Your environs should be pleasingly vole-free for the moment.
Merlin, maybe? Female kestrel? Hard to see.
Wait, am I the only one for whom there is no picture?
I'd say Cooper's Hawk. (They are pretty variable in coloring, but GISS* leads me to Cooper's.)
*General impression of size and shape.
9: huh. When I open it on my phone there is a video.
But seriously, there are amazing birds of prey on my commute. I think this is a competition where I could seriously shine.
You can keep your medicaid expansion and unions. We've got big birds.
Warning: In case of raptor, this car will be unmanned.
I've got nothing in terms of bird identification skills, but I have a media-based belief that the commonest NYC hawks are red-tailed hawks -- looking at pictures of red-tails, it looks possible. This one was kind of scruffy/fuzzy-looking, rather than sleek, which makes me think it might have been young, and going through a change of feathers.
(Camera work and narration by Newt -- I do not have the modern instinct to start filming when anything interesting happens.)
My commute into Oxford is literally hoaching* with red kites. Which are huge.
http://photosbyroy.co.uk/Galleries/wp-content/uploads/yapb_cache/mg_3235s.2a3rz3r22fvoo08g4w0kkgw4c.594zrl0ettogcw0wkgwccgk80.th.jpeg
Nice video of one on this page:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/discoverandenjoynature/discoverandlearn/birdguide/name/r/redkite/
What you can't tell from that, is that they have a 6ft wingspan. So if they swoop low over you, you bloody notice them.
* Scots, to be swarming with, or covered in:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hoach
I am having the same problem as urple is having. I'm traveling and only have a phone and a shitty tablet.
I am having the same problem as urple is having.
On general principles, I firmly doubt that this is ever the case for anyone.
(To the extent you just mean that you can't see the video, it's three seconds of a very large bird of some kind on my fire escape beginning to fly away as Newt says "It flew away!" (or something like that).)
Right. Just the video problem. Thanks.
Just before it starts to take off in the video (just before 1 second) you can pretty clearly see how red the tail is. Also, if I've learned one thing about hawks in east coast cities, it's that they're always red-tailed hawks, no matter how much I want them to be peregrine falcons (you can also tell this one isn't a peregrine falcon because they have stripey legs).
The lighting's lousy, of course -- it's backlit. I don't remember noticing the tail as distinctly red, but the pages I looked at say that it isn't all that bright in younger birds.
Anyone bird-knowledgeable enough to tell me if attributing its fuzziness to youth makes any sense? (You can see the fluffy, disorderly feathers on its lower belly.)
It does kind of look like the red-tailed hawk who sometimes hangs out outside my office window, but I don't trust myself to be a keen enough observer of birds (or colors) to judge accurately.
The lighting's lousy, of course -- it's backlit.
You're saying it was really blue and black, right?
that tail looks pretty darn red to me.
29: That's got to be different monitor adjustments -- on my monitor, the colors are dull enough that it's almost monochromatic. (Which was the impression I had in person.)
It isn't a noticeably different color from the wings in that picture for you?
(essear gets it right oh god)
26: I haven't seen Liz Spigot around here much lately, but she seriously knows birds and should be easy to find elsewhere if you want an actual informed answer.
looking at pictures of red-tails, it looks possible
That would be my second choice. It is too bulky for anything on the falcon, kestrel, merlin axis. If it is an accipiter it is almost certainly a Cooper's, and if it is a buteo it would almost certainly be a Red-tailed. Both frequent Manhattan it appears. In searching came across these nice shots of Bald Eagles on the ice on the Hudson off of Dyckman Pier/Inwood Park.
That tail seems pretty red to me, but in any case their tails aren't always particularly red.
35: And that shot looks exactly like it to me. Not so much the color -- mine had a whiter belly -- but the bulk and posture is dead on.
I was just reading something on Twitter about red hawks - not sure if meaning red-shouldered or red-tailed - but this person has an office window under a perennial red hawk nest, and apparently "juvenile red hawks scream every fifteen seconds from when the sun comes up until the sun sets," every year, March through June.
Red-tailed hawk, def. But speaking of raptors, as I just mentioned to one of you at the other place, I recently learned that an archaic name for the kestrel is 'windfucker'.
I haven't seen Liz Spigot around here much lately, but she seriously knows birds and should be easy to find elsewhere if you want an actual informed answer.
Was just going to mention this. I also just sent the video to a serious birder friend, so one way or another we'll probably have an answer soon.
Remarkable bird, innit? Beautiful plumage.
"Windfucker" would be almost as great a pseud as "Wry Cooter". Both available, and both ornithological, imagine that!
What's the ornithology in Wry Cooter? Are there non-turtle non-NSFW cooters?
I learned from googling that a "Cooper's Hawk" is the former "Chickenhawk" which apparently also wasn't a particular threat to chickens. I have no idea how birders do it, because even the pictures in the field guides look identical to me always and there's so much variation w/ individual birds. Also looks loke a "red shouldered hawk" from Stormcrow's link in 33.
I can see red in the png that Sifu linked above.
FWIW, I'm using a colour calibrated monitor.
42: That was a setup for this. Though I think I've heard people refer to coots as cooters.
I've got a redtailed hawk that hunts my interstate exit *and* (currently) a possum living in my attic.
Not so happy about the second, tho.
