In a multimedia slideshow called “Weeping for the Life and Death of the Mission District,” Sarah McClure of Mission Local talks to a number of locals preparing altars for the upcoming holiday. Several of them mention the death of the Mission, or the death of the Mission they once knew.
One of them put Mark Zuckerberg’s face on Jesus.
And:
For Fucks sake!
I wonder if the Irish & Germans that lived in the mission used to bitch and moan as much about “THE DEATH OF THE MISSION” in their time, as the entitled hipsters do now.
This. “The death of the Mission” is just a hyperbolic way of saying “the change away from whatever version of the mission I prefer, based on my own personal prejudices and my own sense of entitlement.”
This shit didn’t just drop out of the sky, in its present form, directly from heaven. The neighborhood that is here today replaced other neighborhoods that were here in the past, and we’re all marching around on the bones of the native Americans. So unless you’re a single-celled organism who was here soon after the Big Bang, kindly SHUT THE FUCK UP about how your perceived ideal use of space is not being preserved, with no alteration, into infinity.
It’s true. No one should ever talk about how capitalism fucks people even if we’re all part of that same system. We should just all shut our mouths and bow to our new tech overlords.
> No one should ever talk about how capitalism fucks people
Capitalism does indeed fuck people. But there is a difference between having a serious discussion about that issue and simply jerking off to the sexy feeling of ahistorical cultural entitlement.
I think this is awesome. A great idea of self expression.
Do you think the comments above were paid for by Mr.Zuckerberg, or his fellow workers? Maybe? He’s rich enough? Gotta save “Face”?
Or perhaps by people who are hurt by the idea that they may of had a part in altering a community that was once poor and is now very eccentric or perhaps even excessive? And is only done so by moving into the community, not excelling it’s current occupants situation, or helping them out, but, in fact now banishing them to form new communities in the ghettos of California (south city, Richmond, what have you).
This is really about immigrants, or vagabonds to the system and self entitled “well off” people who create an ugly persona by commenting on this topic with such taste and well formed thoughts.
Relax, you will all be fine, hanging out on the internet giving your educated opinions to the world.
I do fear you all may have deep seeded issues that may someday drive your ambition into a mall with a shotgun. As you unload your rounds to the innocent people you think to yourself, “I really messed up the Mission, and daddy never loved me” and the last bullet goes into your skull.
SHUT THE FUCK UP? Gotta love entitled white folks. Freedom of speech, only for you, eh?
exactly
…Says the entitled white man.
Specious nonsense
They weren’t forced out, dummy. White people assimilate a little differently in this country. Read a book some day!
The Irish, Germans, Slavs, etc were not FORCED out. All colors of the working class in this area are being FORCED out, as in late 90′s. The whites of the late 40′s to the early 70′s were massively subsidized by govt FHA loans to move to the suburbs. These loans only given to whites, were not available if you WANTED to stay in a city if the block had a low grade. “A” meant all white, and even no jews. Lower than a B, no loan. One black family on your block lowered the grade. This is fact. Learn some history of your own country before you arrogantly try to shut down even a semblance of community/working class discussion. But you won’t. For others I suggest Crabgrass Frontier, Life and Death of great american cities (jacobs), City for sale (revised edition, Hartman), and Sugrue’s Urban Crisis. All these texts are taught in colleges that still have an urban studies department. Gentrification is not a simple change. The word itself is based on ‘Gentry’ (duh!) The property speculation class, the rentier class. The word itself MEANS the rich clearing out the poor and working class. NOT just a simple cleanup and change. Jesus fucking christ…..
for those interested, the FHA maps were made under the ‘great liberal’ FDR and continued to be used/updated up to 1970. I’m sure there is a PDF somewhere via a university or such that shows them and city’s grades. The suburbanization program was not only a way to appease the white working class by making them ‘middle class’ with an ‘ownership ideology’ to counteract the still brewing radicalism from the 20′s and 30′s, but to stop the increased integration(finally!) of our conservative AFL-CIO/UAW/Teamsters. And of course with the huge highway program, to facilitate white workers movement to industry leaving the hot concentrated heat of urban radicalism. Then there is the massive HUD Urban Renewal programs of the 50′s and 60′s (aka ‘Negro Removal) that was a conscious effort to divide parts of cities into segregated blocks, and cleanse nearby areas to ‘good’ shopping/high value sections. This is why the fillmore was cleared. And why parts of Boston and NYC were divided by highways in the direction they were.
