |
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I don't think that any new neighborhood will gentrify in the next 20 years.
Downtown has too much heft now that it will suck gentrification out of the other areas, at least for the next couple of decades. If you look at the East Village, attracting businesses and restaurants will take about 20 years. That's how long it took the Gaslamp to become what it is today. The East Village is several times as big as Little Italy without the cozy feel.
Gay enclaves are declining as being gay is becoming mainstream. The Internet has lessened the need for areas for gays to meet up and socialize. Castro in San Francisco is becoming more mainstream as the chain stores move in and the old gay men die off. It's too expensive for young blood to move in.
Rents are too expensive for small restaurants to thrive, so you end up with the PF Chang/Starbucks effect. The Cohn restaurant group is an example.
Gentrification of "bohemian" neighborhoods is an interesting phenomenon. As the neighborhood gentrifies, the bohemians have to move away because of rising costs.
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78TTop
Posts:88
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| 08/25/2008 1:05 PM |
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Adams Ave (zip 92116) offers some long-term opportunity. Lots of good restaurants: Antique Row Cafe, Dimille's, Kensington Grill etc.
They have a very active Business Assoc: http://www.adamsaveonline.com/
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Betty
Posts:147
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| 08/25/2008 1:24 PM |
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[quote]Gentrification of "bohemian" neighborhoods is an interesting phenomenon. As the neighborhood gentrifies, the bohemians have to move away because of rising costs.[/quote]
That's so true! One can see that in Harlem where the old brownstones are restored and the apartment buildings get a face lift,
especially the section closer to the northern Central Park area. The buildings look great but the rent has become too expensive for
the black community who made Harlem what it was.
I've been in San Diego for 20 years, and I remember how undesirable downtown was (I wish I had bought then) with all its tattoo
parlors, cheap pubs, nude bars, and the rescue mission in midst of it. It was filthy and attracted the transients by the hundreds,
not a place where one wanted to eat - quite the opposite of today!
Hillcrest was the North Park of today - that's a good comparison, whereas Hillcrest always was surrounded by good neighborhoods
like Mission Hills and Balboa Park. North Park still has some rough neighborhoods to the east and around El Cajon Blvd - that will
take quite a number of years to shape up.
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Sparky
Posts:143
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| 08/25/2008 2:06 PM |
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Posted By Brian on 08/25/2008 12:56 PM
Gay enclaves are declining as being gay is becoming mainstream. The Internet has lessened the need for areas for gays to meet up and socialize. Castro in San Francisco is becoming more mainstream as the chain stores move in and the old gay men die off. It's too expensive for young blood to move in.
Does it surprise anyone that our resident expert-on-all-things is also an expert on all-things-gay as well? Brian, just where are you getting your information to make such a bold and confident statement about the socioeconomic future of gay men? It is a fact that gay men generally have a higher socioeconomic status than heterosexual men as noted in this article http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119231808/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0. So if the young gay blood can not afford to move in, then who can? Your careless assertions are a detriment to this forum. Back up your assertions with facts, not unfounded opinions that you assert as fact. |
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Waiting
Posts:35
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| 08/25/2008 2:58 PM |
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Posted By Brian on 08/25/2008 12:56 PM
Gay enclaves are declining as being gay is becoming mainstream. The Internet has lessened the need for areas for gays to meet up and socialize.
Can you please tell me where you got this information? Do any gay men or social anthropologists want to comment on this apparent trend? |
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Brian
Posts:2210
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| 08/25/2008 3:20 PM |
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There you go, Sparky.
I don't profess to know about gay life. But I do like to read about urban development and architecture and sociology.
I also do have gay friends and they tell me that the community feeling of gay life is different now than 20 years ago. From what I understand, young gays are now very mainstream and don't aspire to live in gay enclaves and restore old houses like their elders -- they are more affected by mainstream marketing and want to live in new developments, wear brand name fashion and drive luxury cars (which gays of the 1970s rejected).
Sure gays have disposable income but they are spending it more mainstream ways. My point is that neighborhoods of old houses in need or repair are less likely to have "Martha Stewards and Kevin O'Connors" moving in.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/25/MNG2DOATDK1.DTL
"I think the only gay neighborhood that is going to survive is the Castro," said Don Reuter, a New York writer who has spent the past seven months documenting the status of gay enclaves in 12 U.S. cities. "In every city this is going on. We're unraveling. Our gay neighborhoods are unraveling," he said.
In Chicago, the core gay neighborhood has moved farther from the urban center as real estate prices have risen. Most gay and lesbian people who own homes now live on the northern edge of the city, said filmmaker Ron Pajak, who is documenting the history of the city's gay community.