Ah, so I've apparently demonstrated why I'm not allowed to be left alone on any bird identification tasks in the field.
I vote for Red-tailed Hawk. Also, 25 is totally true. I've tried to make Red-tailed Hawks into wonderfully exotic birds, but they're always Red-tailed Hawks.
There's a lot of variation in the belly of Red-tailed Hawks so they might look different depending on your geographic location.
The bird doesn't look fuzzy to me, insofar as I think they all look like that. In this Wikipedia image you can see that the feathers are very fine at the edges around the bird's breast.
Wasn't Harry Flashman's Apache-bestowed name something than translated to "He Who Rides So Fast He Breaks the Wind with His Speed" or, rather, "Windbreaker"?
50: Great, now I imagine him looking like Jack Nicklaus.
I regularly see peregrines stooping outside my office window here in SF. Intimidating.
Here's video of one of the downtown SF nests: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=spEiNyQzcdg
Basically, they live in despotic squalor, no wonder they grow up to be killers.
Pennsylvania's bald eagle population has been growing over the last few years, and they managed to sneak an HD stream up next to one of the nests last year, so people can watch them raising chicks in real time. It's mostly just a bald eagle sitting on a nest right now, which isn't that interesting, but it's still impressive that they've gone to that length and it seems really popular in the area*.
The caveat that the Game Commission attaches to that website right at the beginning of the page is kind of great too.
Join us in celebrating a thriving bald eagle population in Pennsylvania. This brief peek into the lives of this bald eagle family is brought to you by the coordinated efforts of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, HDOnTap, Comcast Business, Friends of Codorus State Park and several other partners. Enjoy! And, be aware that, at times, nature can be difficult to watch.
You can watch real bald eagles - our national symbol! Please remember that our national symbol is a predatory bird. Your children will actually learn a lot about nature watching this, but actual nature not the cute safe one.
*The Pennsylvania Game Commission does not recommend naming/anthropomorphizing/etc. wild animals. But a local newspaper ran a poll to name the pair and ended up with (sigh) Freedom and Liberty.
||
What's up with this. Cop shhots naked, obviously mentally ill, black man. They can't claim he had a weapon. WTF?
There's a pair of peregrine falcons that likes to perch on the chimney of the Tate Modern in London. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds often has telescopes set up at the bottom, so you can peer up and glimpse a grey silhouette or two.
Last summer I saw one of the red-taileds that hangs out on top of my building tearing a mouse to shreds atop the pedimented entry to a nearby museum. Nature red in tooth and claw door-to-door service.
An ornithologist friend from school has been doing some amazing photography around here lately, including many amazing shots of bald eagles.
59: The kestrels in Utah can frequently be seen on top of electrical lines eating mice. Being a vegetarian, I don't like hearing people talk about eating animal parts, but I love seeings birds take apart the mice. Go figure.
I believe I had posted this/put it in the pool before (hawk having what was probably a frustrating time of it eating a cardinal through deer netting). And I think I misidentified it as well, as I am pretty sure it is a sharp-shinned. Daughter took the picture. But in general it is Cooper's hawks that case out our feeder. And get a fair number of red-tails high overhead.
I think we can all agree that the creature in LB's video is definitely a dinosaur.
I enjoy eating animal parts, but have felt no inclination to try perching atop a structure and tearing live animals to pieces. Could do, I guess?
58: There are also peregrines at the Poolbeg Power Station in Dublin.
(And reading the fine print at the bottom of that article, I see it's by the author of H is for Hawk.)
Since this thread seems dead (not that I otherwise want to stop talking about raptors, but).
Someone on Facebook asks if anyone can think of an example of gentrification reversing itself. That is, a classic "bad" urban neighborhood, which gentrifies into a "good" one, and then becomes "bad" again.* Surprisingly hard to think of a single example.
*so, just a transformation from a "good" neighborhood to a "bad" one doesn't count. You need the full cycle of "bad"-"good"-"bad."
I was thinking maybe some neighborhood of Detroit that mildly gentrified in the 70s before de-gentrifying again (like the Cass Corridor maybe?) but I don't really know the history of the city well enough to know if that works.
69: I suspect for Detroit, you'd have the pattern in some near suburbs, not the city proper if you spanned Great Migration (poor) to post-WWII (wealthy) to present (poor). If you don't care how fast it has to happen, Chicago might have some over a very long history within the city. The north side of the city was originally poor, then became the wealthy side. I bet there are some north-central neighborhoods that (over 150 years) became wealthy, then poor. Really, though, I don't think those are what you're looking for.
Maybe if you stopped time in 1991 you could find some NYC examples -- I think there were parts of the Lower East Side that gentrified in the early 80s and then de-gentrified again. But I think the extent of the gentrification in the first place was pretty limited. I can't think of a single example at any period of time for LA, but maybe that's a failure of imagination.
My SIL has a hawk that's been hanging out outside her office window. Today he had a lady friend and they were getting it on. I saw the video on FB.
West and South Berkeley probably have, in waves of immigrant fishing -> dairy & truck town for SF -> downstream of filthy light industry -> WWII housing boom -> civil unrest -> current frenzy.
Salton City, maybe -- I seem to recall that it had a brief abortive renaissance in the early 2000s.
73: "frenzy" is really the right word. There's a luxury building going in at the corner of Ashby and San Pablo; 1BRs will start at $2300/month. Those prices wouldn't surprise me for downtown, but in the flats?