See? This person reads. Also, with regards to highways: Chicago’s probably the most notorious (see: Dan Ryan expressway).
Why would they have? They left by choice for greener pastures to SFHs in the City and the suburbs
What is your point?
Wow, calling Latino artists “entitled hipsters.” That’s sweet.
The exhibit is actually “Weeping for the LIFE AND DEATH” of the Mission. Mourning what was been lost and celebrating what is new.
Oh damn, forgot that Latinos can’t also be entitled, whiny hipsters. I’m So very sorry for that!
so hipster is a racial term? which ethnicities are allowed to be hipsters?
Seems to be a lack of self-awareness that the “bohemian artists being creative and paying low rent” is a crucial first part in the cycle in the g-word.
It happened in the Mission and the transition in phases is railed against by the people who enjoyed and participated in. Now the mass of “edgy artists being creative and paying low rent” shifts to Oakland, and the cycle will play out there, and it will be railed against there.
Yup. Same story over and over.
That’s a myth. Sadly it seems my Latino working class neighbors play into it.
That white working class people who also happen to be creative are somehow the cause of gentrification. There is a MASSIVE difference between ‘artists’ that can afford Valencia gallery rents and those artists that I knew that lived here in the 80′s and 90′s. Who actually all had to work, in order to create. White working class (what is ‘white’? there is no massive class divide among whites? My god). …people are not the GENTRY. They got booted out too. I could list a hundred names right now. And ten of our collective meeting/music/mutual aid spaces that were gone by late 90′s.
Change is part of city living. If you don’t like change, you can find all sorts of cheap bank-owned properties in the suburbs.
Maybe, but city neighborhoods are about communities, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with people trying to preserve their community. If you don’t like that, why don’t you move to the burbs?
All you “change is inevitable” motherfuckers are rationalizing the “legal” theft of land, housing and culture by means of a racist, capitalist system that you are likely the beneficiaries of. I am also a beneficiary being a white male, but I’m gladly not so self-absorbed that I would deny that fact.
Get your head out of your ass, or don’t. I am sure there’s somebody out there that will see your sense of entitlement as an opportunity and take back just a tiny bit of what is owed.
By the way, 1994 called. It wants its simplistic, reductive rhetoric back.
Odd, I would define simplistic as “unless you’re a single-celled organism who was here soon after the Big Bang, kindly SHUT THE FUCK UP.”
PS. If it were 1994, I would have loved to see you pop that smack at Zeitgeist. Oh, boy…I’d pay for tickets to that show.
>I would define simplistic as “unless you’re a single-celled organism who was here soon after the Big Bang, kindly SHUT THE FUCK UP.”
The difference is that I realize I’m being simplistic, whereas you seriously think that lukewarm Marxist cliches speak to the reality of 2013. I just hope you’re also listening to Spitboy and eating a plate of brown mush cooked by Food Not Bombs.
You’re right, historical materialism went out in the 90s. It doesn’t make any sense anymore.
The tech industry and what has happened to SF is a symptom of the larger problem with the U.S. economy. A tiny minority prospers and does basically whatever the fuck it wants while everyone else tries to hold on to what little they still have. No one questions the fact that kids straight out of college selling online advertising are making six figures, but god forbid blue collar workers at BART don’t want to take a wage cut and decide to strike.
Just keep patting yourself on the back. You’re way too smart to be part of the problem, right?