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Brian
Posts:2210
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| 08/25/2008 3:29 PM |
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While we are the Hillcrest topic, here's more info on gay social trends.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/06/09/internet.tolerance.spark.change.urban.gay.communities
"With the exception of London and possibly New York, gay bars and culture are changing. On almost all measures, we're seeing the same trend: decreasing number of gay bars/clubs, decreased attendance at gay events, less volunteerism in gay or HIV/AIDS organizations and, less gay media, resulting in an overall decline in gay visibility," said Simon Rosser, Ph.D., principal investigator on the study and professor in the School of Public Health's Division of Epidemiology and Community Health.
"The biggest reason for these changes, we think, is the Internet. Traditional gay communities have become much quieter now that most gay men are online. It's really a worldwide trend." |
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Horst
Posts:33
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| 08/25/2008 3:35 PM |
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Posted By 92101Resident on 08/25/2008 3:20 PM
I don't know who thinks Hillcrest is all that! Frankly San Diego being such a "small town" somehow makes areas such as Hillcrest seem trendy or upscale - it's sorta like at 2am when Taco Bell can seem like a good option when in reality you would never eat there at 9pm...
I personally find Hillcrest to be nothing more than a cluster of few lame restuarants with the added flavor of seeing some disgusting images....
So, there are alot of mirrors in Hillcrest?
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Sparky
Posts:143
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| 08/25/2008 3:54 PM |
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| Interesting article and I now see where you got the information, so I apologize. But I wonder how that pertains to Hillcrest, the subject of this thread? Does anyone really see heterosexuals and families now moving into Hillcrest to displace the older gays as they pass away, while the younger gays stay in the burbs? |
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UnsureBuyer
Posts:211
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| 08/25/2008 3:56 PM |
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lol horst, love it.
I think you guys should give Brian a little slack. It's not like he's hateful towards gay people like 92101resident. No one is jumping all over her back. |
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Sparky
Posts:143
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| 08/25/2008 4:01 PM |
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| Buh bye 92101resident. I'm sure that completely inappropriate remark will get flagged for deletion, as it should be. |
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92101Resident
Posts:140
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| 08/25/2008 4:09 PM |
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| I call Hillcrest what it is! it's a joke of place with nothing special to offer but I'm happy it's there so to know to avoid it! |
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punstress
Posts:123
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| 08/25/2008 4:11 PM |
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I moved to Hillcrest 17 years ago, and I do see some differences. For one, crime and homelessness have gone down. When I first moved there, we had a group of regular street people hanging around the liquor store and the almost-abandoned telephone company building. My car got broken into several times in the early 90s. I would chase tweakers from our parking lot. But once the liquor store closed, the telco building became the Cable lofts, and the satellite police office opened, that stuff became a lot rarer. I also remember a lot of runaways hanging out around 5th and University a few years ago; don't see that much anymore.
It was maybe 10 or more years ago, though, that it seemed like all my neighbors moved to North Park. Most but not all were homosexual. They felt they could get a much better deal renting a house there for the same price as an apt in Hillcrest. I should note, though, that one friend came running back after she caught a would-be intruder removing her screens -- and he didn't run off right away. I also remember hearing that after I left a Halloween party in N.P. one year, a bunch of gang members crashed the party and it was a very bad scene. That is stuff I'm just not willing to live with!
Of course the condo conversion mania only made things worse in Hillcrest. My building never converted, but what was once an easy place to find rentals became nearly impossible. If you can believe it, my rent in 1991 was $425 for a large studio with a pool and covered parking in a very central, convenient location. My rent didn't go up for years. Two-bedroom apts were going for $650. Those were the days.
As for the area, I'm not a suburban cul-de-sac type of gal, but downtown lacks services, so Hillcrest is just right. I like being able to walk to the drug store, Bread & Cie, the garage, and just about any bus I might need (even though I have a car). One thing that perhaps made it easier for Hillcrest to improve is that most neighborhoods it abuts are about the same or better -- Banker's Hill, Mission Hills -- and there is a fairly strong geographical separation between Hillcrest and the parts that are "worse." Park Boulevard, Balboa Park and some freeways and canyons form a buffer against the yuckier neighborhoods in N.P., downtown and Middletown.
But if you look at Golden Hill and North Park, however, there are OK sections, but they're almost completely surrounded or encroached by yucky or marginal neighborhoods. Not to say they can't improve, but frankly they could go either way, up or down. And Hillcrest being Hillcrest is probably what brought the police to set up the satellite office there. They just can't or won't set up in every neighborhood where people want them, but there was at the time a perceived threat against homosexuals. |
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