The place des vosges has certainly gyred about wildly, but over a span of 4 centuries so probably not what you're looking for.
"Good" -> "Bad" -> "Good" is a pretty common urban gentrification pattern (the rich neighborhood that goes downhill and then has good housing stock so comes up again), but it's bizarrely hard to think of examples of "Bad" -> "Good" -> "Bad" or even "Good" -> "Bad" -> "Good" -> "Bad." And it's hard to think of why that should be.
An upturn in Salton City would work, but think the question asks for urban neighborhoods more specifically.
68: I bet the London commenters will have an example.
I think they are still all lost somewhere outside Kings Cross. We have heard nothing since the supposed liveblog.
First let pass the black horse, and then let pass the brown; but when there comes the milk-white steed, pull you his rider down.
In the US, isn't part of the issue that most cities were still doing new construction until recently (or still are)? Why, if you're wealthy enough, go to an already built not great neighborhood when you can take off to the suburbs or even a new urb?
75: BART pricing?
I hope Lacis doesn't get priced out.
81 - Sure -- urban gentrification is a relatively recent thing most US cities. Still, you'd think that one could easily think of at least one example of Bad->Good->Bad in the history of the US. But I can't. And even for Europe there's no obvious example I can think of (though that's from an even smaller base of knowledge, and there's got to be one there that I just haven't thought of).
73 is bad -> good -> bad -> good -> bad -> good, between _Tales of the Fish Patrol_ and now.
Prince Georges County, Maryland had been making some great strides until the economy exploded. I haven't been on the ground there in a while, so not sure I'd go so far as to call it "bad", but a shitload of foreclosures isn't good for any community.
It's a little arbitrary, but I feel like places like Prince George's County (or closer to home places like say Rialto in the Inland Empire) don't quite count. That is, working class suburb -->more prosperous working class suburb with lots of new housing fueled by cheap credit --> poorer working class suburb after housing bubble bursts doesn't seem quite right.
I want the equivalent of Williamsburg being turned back over to drug gangs and homeless people, that is a poorer urban neighborhood to a rich urban neighborhood back to a poorer urban neighborhood.
Possibly there are parts of Brooklyn and Queens that were doing well before getting set back by Hurricane Sandy. Or maybe someplace on the Jersey Shore.
82: Access to BART is bad from that neighborhood. Gotta take a bus down San Pablo to 19th Street. There's a transbay bus stop right across the street, but no casual carpool anywhere nearby.
Maybe Atlantic City works -- was it gentrified after the time of the Louis Malle film, and has now declined again with casinos closing? I thought it had never really gentrified despite casino money, but I could be wrong.
I don't think the Berkeley example quite works because it was still being built out, though I don't really know enough to know -- was South/West Berkely an affirmatively bad neighborhood in the 30s, that became a good one in the 50s, that became a bad one in the 70s, or was it just that people didn't really live there until the postwar housing boom?
From the remaining old buildings, So and W Berkeley likely originally developed with a mix of residential and industrial (and not necessarily only light industry). The residential wouldn't have been luxe but wasn't only shacks either. There are some pretty substantial old homes still in both areas.
Yeah, I don't get the feeling that AC was ever broadly gentrified, but the Boardwalk itself had lots of money poured into it. It was never particularly authentic in being upscale, though.
I think part of the problem with finding examples of this sequence is that gentrification and its opposite in any given city aren't purely local phenomena, but parts of larger societal trends, and in the US over the past century or so the dominant trend has been investment-disinvestment-reinvestment in urban neighborhoods rather than the reverse.
On the OP, I saw a bald eagle yesterday.
Great example of pre-Euclid development on the West Coast:
"Ocean View was also an industrial center virtually from its beginning. The first factory-
-the Pioneer Starch and Grist Mill--opened in 1855. It would be joined by enterprises
such as a soap plant and a gunpowder maker. Industrial development got further boosts with the 1876 development of a "shoreline railroad" (the current SP mainline) and of gas mains in 1877 (well before central Berkeley got this service)."
"West Berkeley's economic development accelerated in this period, as its industrial life
came increasingly to overshadow (but not completely eliminate) its agricultural life.
Improved transportation was a significant factor--the building of a railroad station in 1878 at Delaware St. (which would later be joined by Corbin Station north of Gilman) was an important stimulus. Even more important was the 1891 opening of an electric trolley line on San Pablo Ave., followed by a line on 9th St. (the reason for that street's great width). 1891 also saw the inauguration of trolley service on University Ave., but east-west routes were never as important to West Berkeley as north-south ones. New
and expanded enterprises included a lumber yard with a pier 1/3 of a mile long for shipping lumber, the Manassee Tannery, and a cement works. By the end of the period, Cutter Labs and California Ink (now Flint Ink) had begun to establish their manufacturing on their current sites. A very few other West Berkeley businesses can trace their origins to this era--Spenger's began frying fish (at its current location) in the
late 1880's."