@heyballsack, I’m not patting myself on the back. I agree with everything you wrote re the change in SF being symptomatic of “the larger problem with the U.S. economy.” Where I differ with the general perspective of commenters on this post is that I don’t agree that there is any “real” or “essential” Mission that is being lost. There is no such thing, any more than there is a “real” Pleasanton or a “real” Antioch. These are all just rhetorical claims appended to the region by people who wish to benefit from or preserve a perceived hierarchy of values. Many of the folks who have commented appear to assume that I’m making some kind of argument in favor of rich folks, or against tenants, or something like that. In fact, I’m just arguing against a naive and oversimplified conception of the Mission. Before the Mission was the way people think of it today, it was different, and there were different changes, and probably other folks making equally bogus claims about the death of the “real” Mission. See, e.g.,: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_District,_San_Francisco#Ethnicity_trends
>rationalizing the “legal” theft of land, housing and culture
Whereas when people occupy rent-controlled apartments and invoke their legal rights to stay in those apartments, it’s not theft at all, it’s just the righteous struggle of the oppressed, amirite? Legal rights only for the downtrodden, everybody else is a “thief” who “owes” and has to pay up!
You misunderstand. The poor who have been systematically denied education and opportunity CANNOT buy land like the beneficiaries of said system. So does that mean that certain groups of people hold no stake in their communities? I am curious, do property rights supersede community investment? Does that mean that only people who own land should have a say in the direction of change? Wait a minute…that’s starting to sound suspiciously close to the old “only white property-owners” can vote!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States
Well, yes, property rights do supersede community investment. I’m not saying they should, but this is capitalism and so they do. This shit is inevitable under capitalism. Should it be like that? I mean, who’s to say, but in general I would think no, this is a bad way to do things, but it’s unfortunately what we’re stuck with right now.
Don’t you know that being non-white automatically entitles you to sub-$1000 rent? Ownership and demand/supply doesn’t count if you’ve rented an apartment for, like, a really long time.
“but I’m gladly not so self-absorbed that I would deny that fact.”
Self-righteous you are.
Hazbeen: Hear, hear. Well said.
Sadly these people don’t seem to understand that they really are advocating that only those with capital should have a say in our communities. It boggles my mind sometimes
Yup. It is short-sighted at best.
Or entitled classist rhetoric…
. . . said the entitled white man
Can I get that Zuckerberg on a t-shirt?
Did Zuckerberg move to the Mission? I’ve seen him a few times. He appears to have very strict rules about evenly splitting checks. Saw him collect and count money from everyone at his table.
Jeremy if he has I do not believe he is living at his place on 21st and Fair Oaks as the house is in deep rebuilding mode. His bill for cement has got to be crazy.
I have been in The City since 1972 and you all have moved in on MY turf. Grew up in The Richmond when the Russian Jews were the newbies.
I was pitching the ol’ hard ball in Glen Park playground in the mid -60s and have seen many changes. Mainly my fastball now clocks in at 15 mph on the radar gun. Beatniks, Summer of Love, Patty Hearst, World Series earthquake, Dot Com the First and now Dot Com 2 the Google Bus. It all changes, always will.
Only 15 mph? So unjust. What was it before?
20 mph. But that was when I was doing steroids.
Egg the googleapple busses! Trick or Treat bitches.
Some if you people probably can’t afford to throw your breakfast, lunch and or dinner at buses.
when you live with your mom the eggs in the fridge are free.
You all realize you’re just being played by Mission Mission in order to get a lot of comments on a post? Every few weeks, probably when traffic is a bit low, they put up a “the Mission is dying” or “this burrito joint is the best” post to stir the pot.
And, yes, I realize the irony of commenting on this about that.
And if you’re going to say my use of “irony” is wrong, well, whatever.
Do they gain some of that filthy capital by selling page hits to advertisers? Disgusting.
Pay $1000+ for a room and $4000+ for an apartment…The locals think you’re a jackass… jus’sayin
If any of the iphones from the alter get stolen the mission is still alive.
