Two people posing as a young home buying couple (they are a young couple, that part isn’t in dispute) are sending mass letters to houses in entire neighborhoods talking about how much they love the house and want to buy it. For those who have sold, the couple have then flipped the properties, turning massive profits and displacing whole neighborhoods so that rich white newcomers can move in. Watch out for Rarebird!!!
The couple denies doing anything wrong.
What Literally what There isn’t anything wrong with that, people flip houses all the time and the people that are “displaced” chose to sell their houses and were compensated for it. There is nothing wrong with that.
HI YOU ARE MORALLY BANKRUPT AND DON’T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT PF GENTRIFICATION BYE
No offense, but can you explain to me why this is a bad thing? I am not disagreeing, I just don’t understand. Thank you.
Ugh this is so hard.
Okay, in Portland you’re talking about a historically very racist city that’s segregated low income families and families of colour into certain specific areas–the Laurelhurst arches, for example, are the borders within which no black people could own houses or businesses. Research the Vanport Flood.
So in the early 2000s an influx of poor white queers started in the poor people of colour areas. We couldn’t afford better, and we wanted to be around other queers. The schools are underfunded, there are still shootings, long term residents couldn’t get home improvement loans or refinance their mortgages, and when white queers made the neighborhoods edgy instead of “the ghetto” white bridge and tunnel tourists wanted a piece of it and slowly began infiltrating. Literally pushing out businesses of colour like the Native American Youth Association couldn’t afford the new raised rent on their building and was forced out for a business called, literally, “hovel” which sold overpriced knickknacks to the new white residents moving into the new apartment buildings. At first the apartment buildings were built on vacant lots, which isn’t as bad as displacing actual residents, but it drives property taxes up while the banks still refused to refinance or offer home improvement loans to long term residents of colour and low income residents.
The businesses moving in to the neighbourhoods are to a one too expensive for low income residents to access, so when people talk about “urban renewal”, the renewal happening is happening for the specific newcomer population of rich white people. The locals aren’t able to access these new services like yoga studios, expensive hipster bars, expensive urban coops.
And then there’s the school factor: newcomers aren’t invested in local schools and overwhelmingly tend to send their children to charter schools out of the neighbourhood, so a strong advocating force for schools is thus denied to locals.
As the process continues, locals get priced out. They can’t afford their property taxes, rents get deliberately upped (this happened to me twice), people get evicted with no notice so that landlords can remodel or simply sell the lots for money.
In my old neighbourhood an old empty lot that locals had turned into a park was sold to become a giant overpriced apartment building.
The family across the street sold because they couldn’t afford the new taxes.
Three blocks away a landlord kicked out three generations of a family who’d been living in a house divided into three apartments to sell to a developer who made a four story luxury condo building.
The last black owned business in the area was forced out to become a giant leed certified business office.
A family owned ethiopian restaurant was deliberately driven closed because the new developer didn’t think the prospective white residents of his new buildings would “want to smell that kind of food.” But the piss smell of the local microbrewery is so aromatic, amirite?
A local laundromat was driven out of business when a hipster laundromat with wifi, coffee, and wine moved in four blocks away.
What people like Rarebird are doing is facilitating this process without giving back to the community.
Flipping is, definitionally, paying undermarket value for a product to remodel it and sell it for more.
They aren’t paying long term locals what their properties are worth, taking advantage of the high taxes white people have brought while underpaying to buy these places they then profit off of.
This is part of a larger problem where rich people buy multiple condos and apartments and then never live in them, preferring to Airbnb them occasionally for a profit.
There is no corresponding housing being build for the people who are displaced.
None of these buildings accept section 8 and mandatory inclusionary income zoning failed, which means there are no affordable apartments in any of these new buildings.
Rents have risen in Portland six times faster than anywhere else, while we remain largely a poor state, with only Nike, Adidas, and Intel drawing in new workers, and these workers are not the long term residents who’ve been forced out by the greed of the incoming whites for local flavour.
The only geographic locations with prices comparable to the old North and Northeast Portland are incredibly far out, areas without good public transit, and usually without sidewalks.
57% of our school children are on free lunch this summer because their parents CAN’T AFFORD TO FEED THEM.
Over 800 families are on ONE WAITLIST for shelter.
Our dv and homeless shelters for single people are full.
And Rarebird is buying people out, increasing rents, not giving back to the community in any way, and taking their profits and reinvesting them into repeating the process over and over and over again?
And people don’t see a problem with this?
This is the racism just under the surface that so many white people will never even think about.
this is a really good explanation of gentrification, please read it!!
This also explains in a great way the roll that white LGBT+ people play into gentrification, wheither they mean to or not. And if YOU are a white LGBT+ person that thinks you might be part of the problem and want to make sure your doing your part to fight gentrification I suggest looking up articles about “revitalization without gentrification” and go from there.
Who will be the next class of organizers in San Diego? SEJ Fellows are the current and future leaders in the fight for social and economic justice.
Help spread the word to passionate college students interested in fighting for social and economic justice!
Overview
The Students for Economic Justice (SEJ) summer fellowship will be an intensive 6-week program that will give committed student activists organizing experience in a current campaign for economic justice. College students will receive organizing skills training and will be engaged in educational discussions on various topics. The goal of this program is to build the next generation of young leaders and community organizers who will effectively push forward social change and economic justice in San Diego. Students receive trainings from various community and labor leaders throughout San Diego and will finish the program with a better understanding of the social and political landscape of the region. These are some of the trainings and hands-on experience that will be provided during the summer internship program:
Organizing Skills
Doorknocking, Phonebanking, and Turnout 101
Understanding Power / Choosing Your Strategy
Coalition Building
Communications and Using the Media
Organizing and Taking Action to Win Change
Political Education
Accumulated Struggles: A History of Economic and Social Movements
Understanding San Diego’s Regional and Political Landscape
Current campaigns for economic & social justice in San Diego
Ideal candidates First, second, and third year college students are encouraged to apply. If you are a graduating senior, we highly recommend for you to apply for the SEJ Assistant Coordinator part-time position.