Intermixed with the cement and gunpowder factories:
"In 1874, the Berkeley Land Title and Improvement Association was formed to sell lots in West Berkeley, but the promotion had little success until 1878. But the succeeding years saw
a proliferation of Victorian cottages, as well as a few grander structures. One modest cottage is the Italianite 2105 5th, erected in 1886. Twin to its southerly neighbor, in the 1890's it housed Thomas F. Dowd, an English immigrant framemaker and Berkeley town trustee from the 6th Ward. 5th St., 6th St., and the block of Delaware between 5th and 6th are particularly rich in homes from this era. Perhaps the grandest structure of the era is the currently abandoned Niehaus House at 7th & Channing. Built in 1889 on a lot originally incorporating a full block, the flamboyant woodwork advertised the products of Niehaus' planing mill a few blocks away."
All from http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Planning_and_Development/Home/West_Berkeley_-_Physical_Form.aspx
91: As it turns out, the City of Berkeley has a history of West Berkeley on its website. (As part of The West Berkeley Plan from 1993!)
West Berkeley's population grew with its economy. By 1900, the area's population had reached 1,544, or about 12% of the city's 13,000+ population (West Berkeley today represents 7% of Berkeley's population). In that year, for the first time, a majority of the West Berkeley population was foreign born--including Finns, other Scandinavians, and Germans. Just as today West Berkeley has the city's most diverse population, it was in the late 19th and early 20th Century the center of the foreign-born population.
Incorporation was thus followed by both residential and industrial growth. In 1874, the Berkeley Land Title and Improvement Association was formed to sell lots in West Berkeley, but the promotion had little success until 1878. But the succeeding years saw a proliferation of Victorian cottages, as well as a few grander structures. One modest cottage is the Italianite 2105 5th, erected in 1886. Twin to its southerly neighbor, in the 1890's it housed Thomas F. Dowd, an English immigrant framemaker and Berkeley town trustee from the 6th Ward. 5th St., 6th St., and the block of Delaware between 5th and 6th are particularly rich in homes from this era. Perhaps the grandest structure of the era is the currently abandoned Niehaus House at 7th & Channing. Built in 1889 on a lot originally incorporating a full block, the flamboyant woodwork advertised the products of Niehaus' planing mill a few blocks away. The late 19th Century also generated the Gothic spires of St. Procopius' Church at 8th & Hearst, and Church of the Good Shepherd at 9th & Hearst. Changing technological needs has all but eliminated factory buildings from the period, although there are some remaining portions from California Ink's original plant.
That'll teach me not to preview. But at least I knew to blockquote!
Thanks both, that's super interesting.
I still don't think it quite fits the arbitrary rules I've given -- I'd say a fair characterization is "working class neighborhood that gets bigger and more prosperous as industry develops, then declines severely, then is reinvented post-industry into its modern gentrified form." But it didn't ever go poor-rich-poor, i.e. working class-professional class-working class, if you see what I mean.
Totally see what you mean would just clarify that W Berkeley (and a bunch of other W Coast towns) weren't strictly working class in the beginning, rather they were a mish mash including wealthy as well as poor, Spenger's and tanneries. The one thing that united West Berkeleyans, entirely to their credit, was a burning desire to escape the yoke of prohibition imposed by progressive eggheads from East Berkeley aka the professoriat.
Sweet formatting, Josh! You are all very fancy with the formatting.
You're pickier than a deposed Central American dictator.
It's not bad now, exactly, but Bridgeport in Chicago. Daley senior lived there. I'm not sure exactly what a poor Irish neighborhood was like in the thirties, but that's what it was. Then the mayor lived there, and now it is working-class Mexican. Not bad exactly, but not an upward trajectory. Cicero had a similar dynamic with an earlier mayor, Cermak. Again, there aren't needles on the sidewalk, but there's not much getting built either.
Ferguson MO is another example. Wood frame buildings from the 1920s replaced with brick structures built from McDonnell-Douglas workers' savings from 1950-1970 or so. Now plywood for the windows.
Basically, in the US, I think that postwar gentrification is only loosely like current gentrification. In Europe, the main example is Yugoslavia, whose cities were basically nice places in the sixties and seventies. Again, probably not relevant for fb, where any event more than 20 years ago may as well be filmed in black and white.
Hey teo, if you're up, is AK experiencing any visible adverse effects from Ted Stevens' patronage money drying up?
My Chicago examples are basically neighborhoods that thrived from getting temporary clout, as opposed to the good inytrinsic free matrket kind.
Hey teo, if you're up, is AK experiencing any visible adverse effects from Ted Stevens' patronage money drying up?
My Chicago examples are basically neighborhoods that thrived from getting temporary clout, as opposed to the good inytrinsic free matrket kind.
The one thing that united West Berkeleyans, entirely to their credit, was a burning desire to escape the yoke of prohibition imposed by progressive eggheads from East Berkeley aka the professoriat.
The funny thing is that there's still resentment here. There are flyers in my neighborhood protesting the economic oppression being visited upon us by East Berkeley.
Very important for all Southern Californians to know -- Kajon Cermak is related to Boss Cermak.
What about Richmond? Was it always poor? (I know, some parts aren't, but overall it's been struggling a long time.)
Hey teo, if you're up, is AK experiencing any visible adverse effects from Ted Stevens' patronage money drying up?
I wasn't here during the Stevens era so I can't say from personal experience, but I don't think so, no. The end of that era coincided closely with the spike in oil prices that brought a rush of money into the state, so the good times have continued to roll. (The next few years are not looking so good, at least if oil prices stay low.)