“hipster” is now literally what were called “yuppies” in the 80′s.
anyone, please remind me what redeeming qualities, the Reagan era yuppies contributed? were the caricatures of them in movies and popular culture off the mark… as soulless, money grubbing narcissistic douches?
yuppies always dressed to make sure everyone knew they had disposable income. i remember guys wearing 3 different color polos with the collars all turned up so they were staggered. i easily see even more ridiculous outfits on a daily basis on valencia. you all know who you are, ie: horn rimmed glasses, perfectly coifed beard with a ton of product in it and an equally coiffed pompadour haircut, skin tight, dark blue jeans and god ugly brown work boots…all with the price tags still hanging off everything you are wearing.
congratulations, you are now the new douche bags. look what yuppies did to new york creative culture of starving artists, when you are now destroying the mission.
very simple solution. move to burlingame, palo alto, cupertino etc. shorten your commute and go back to hanging out in the marina and pacific heights. and if you insist on breeding move to noe valley and eat a burrito in the mission now and again.
you sure burn a lot of calories obsessing over how other people dress themselves, where do you find the time to change the world by trolling blogs?
truth
your wearing big ugly brown boots right now aren’t you?
*you’re
So glad to stumble upon your website, looks like you have lots of guests in your guestbook, LOL! Keep up the good work.
It really does boil down to economics.For decades in the late 20th Century, you had this beautiful city of San Francisco without any sort of high paying industry after SF’s ports closed.
It was only a matter of time before some industry came in and changed the city’s economics, as IT has done. For those who were here before the 2000s, it was a fortunate chance to experience a city like SF when it had a different character. You’d never compare SF to LA, for instance, but now, that’s exactly what’s happened. SF is a place you can go to get a high paying job right out of college, a status job in a growth industry. That’s what’s changed. It attracts a different class of people.
There have always been computer geeks, but they were true geeks (in a good sense of the word). Cole Valley was their defining neighborhood, not the Mission. Craig Newmark was their iconic figure, not Zuckerberg. I went to college with ambitious, materialistic yuppies. Few of them moved to SF. Instead, they moved to LA where the financially lucrative careers were. Those who did come to SF moved to the Marina. Money was their motivator. People who moved to the Mission had different values.
A sense of antimaterialism is always what imbued the character of SF and especially the Mission in recent decades. It is that ‘special SF Mission character’ that existed in the 90s that attracted the youngsters of the 2000s. The Mission was different from the Marina and they liked that. But what they don’t fully realize is that they are changing it into another version of the Marina. People used to be afraid to flash wealth in the Mission, not because they’d get mugged but because some krusty local would tell them to fuck off back to the Marina. That’s gone.
What I see is the spirit of antimaterialism that attracted people to the Mission (and SF) in the first place being gradually replaced by a stealth materialism…the Punk Baby get-up that was posted here last week is a good example of that. Million dollar ‘artists lofts’ are another.
What the new people don’t understand is that they are full blown consumers. Today they’re “slumming it” in the Mission on their 80,000 dollar IT checks, tomorrow they’ll get married and buy a house in Agrestic and crank out kids. The old Mission hipsters were classic bohemians who dropped out of that game for the most part. If they were closeted rich kids who would go on to good careers, it wasn’t happening in the Mission. In the Mission they were working as wage slaves in coffeehouses or temp agencies, or quietly drawing off their trust funds, while they figured it out.
But these “good jobs right out of college, no need to find myself” kids are a totally different animal, and like it or not, they will turn the Mission into another Marina or West LA.
dave > spot on interesting observations/comments.
i have noticed that more and more wealthy young woman have been moving to the new mission. its almost as if the alpha males from the marina came first to insure the mission is a safe place to bring their women folk.
now the pony tail, black tights, baseball cap wearing blondes of the marina/pacific heights are now seen regularly at the 16th st bart. of course now with yoga mats and head to toe in lululemon all while loudly chatting away on their cell phones. that is until the day they accidentally bump into some female gang member posted up outside of the bart. that is the day she realizes she isnt in kansas anymore and ends up on the police blotter.
in the marina these woman added to the culture of the marina, which is excess, wealth and privilege. what do they contribute when they live here? well birds of a feather flock together , so economically they will drive businesses to cater to them. ie: exclusive gyms, expensive restaurants,cafes and boutiques that push out existing restaurants that ARE THE MISSION.
walk down valencia street any weekend night and tell me if see any difference between union street and mission st?
that is what the alters are addressing.
and then there are the pathetic, middle aged slackers who are constantly reminded what losers they are. what will happen to them?
