On Disenchantment, and Thinking Too Much

Maybe I am too socially aware to be any fun, I guess. Because while the majority of my friends are childless, and have more money than me, I have very little money and three children. So when I look at the neighborhood, it doesn't look as good to me. Bars and restaurants that are super adorable and have appeal, for sure, but they are irrelevant to the neighborhood that they're in. The cute little shops that carry handmade jewelry and quirky stuff and art, hey that's great, but they're irrelevant and financially inaccessible to the neighborhood they're in. It's a mostly black neighborhood, most people are *just* barely getting by and they have children. None of us are buying $7 craft beers six in a night or interested in buying $150 handmade necklaces. We want to have things we need, things we can afford, and somewhere to take our kids. ALL of me is feeling more than a little disgusted at the college age hipsters coming in from the more affluent areas and hanging out in my neighborhood getting drunk on the weekends. At white people coming into a black neighborhood and opening businesses very few people in the neighborhood have money for, and even fewer have an interest in. At the artists living in the better neighborhoods but coming here and calling themselves '(Street Name) People'. Because they're NOT. They don't LIVE here. The people in my neighborhood have been dismissed. And I find it terribly sad.

I see this neighborhood on the way to gentrification. But what are people who are poor to do? We can't open businesses, we are too busy just getting by. Or maybe there's a lack of education and motivation and whatever else is needed to get something going. It's a huge thing. People do have the right to open businesses and find their own way to make money, and they have to go somewhere, but it just BOTHERS me that they are so.....irrelevant to the people that live near them. And these people are thinking that they are doing a good thing for the neighborhood. 

Maybe lack of money has made me bitter. I LOVED this neighborhood when I moved here. But the more people who came to my door to get me to sign petitions for their bars, and when what was supposed to be a 'community garden' really turned into somewhere for people to grow things to sell ended up with a privacy fence and none of use ever seeing the people who worked there....well, I just don't see any of this being good for the people who LIVE here. I know the issue is more complex than what I understand, economics and all, but this is what I think......