I am so enjoying the SFPD's new found enthusiasm for moving violations, nice expensive ticket being issued to driver of a Mercedes 2 door on Stockton just now, ahhhh.
107 was totally my thought after lw mentioned something about a wartime boom. Also 93 is obviously a pretty good answer to give your friend, Ripper: find a similar phenomenon with the reverse pattern and you can find an instance to match it if you look. "Boom neighborhood" is not quite the thing that "boom town" is, although you could try to find urban correlates for whatever created various boom towns.
There is a planned development on Central Ave in El Cerrito that is supposedly not going to destroy the path to the freeway completely, an assertion I give zero point zero zero zero credit. It's not physically possible to avoid that outcome unless they refuse to rent/sell to anyone with a car. Ashby/SP sounds like another ill-considered "sell to people who want easy freeway access; make everyone's lives miserable" plan. There must be some kind of strategic dominance initiative involved. It's not about that development as such.
93 is a good general explanation but it still seems like we should be able to collectively think of one good neighborhood example (somewhere, anywhere) of bad->good->bad reverse gentrification actually taking place.
Hey, teo, if you're up, have you ever heard the music of A Tribe Called Red? Is there any AK hip-hop that you can point to?
What's this "if you're up"? It's 6:15 pm here.
Anyway, no, I'm not familiar with the hip-hop scene up here, although I know there is one. I'll let you know if I come across anything good.
Welcome to my procrastination zone. Possibly focused conversation with full awareness of all circumstances will not be a high point.
Rickie Lee Jones as a foreshadowing of Amy Winehouse: discuss.
Wikipedia disappointingly does not generally include a description of whether shitty neighborhoods in declining small cities were at one point shitty before improving before the whole city went to shit. Which is another way of saying I'm trying to look up some Connecticut cities.
Google street view-- go down the main drag and look for buildings that predate the boom. Just post an image.
No really I'm going to do this other tedious thing here.
Ok, so 117 is overstated. But I'm guessing this pattern, if it exists in the US, will be something like poor neighborhood in smallish city, city grows and rich move in, overall decline of city, rich move out.
New Bedford has probably had more than one golden age. It's not having one now, or is it?
It has? 1830-1900 or so was one, what are the others?
It is not having one now, no, which is too bad, because holy shit it has the nicest Victorians in the entire country (some of which have been restored, delightfully).
Or were you just teeing me up to once again recommend the New Bedford Whaling Museum, which is the best museum?
I was breaking up that period into two booms and a slump. Was there another boom in the 20s? I don't know.
NBWM is great.
Maybe the lesson is that buying in a gentrifying neighborhood is literally a risk-free investment over the long term, since apparently no neighborhood ever has gone bad-good-bad. Or that I should start some kind of real estate investment hedge fund/write an airport business book based on this insight.
"When Bad Good Bad Things Don't Happen To Bad Or Good People: The Tim "Ripper" Owens Way To Wealth."
One of my regrets about leaving the east coast so quickly is I never got out to New Bedford. It was in my plans for spring/summer.
Some of the towns in Alabama definitely look like they went bad-good-bad. Lots of giant houses near a cute downtown now with unemployed people and empty store fronts. Also my hometown in Canada is suffering an upswing in crime which means downtown has gone bad-good-bad in my lifetime. It's not as bad now (strip clubs run by motorcycle gang are gone and new condos are being built) but it's back to 'don't walk alone at night'.
What is your hometown in Canada? The Alabama towns just sound like good->bad, which is common, but that downtown sounds like it might work, though it would kill my business book plan.
Maybe the lesson is that buying in a gentrifying neighborhood is literally a risk-free investment over the long term, since apparently no neighborhood ever has gone bad-good-bad.
More likely it's that most American cities are still relatively young and haven't yet gone through more than one cycle of this. But yes, you should definitely write that book, because people who buy books like that deserve to lose all their money by following the advice in them.
Some of the towns in Alabama definitely look like they went bad-good-bad. Lots of giant houses near a cute downtown now with unemployed people and empty store fronts.
This reminds me that downtown Scranton might fit; it went downhill in the '70s, picked back up again when the Mall at Steamtown opened up in the early '90s, and now the mall's been foreclosed on but didn't meet the reserve price at the sheriff's sale.
Ok no. I was in downtown Scranton a few times in the mid-90s and no way had that achieved "good." We're not playing horrible-bad-horrible.
Although man does that sale at foreosure story sound depressing, even for Scranton.
Hartford and New Haven neighborhoods that didn't start rich and have subsequently gone downhill seem to have never reached rich, though some did seem to be good working class neighborhoods at one point until industry left. They may have started as good but not rich, though.
It really looks like, until recently, the rich in the US mostly built on new land instead of moving into existing housing stock. You don't usually see tenement -- mansion -- tenement, but you might see mansion -- tenement -- mansion -- tenement if you wait long enough.
I wish our UK/Euro crowd hadn't fallen into a meetup-induced vortex so we could get some takes from them.
I think the South End of Boston may qualify. bad -> good -> bad -> good. It was industrial/working class, got landfilled and developed into a nice area, and fell from favor for a long long time.
From Wikipedia (the sum of my knowledge about the South End) it looks like that might work but does so without proving Fake Accent's theory wrong -- it was a bad neighborhood, then new land got built around the bad neighborhood (by putting sand and rocks into ocean inlets basically) that rich people built on, then it was a bad neighborhood for a long time, and then professional class $$$ moved in recently. Gentrification by landfill. But the best US example so far.