Losers are people who would rather acquire wealth in order to be comfortable than make the world a better place or do something they love.
The Mission is filled with losers. The majority of them take private buses to work every morning.
I’ve been here so long, I used to play “spot the white person.” I knew it was all over the first time I saw a blonde chick jogging down 24th Street.
I don’t like being someone’s piquant backdrop in their movie. I’m not a Mission “character.” I’m a real person and I’m selfishly hanging onto the roof that shelters me, and so please kindly fuck off while I live my life.
Being a renter doesn’t make me less of a human being – the assumption is renters are second class citizens who just are too lazy to buy houses. When the fact is, a lot of people never have the chance or resources.
Btw, it was landlords who birthed rent control. Thank them for instigating a defensive response by desperate people. I’m one of the “deserving” poor, but carpetbaggers think I should deprive myself further for the privilege of paying 50,000 a year for my home? And shuffle and bow and say “massah?”
Why don’t these rich fucks stay in Pacific Heights which is where the fuck they belong.
There is no room for the individual entrepreneur, which I think is at the heart of the discussion. There is no ladder for the poor to achieve. It’s all Stanford and Ivy league connections and networking, trust funds and VC investment.
Poor people in rent controlled buildings are just the cost of doing business to most landlords and frankly doesn’t hurt them. They are making plenty of money. They just want more.
Frankly you should fuckin thank people like me. That’s how my roommate pays a reasonable rent.
wtf? middle aged with a roommate?
I said “poor,” asshole.
This post is full of some of the more ignorant comments I’ve seen on this blog.
This whole “Can’t afford it? Get the fuck out. That’s life” sentiment? Wow. This city is really attracting some awful people these days.
>“Can’t afford it? Get the fuck out. That’s life” sentiment?
Where did you read that? b/c it ain’t in the comments.
Here, found something akin to it (source: you):
So unless you’re a single-celled organism who was here soon after the Big Bang, kindly SHUT THE FUCK UP about how your perceived ideal use of space is not being preserved, with no alteration, into infinity.
Telling people to shut up about perceived ideals on a blog sure is funny! Also, please don’t use “This.” anymore. It’s redundant, hackneyed, and well, like me and you, doesn’t add too much.
>something akin to it
Right, except substitute “completely different” for “akin to” . . .
Through the prism of the “that’s life” sentiment noted? Nope, nice try. Hey, you said it, not me.
dr says:
“wtf? middle aged with a roommate?”
so funny i saw the same arrogance with the first wave of 1998 dot-commer’s. next time you step out on valencia st. , ask your servers and bartenders if they worked for a dotcom back in the day. and btw they all live with roommates in bigger/nicer apartments than you
do you think you are going to sail into the sunset, working for a startup that’s burning thru VC money. your app is the #1 download for a day on itunes! take a good look around your office and say who is actually making the company money? if you are not one of them, i would be prepared to leave the mission any day now.
you are living large paycheck to paycheck for your $3000 1 bedroom/studio and constant shopping habits and the day you are laid off….time to call mom and dad. the party is over, time to move back home to the suburbs.
buh-by
Ziiiiinnnng……….!!!
thanks for the lecture. and i get it. everyones half your age and you can’t get laid.
I’ve turned down more pussy than you’ll ever have.
omg. what a creep.
dr, the good thing about being middle aged is your mom is choking on my dick.
strange fantasies. probably the onset of dementia…
You just jelly.
For a second, I thought the picture of the marigolds was fried chicken.
¡Qué maravilla! …….get it?