Gentrification

I have followed, with interest, your intermittent articles dealing with (staff writer) Berkley Hudson's move to Eldora Road in Pasadena. As I have worked in this area for four years, I've watched the slow, gradual change with interest and anticipation. I agree with your appraisal of the neighbors (people) and homes. I was saddened, however, by your article (Times, Jan. 7). Gentrification of a neighborhood can bring about as much loss as gain in human terms. The residents who have lived in this area for years are not necessarily "undesirable" because of income constraints.

The Pitcher House was a line in the sand. If you drove north on Pacific Coast Highway, it was one of the first businesses in Hermosa Beach, located in an old, slightly run-down bank building, making the place seem historic and mysterious at the same time. It was a reminder that Hermosa used to be a working-class town and a warning that you had only a few more miles until you hit the tonier Manhattan Beach. In the late 1990s, the Pitcher House was full of middle-aged surfers who'd push through the bar's swinging doors and drink a few Buds while keeping their distance from the just-out-of-college crowd doing upside-down margaritas on the Strand, Hermosa's bright, main drag that was starting to look more and more like Manhattan.

In the span of three hours Tuesday night, the 21 men and women who form the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council found the time to accuse one another, loudly and publicly, of "whining" and "bullying," of racism and reverse racism, of violating the separation of church and state, and of cultural insensitivity. Council President Jose Sigala was in dire need of a gavel, banging his pen on the table with increasing urgency while trying to shout down his out-of-order colleagues: "Mr.

] It was meant to be a celebration of high art and the bohemian spirit of a city that has been designated by the European Union as a European Cultural Capital of 2010. Instead, a controversial art exhibit last week turned into a violent neighborhood melee that made national news. As art lovers drank sangria out of plastic cups and contemplated iconoclastic pieces of art that deconstructed Turkey's 20th century history, a group of local toughs in the central Istanbul neighborhood of Tophane attacked them with pepper gas and frozen oranges.

A year ago, high school junior Stephanie Cisneros had never heard the word "gentrification," but in many ways, she already knew what it meant. She was watching it happen all around her in the Echo Park neighborhood she's called home since she was 5 years old. Stephanie saw working-class neighbors losing their rental units, only to see the apartments revamped and priced far higher than before. She saw old storefront businesses close and disappear. Familiar faces, gone.

It looked like trouble. Or maybe it looked like the stuff that dreams were made of. The street was dark and the lighting was eerie as the hard-boiled book publishers from New York gathered outside an old factory building in downtown Los Angeles. They eyed the crowd that had massed inside. Some of the dames looked like femme fatales; some of the guys looked like saps.

They're going toe-to-toe to keep from getting towed. Mobile home residents in Culver City are fighting an effort by the city to replace their park with nicer housing, a neighborhood renewal project they say their community doesn't need. City officials have labeled two Grand View Boulevard mobile home parks "blighted" and picked a private developer to draw up plans to replace the parks' 43 coaches, possibly with townhouses.

The crime statistics on the Westside tell one story: Violent crime went down 45% in the last two years. But the fatal attacks on three Westside-area high school students in recent months tell another. First, Santa Monica High School student athlete Eduardo Lopez was gunned down in February as he walked with two other teenagers.

THERE'S a scruffy brick apartment building at the corner of 7th and South Park View streets in Westlake that hints at the history and possible future of the neighborhood. On the ground floor, a pharmacy and health clinic with signs in Spanish sit next door to an inexpensive Honduran restaurant.

For about 75 people Saturday, the sticky auditorium at St. Mary's Church in Boyle Heights was both a sanctuary and a pulpit, a place to reflect on their blessings and begin a fight to preserve their neighborhood. A framed picture of the Virgin Mary adorned one side of the stage; on the other stood three stark, captioned black-and-white photographs of homes and apartment buildings in their community. "Over 900 homes destroyed to make way for public projects," read one caption.