What's all this boring urban decay talk, raptors are way more interesting. I have to give Stormcrow some shit for going with Coopers right off the bat.
I've tried to make Red-tailed Hawks into wonderfully exotic birds, but they're always Red-tailed Hawks.
Huh, I've actually had a lot of occasions here in the valley where I've assumed Red tailed and whipped out the binoculars to find I'm looking at a Swainson's. Which I guess isn't exotic but it's always nice to see something other than what you were expecting.
102: I actually lived in Belgrade until 1962, and though my memories are very happy, they also involve all the kitchen implements being made of wood. We had to drive to Trieste to buy household goods made of plastic. Gentrificated it wasn't. On the other hand, Google maps now shows one of the houses where we lived (the one with the cesspit in the drive and a gypsy encampment in the field next door). And this was the diplomatic ghetto. It doesn't seem to have been very gentrified from there, except that one of the buildings now houses a PR company.
ttaM, what about the area north of Partick Cross, in Glasgow? I can't remember what it is called, but I had a relative who grew up there in great wealth in the early nineteenth century (and, with his mother, pissed it all away) in one of the big houses there. In ~1975, when I had a girlfriend in one of the tenements by the river, I walked around the district and actually passed the ancestral house, which was incredibly shabby and run down and horrible. In the 90s it seemed to have recovered. But what's there now?
I can't immediately think of an example of bad-good-bad in London, but that's probably because (a) I didn't live there long enough, and (b) anywhere in the southeast that isn't utterly dreadful, and many places that are, are gentrifying at a terrifying rate. What I can imagine is something like Victorian cottages in an industrial city that started out as slums, were improved post-war, then went downhill again when the steel industry (or mining or whatever) collapsed. But I don't know if that sort of housing ever got tarted up sufficiently to count as gentrification.
138: Delightful that wood-instead-of-plastic was then the opposite of gentrification. Treen!
141: when Claud Cockburn toured Jugoslavia immediately after the war, he was shown a railway bridge which had been bombed or blown up, and rebuilt entirely in wood: even the nails were wood, since the metal ones had all gone or been melted down. And there is a very famous paper on the Odyssey (our classicists will know it) which was written during the war by a scholar who had to hide out in a village only about ten miles from Belgrade where so little had changed since the Bronze Age that he immediately grasped some otherwise mysterious details of domestic architecture in the poem.
re: 139
The area generally to the north of Partick Cross [I had too look it up, because the tube station called Kelvinhall] is now a very nice part of Glasgow. Or at least, the bit a bit further up as you get closer to Highborough/Hyndland Road and beyond, is. It's certainly a really nice area. All round Hyndland, Dowanhill, and the west end in general, is lovely. It's not completely gentrified, but it's definitely a desirable place to live.
I used to live on White Street, and on Caird Drive, both of which are only 100 or so metres from Partick Cross.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Dowanhill,+Glasgow,+Glasgow+City+G12/@55.873391,-4.302634,3a,75y,134.53h,90.43t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s-mu7CqPf-C5xj8ssEEM_SQ!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x488845c143ccab6d:0xcb308c56035c7f07
That whole area is a mix of wealthy people, students, and bohemian types. Lots of nice bars, cafes, and the university is a short walk away.
In terms of housing, it's largely tenements, which are often very nice with bay windows, high ceilings, original Victorian and Edwardian tiling and glass. But there are some big Victorian villas, too.
If I had to pick almost anywhere to live in the UK, I'd live there. Maybe a bit further up into Dowanhill, just the other side of Highborough Road. Which is more obviously posh.
I can't believe I mis-spelt Highburgh Road, too, given that I lived directly off it for 6 or 7 years.
140. There are also places in the South East which were kind of respectable if you go far enough back but which have now fallen off the bottom of dreadful (Hastings), while towns a few miles down the coast have gone on to become unaffordable bourgeois dormitories. Margate has bits of both. Neither rhyme nor reason to which trajectory happens where that I can see.
What I can imagine is something like Victorian cottages in an industrial city that started out as slums, were improved post-war, then went downhill again when the steel industry (or mining or whatever) collapsed.
Yes, this does happen quite a lot. The districts don't exactly revert to their pre-war state, because privatised council houses which have been bought by landlords are now the bottom end, as in London, but they're not as upmarket as they were 25 years ago.
Salford is an obvious UK example, though not having been there for ages I don't know whether it's really gentrified again or just has a bunch of new buildings and the BBC.
140. There are also places in the South East which were kind of respectable if you go far enough back but which have now fallen off the bottom of dreadful (Hastings), while towns a few miles down the coast have gone on to become unaffordable bourgeois dormitories. Margate has bits of both. Neither rhyme nor reason to which trajectory happens where that I can see.
And in the west too - Morecambe, for instance.
Oops. First para is a quote, obviously.
Everywhere. Hull has as fine a collection of civic buildings as you'll find anywhere, but about 13.5% unemployment (highest in Britain in 2013) and no real prospect of recovery.
My point in 145 was simply that the view of the South East as the "prosperous bit" is an oversimplification. While some neighbourhoods are becoming totally unaffordable, others are sinking in the mire. The wealth gap is incredible, far worse than in most of the rest of the country.
