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FILLMORE_GOES_SOUTH

                                             December 10, 2007

  Fillmore Street runs north-south.

  There's a transition where it
  crosses Geary Street:
                                          Once sometimes called
  On the south side there's               "Fillmore-West", back in the
  the music venue, "The Fillmore".        60s psychedelic rock era --
                                          since then it's closed, but
  On the north side, there's              then re-opened in the '90s.
  "The Boom Boom Room" (which
  was called Jack's when
  I first got to the city).

  As you continue north, you're        And to the immediate north-west
  in a fairly slick neighborhood       is Japantown, centered around an
  that shows way too much              indoor shopping mall and the
  influence from the Marina            Kabuki movie-theater, and until
  district anti-culture, though        recent years, a 24 hour bowling
  it is not anywhere near as far       alley that was quite the
  gone.                                hang-out.

                                            CHERRY
  Anywhere south of there
  (all the way down through
  the Lower-Haight) you're
  in a neighborhood with a
  lot of public housing
  projects, which always
  seems to be economically
  stumbling.




  There's a scheme afoot to
  "revitalize" the Fillmore
  district, recalling it's days          [ref]
  as a center for Jazz music
  (back before they razed the
  neighborhood to create
  Japantown in the mid-1950s).

  A center piece of this is the
  opening of a new branch of
  Yoshi's (the original is over
  in Oakland, though it's moved
  a few times itself, once as
  part of a scheme of Oakland to
  create a new water front
  neighborhood).

   So, this is something
   like the New Orleans
   strategy:                                 Or rather, the *old*
                                             New Orleans strategy.
   Using music to make
   a black neighborhood                      In the current strategy,
   palatable to the                          they're using Katrina as an
   tourist trade.                            excuse to shut down public
                                             housing, and forcibly move
       It's hard not                         many people-of-color (and
       to have mixed                         not incidentally, Democrats)
       feelings about                        out of town.
       this.             Embrace thy
                         stereotype?

                                  Hey, it worked
                                  for Chinatown.     CHINATOWN

    The neighborhood really
    can use some economic
    action of some sort, and
    there's nothing wrong        Well, actually I
    with jazz music.             could complain
                                 about this
    I mean, it's better          *kind* of Jazz.
    than the traditional
    "urban renewal" scam:                   Watered-down, retro, easy
    trumping up an excuse                   listening for people with
    to knock down the                       as about as much edge
    housing projects, and                   as a styrofoam noodle
    then move the locals                    soaked in mayonnaise.
    to some far-flung
    corner of town.                            I think there's a
                                               pattern -- that
                                               continues to this
                                               day -- of the
                                               city doing it's
                                               best to destroy
                                               music scenes when
                                               they're new, then
                                               bringing them
                                               back later in an
                                               inauthentic form,
                                               capitalizing on
                                               nostalgia.



                  "There were all sort of invented Indian legends
                  then; they couldn't quite decide how to view
                  the Native Americans here, for as long as they
                  were still contesting them for the land they
                  hated them and it was massacres and genocide,
                  but once they were subdued and disappeared into
                  the background, they became 'noble savages'."

                         Tom Killion, quoted by Steve Heilig
                         in "Walking Mount Tam", a review of
                         "Tamalpais Walking: Poetry, History, and Prints"
                         by Tom Killion and Gary Snyder

                         [ref]






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