I recently moved to a quickly gentrifying neighborhood in Washington DC. All my neighbors are well-educated city-dwellers who exude progressivity and enlightenment with every word they speak that is until last week.
There is a bodega on the corner that has been in the neighborhood for a long time (from back when it used to be a bad neighborhood). They sell 40s of malt liquor and there is a consistent stream of drunks wandering into and out of the store at all hours of the day. The store is owned by Chinese speaking immigrants. Their liquor license is up for renewal and these enlightened neighbors of mine decide that the right thing to do is to protest the renewal of their license because they sell 40s and basically cater to drunks and derelicts, the alternattive is that the bodega moves to another location about 5 blocks away. In the meantime there are several bars and clubs in the neighborhood that vomits drunk carousers onto the streets until 3 in the morning and I am told that the drunken carousers are “part of city life.”
The carousers are loud, agressive and confrontational however they are also reasonably well dressed and white. The drunks are usually unkempt, old and black but other than the eyesore of having to actually see poverty and social decay (in the form of derelict drunks) on a daily basis, they don’t bother anyone (they do tend to piss in the alleys but so do the carousers), these guys keep to themselves and I have never had one look me in the eye, never mind harrass me. Yet we are on some sort of crusade against the immigrant Chinese family that sells 40s to drunks because we want to improve the quality of life in our neighborhood. I don’t mean to imply that this family is doing anything noble but something about the situation bothers me.
I can understand your frustration with the situation but it might not be as motivated by racism as it seems. Perhaps the drunk carousers are taxpaying residents of the neighborhood in question, and therefore benefit the area despite their habit of gutter-pissing. Perhaps also the derelict drunks that shop at the bodega are coming in from nearby neighborhoods and don’t contribute to the growth of the area in other ways. Although your enlightened neighbors might like to get rid of the bar patrons too, they don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
The problem of the drunken bar patrons can be alleviated in other ways, though- a few fines by the police for contributing to the after hours revelry would inspire the bar owners to get a better handle on their clientele.
Judging from your description, I’m wondering if you are in Adams Morgan. The police should do something about the drunks at closing. However, getting the DC police to do something about anything is an uphill battle.
Although, most of the time, the bars are all on one street, which for the most part isn’t residential so at least the mayhem is kept off the complaining folk’s street whereas the bodega is most likely on an otherwise residential area.
There are quite a few liquor stores in my neighborhood and the neighborhood south of me and a common complaint is that sales of singles tend to increase the number of drunks loitering in the streets at all hours. Oddly enough, there are quite a few bars opening up in my vicinity. However with the price of drink at those places, I don’t think that we’ll be experiencing a wave of public drunkenness any time soon.
I consider Adams Morgan to be gentrified as well. There are pockets where there are still some lower income housing, but they are quickly disappearing.
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The only other neighborhood that may qualify is the U Street Corridor, but even that neighborhood is almost completely gentrified and I don’t think that they have the concentration of bars that Adams Morgan does.