137: I have to give Stormcrow some shit
I blame bad priors (or geographically-inappropriate priors). Also bad at ID of people and things in general.
Birds being a thing in general.
Kabul probably qualifies as a neighbourhood that has gone bad-good-bad.
I'd have thought that some parts of midtown Manhattan may have done bad-good-bad-good. Tenements knocked down for skyscrapers that became rundown skyscrapers and then got cleaned up.
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FB shlock:
"When you say "I love you" it means "I can offer you true peace and happiness". In order to be able to offer them, you must already be able to offer them to yourself."
From a friends who is recovering from addiction and generally having a rough time of it, and I still like him, so I cut him some slack for these nonsensical jabberings. But still nonsensical.
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155. Many times. Is Dost Mohammed dead, that there is no justice in the streets of Kabul?
When the South Coast Commuter Rail Project is finished, New Bedford will become the next Newburyport (an argument I have made before). Buy now while you can get in on the ground floor!
Monorail...monorail...monorail...
133: It really looks like, until recently, the rich in the US mostly built on new land instead of moving into existing housing stock.
The 2nd or 3rd-generation "nice" areas that grew up in the late 19th/early 20th century as cities expanded were sometimes built on areas that were already semi-urban with crap housing stock rather than farmland/open space. But the old stuff was simply torn down so I do not think it satisifes the TRO criteria.
It does make me think that some urban renewal work sort of kind of fits the pattern. "bad" neighborhood replaced by "nice" new stuff (if only nice in some planners' dreams) quickly becoming bad in a whole new worse way.
157: A friend of mine (who's apparently embarking on some sort of diet and exercise program) just posted unflattering "before" shots (think: underwear and mug shot) and stats, along with some really sad text about how she's fat. Apparently, it was supposed to be posted to a private group. Eek!
"bad" neighborhood replaced by "nice" new stuff (if only nice in some planners' dreams) quickly becoming bad in a whole new worse way.
Indian burial ground.
161: Oh man. IGNORE IGNORE LALALALALALA.
161: Everybody post their SAT scores, AGI, and before pictures to make s'ydnew friend's embarrassment less.
Dartmouth is my home town. Opelika is the kind of Alabama town I was thinking of. Also, there are some places in the NE which used to get a lot of rich summer visitors who have stopped coming which is another version of bad-good-bad. Like the Catskills, Mount Washington. They're not bad-bad now but there are a lot of empty building. Also places like Orono and Bangor that were rich when lumber was needed and are now poor. I guess there are lots of boomtowns I can think of - why are you excluding those? They are horrible places to invest.
It does make me think that some urban renewal work sort of kind of fits the pattern. "bad" neighborhood replaced by "nice" new stuff (if only nice in some planners' dreams) quickly becoming bad in a whole new worse way.
Yes, catching up on the thread I was thinking of SW DC in this regard, though I'm not sure whether the brief "renewal" counts as genuine gentrification.
RE: ungentrification. The Strivers Row section of Harlem slummified in the late nineteenth century when Whites left town, gentrified in the 1920's, when it was the place for wealthy African-Americans to live in New York, and slummified again when it became possible for wealthy African-Americans to ilve wherever they wanted to. The old mansions turned into welfare hotels by the 1970's. It's coming back now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Nicholas_Historic_District
There are similar ungentrification stories in African-American neighborhoods in North Philadelphia and other cities. The area where Martin Luther King grew up in Atlanta has a similar trajectory.
157, that sounds like a rephrasing of RuPaul's classic apothegm, "If you don't love yourself, HOW in the HAYYYYLLLLL you gonna love someone else?!"
Does Neukölln, Berlin, meet Ripper's criteria? Blume? "Bad" in the early 20th century, when it was known as Rixdorf; became prosperous after the incorporation into Berlin; then "bad" again when the Turks moved in; now in the process of becoming "good" again with the influx of American and European expats.
Berlin is a hard one since it was divided for so long. Neukölln wasn't quite as surrounded by the east as Kreuzberg, but it had somewhat of a similar dynamic, as a place up against the eastern border that punks and Auslaender got pushed into. Kreuzberg is more central to the reunited city, so got regentrified earlier.
Ah: towns in the Swedish rustbelt, such as Trollhättan or indeed Uddevalla, where I used to live. Poor as hell at the beginning of 20th century: then fifty or sixty years of increasing prosperity (Saab factory, powerstation, shipyards, Ford/Volvo factory) then a collapse into unemployment and stranded immigrants. There was a triple murder, shooting dead in their car of a couple of gangsters and the teenage gf of one of them, in a car park maybe 200m from my old flat last week. Now that particular micro-neighbourhood was never gentrified but the town as a whole certainly was. Murder of any sort would have been unthinkable 30 years ago.
I'm definitely playing Calvinball with the rules now, but I don't think either the vacation/single industry boom town or socialist working-class city development quite works for "is there an example of Williamsburg reversing itself."
The 19th century vacation town story (or boom town story) is basically tiny town->tons of big new building caused by industry->industry/tourism leaves and town collapses with lots of nice buildings left. That seems like the story of the Catskills, Hastings, Orono, ME. That doesn't quite work for what I'm interested in, which would be one round of people finding the nice buildings and moving back in, making it a rich area, and then having it go poor again.