Usually the trajectory that neighborhoods go through as they gentrify is entirely predictable -- and more than a little depressing. First a scruffy, down-at-the-heels area welcomes a few urban pioneers drawn by an attractive and affordable housing stock. Then come the first businesses catering to those early arrivals: sneaker shops, a hole-in-the-wall coffee place or spiffed-up dive bar. Then come the piggy-back establishments and a second wave of residents, perhaps somewhat less hardy than the first.

If pickles were currency, it would take 100 of Pat Fairhurst's kosher sours to buy a buttery smooth leather wallet in the chic shop nearby, more than 200 to snag a dress off one of the neighboring boutiques' racks, and a whopping 1,000 to book a luxury suite at the Blue Moon Hotel across the street. That helps explain why Fairhurst's tiny store, Guss', an institution since 1920 in Manhattan's Lower East Side, is moving its red barrels of 50-cent pickles to Brooklyn. No longer the exclusive domain of scrappy immigrants or Jewish aficionados of Fairhurst's briny treats, the old neighborhood has morphed into one of New York's trendier districts, an evolution that is vexing to those nostalgic for the past but who admit that change can be good.

Hyun Soo Kim moved to Koreatown from Seattle eight years ago, hoping to witness the expansion of the Korean community. He did, but hardly the way he envisioned. "Every day," the 30-year-old lamented, "there seems to be something going out of business." As Koreatown becomes more of a destination and glitzy developments take root, longtime residents and shopkeepers say they are being priced out by luxury apartments and retail chains. There are so many bars, restaurants and karaoke joints that some merchants are slashing prices in a frantic effort to get their share of customers.

A decade ago, the stretch of downtown L.A.'s Main Street between 4th and 6th streets was a desolate collection of empty buildings and homeless encampments, an area where drug dealing was conducted in the open, and the only longtime residents lived in residential hotels. These days, that stretch resembles a bustling small-town main street. There's the neighborhood bookstore, where an attentive shopkeeper knows her customers by name.

As Danny Hoch ambles through Echo Park, a familiar sight catches his eye. Although he's far from his home in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, Hoch instantly recognizes the telltale signs of approaching urban Armageddon: pasty-faced guys in porkpie hats, prowling for overpriced espressos; pierced and tattooed young women pushing strollers; a vintage clothing store rubbing elbows with a Salvadoran pupuseria.

When my wife and I and our two small children moved late last year to Glassell Park, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, we were following a predictable gentrification script. The nearby enclaves of Eagle Rock and Mount Washington were slightly out of our price range, having already attracted those who had been edged out of the previous round of gentrification in Silver Lake, Echo Park and Franklin Hills.

They are young, successful, fun-loving professionals who like to live in lofts, wear baseball caps and drive sport utility vehicles--and they are scaring the hell out of old-time San Franciscans. Buoyed by the bullish stock market and the ongoing Silicon Valley boom, yuppies are moving here in droves, looking for the good life.

Tony Franklin is a skinny figure in a big blue coat, a walking testament to Martin Luther King Jr.'s unfinished war on poverty. He is part of the army of panhandlers who roam Atlanta's Auburn Avenue, bearing down on the tourists who flock to the civil rights leader's grave. There will soon be 159 new homes on Auburn Avenue, all of them condos that Franklin cannot afford. But he is proud of them nonetheless. He is a black man.

In the span of three hours Tuesday night, the 21 men and women who form the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council found the time to accuse one another, loudly and publicly, of "whining" and "bullying," of racism and reverse racism, of violating the separation of church and state, and of cultural insensitivity. Council President Jose Sigala was in dire need of a gavel, banging his pen on the table with increasing urgency while trying to shout down his out-of-order colleagues: "Mr.

It looked like trouble. Or maybe it looked like the stuff that dreams were made of. The street was dark and the lighting was eerie as the hard-boiled book publishers from New York gathered outside an old factory building in downtown Los Angeles. They eyed the crowd that had massed inside. Some of the dames looked like femme fatales; some of the guys looked like saps.