Similarly, working prosperity through socialism, now taken away, doesn't quite work -- working class town is poor, industrial socialism comes and makes working class town working class and prosperous, industrial socialism leaves and town is poor again doesn't quite feel like gentrification reversing itself. The black upper class taking over a formerly rich white area before leaving it again also feels different (that's the story of my own neighborhood, basically); the wealthier blacks moving in doesn't really seem appropriate to call "gentrification."
I guess the real bottom line is that gentrification as we know it today -- boom city, decline, and then rich people rediscovering the old architecture and moving back in -- just is a very recent phenomenon.
Incidentally, it's incredibly depressing to read about that happening in Nworb's old housing development, if you've read Nworb's awesome book. Fucking post-1970s collapse of socialism ruining everything.
172: The vacation towns are kind of interesting in their own way. With planes and shit no one well-to-do had to settle for Geneva-on-the-Lake or what have you.
As a special abrupt case of decline, there is St. Michael Pa. where the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was located (whose dam failure led to the Johnstown Flood of 1889). BTW, the site and the flood museum in Johnstown are dynamite--highly recommended for a visit.
Yes, agreed. I have a fondness for 19th/early 20th C vacation towns and appreciate the ones that still sort of putter on, like Chautaqua (kind of a special case). The size and scope of the old resort hotels was also amazing, I love the ones that are left, like the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego or the Claremont in Berkeley.
I've been to Johnstown, but lamely never to the flood museum. Lame!
As far as I can tell, the Grand Hotel on Macikinac Island, MI, offers the most this-is-exactly-like-rich-people's-vacations-in-1900 experience left in the US, but there may be others. I've never been there.
176, The Sagamore at Lake George in the Adirondackks, is probably similar. There's freakin' croquet hoops laid out in front of the entrance.
Lucille Ball is from right near Chautauqua and is buried near there.
The South Fork stuff was preserved as it was above the dam--but my understanding is that it was never used by the members (all the big Pittsburgh industrialists plusn other assorted well-off 'burghers) after the flood.
I assume you've seen The Stunt Man which is pretty good film which makes great use of the Hotel Coronado. Coronado was a favorite daytrip destination of ours when we lived in Orange County.
176: I almost mentioned that one.
I was wondering if the one place we recommended for heebie near Chicago was also like that.
|| NMM to Aaron Schock's congressional career. |>
A map of 13 of the grand old ones here. Includes Coronado and Mackinac.
I love the idea of a luxury hotel called Broadmoor. Here, that's a maximum security hospital for mentally ill criminals. Probably a lot of luck involved in which one you end up in.
182: AIMHMHB, the local community college and a halfway house/drug rehab program have the same name, which leads to lots of foster care hilarity. "OMG, I didn't know her mom had a drug problem!" "Why the hell is he going to college when he needs to get his addiction under control?" etc.
I have a cousin who lives in Mount Gretna Pa.
Ripford, have you been to Chico Hot Springs?
No, but I'd looked it up before, I think probably from a mention by you here. Looks so great.
Boooo! Not Chico, California, which could plausibly have hot springs although it is less likely that I hadn't heard of them before. My hopes were briefly raised.
Oak Park Sacramento was a good neighborhood severed by the freeway, then awful (shootings, stabbings, kids know how to fend off pit bull attacks), then gentrifying, then a long pause for the recession, but the gentrifying has returned. I'd say it has gone good, bad, pause, improving.
The link in 181 includes the Homestead, which I stayed at once (not on my dime; Thundersnow was doing some horse thing there). It's a cool, old hotel, but also sort of feels like The Shining. More recently, I went back to the area and stayed at a B&B and went soaking in the Jefferson Pools, which was awesome. Best thing about the B&B? They just bring you your breakfast as a picnic basket in the room. No awkward, forced breakfast conversations with other guests!
185 -- You should go, and call it client development: they have movie stars and such being anonymous in the saloon.
186 -- You should go, and set up a water conference there.
(So I can go and call it business development.)
Charley I am surprised you didn't mention the Glacier Park Lodge, where I have stayed and which is so, so great.
I've only been to the bar there. And the employee cabins.
(I usually send people to the other Glacier hotels -- if they want hotels -- for the better views and hiking. Did you go to St. Mary? Have pie at the Park Cafe?)
194: My parents and I stayed there on one of our most fondly-remembered family vacations when I was a kid. Nice place.
196 -- But they cut off Mt. Gould. Here's one from up behind the hotel -- you can see it down on the lake -- that gives its context.
Chico Hot Springs is great, although the main building is a little rundown (or was when I was there a decade ago). Thinking about staying there is a little weird for me because while we were there a guy down the hall got arrested for (I think) sexually assaulting/raping a girl one night. It's entirely possible I walked past the room while it was happening (since the main building doesn't have en-suite bathrooms).
You should post 198 to TripAdvisor.
One of my cousins occasionally gets a contract dismantling upstate NY hotels, for which the chance of profit is in reselling the rescued materials. Odd bits wind u in his personal buildings, eg a kitchen table that had been sat on by Sinatra and Monroe and Flynn - when it was the slab at the edge of a pool where pictures got taken.
I have a cousin who lives in Mount Gretna Pa.
I live about 5 miles from there. Never heard of a famous hotel or in fact anything there except an annual art festival of some sort.