Commitment The SEJ fellowship is an intensive full-time program. It is not recommended that fellows hold other jobs or attend summer school at the same time. Exceptions may be negotiated. Fellows are also expected to stay involved after the program is over and to hold SEJ info sessions at their respective schools.
Dates of Program Monday, June 29, 2015 - Friday, August 7, 2015 (six weeks). It will be up to 40 hours a week. Some evenings and weekends may be required but not mandatory.
COMPENSATION
This is a paid fellowship at a living wage ($14/hr). CPI makes the effort to ensure that interns are compensated fairly for their time and that financial challenges do not inhibit students from participating in the program.
Requirements All applicants are required to fully complete this application form and also submit (1) a separate page with answers to two essay questions, (2) a resume, and (3) one letter of recommendation.
Applications Due Date 5:00 pm, Friday, February 27, 2015. Applications should be submitted via email to [email protected].
QUESTIONS If you have any questions, contact Trinh Le: 619-584-5744 ext. 24 or [email protected].
The Center on Policy Initiatives is proud to be an affirmative action employer. People of color are strongly encouraged to apply.
The photographer Al Thompson captures the residue of gentrification and change in a once-vibrant and diverse suburban town. His sparse, black-and-white palette conveys a tenderness and affection for his subjects.
Sooo I JUST took this photo of downtown Columbus, Ohio on fire. And did this painting for my bro like 4 years ago…legit goosebumps. This painting is inspired by the Tulsa Race Massacre and gentrification in Columbus
When we hear the word gentrification, we think of Google buses gliding through the streets of San Francisco and pre-fab luxury condo towers sprouting up along the Brooklyn waterfront. But gentrification, firstdefined by British sociologist Ruth Glass as a process in which a neighborhood’s “original working-class occupiers are displaced” by an influx of higher-income new arrivals, isn’t just happening in New York and the Bay Area. A potent combination of rapid private development, soaring rents and property values, and pro-growth public policy is radically reshaping the fabric of cities across the U.S.
This process doesn’t just lead to a proliferation of twee coffee shops, it contributes to the criminalization of the homeless, increased income inequality and deepened residential segregation. Investment is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but too often, it is driven by developers whose interest is profit, not preserving local culture or ensuring that low-income residents still have access to affordable housing. Meanwhile, longtime residents are left out of conversations about what is happening to the places they call home.
Gentrificationdoes not happen the same way in every place. It is dependent on transit lines, local history and the political inclination of municipal authorities. Some cities that experienced previous waves of gentrification are now undergoing rapid new growth (like Philadelphia), while others are revitalizing downtown areas long overlooked by car-culture suburbanites (like Houston). But the signs are everywhere. Here’s a sample of what’s going on in five major cities across the country.
1. Boston
Boston wins the title of “unexpected gentrification capital of America,” according to data compiled by the Cleveland Fed. Looking at the percentage of urban homes that went from the bottom half of home price distribution to the top half, between the years 2000 and 2007, Boston came in first, with a 61 percent shift. Over a quarter of Boston residents now live in formerly low-income neighborhoods that have gentrified.
The rapid transformation of the city’s south end is being pushed by twin forces, according to Tim Davis, senior research fellow at the UMass Boston Center for Social Policy. In an interview with the Harvard Political Review, Davis explains why low and middle-income Boston residents are facing a decline in affordable housing options. According to the article, this is “caused by both ‘classic gentrification,” in which higher-income residents move into neighborhoods, and a ‘sub-prime lending bubble’ which led to a change in real estate prices that forced existing neighborhood residents to pay more of their income toward housing.”
Johnny Magdaleno reported on this insidious combination for Vice last summer. In the south Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, houses decreased in value by 40 percent between 2005 and 2007. During that same period, the neighborhood experienced twice as many foreclosures as the state average. Housing finance giants like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are leveraging these circumstances to their advantage, foreclosing the homes of low-income residents who fall behind in their mortgage payments. The newly empty homes are sold to large real estate developers eager to invest in newly hip areas like Dorchester. This has pushed many former homeowners into the rental market, but average rental prices in the city jumped from $1,984 in November 2011 to $2,487 as of December 2014, according to real estate database Zillow. Low-income and even middle-class Boston residents are left with fewer and fewer housing options from which to choose.
2. Nashville
The rapidity of Nashville’s metamorphosis has shocked observers and longtime residents. In a woeful New York Times column, Nashville Sceneeditor Steve Haruch laments that in recent years “we built a 78-mile, sprawl-inducing ring highway instead of investing in mass transit; we built not one but two massive stadiums downtown; we spent a half-billion dollars on a convention center the size of an aircraft….A house that went for $40,000 a decade ago might now go for 15 times that amount.” Apartment rents are up18 percent since 2009 and home values went up 9.1 percent last year alone, according to Zillow.
As construction booms downtown, concentrated development and rising rents are pushing longtime residents out of East Nashville neighborhoods like Cleveland Park, which has a significant concentration of older residents relying on fixed incomes. Working-class families have also been priced out, abandoning centrally located neighborhoods like Germantown and Hope Gardens for farther-flung, more affordable housing on the outskirts of the city. This speaks to a broader national trend: the suburbanization of poverty. As higher-educated, higher-income individuals flock to urban centers, lower-income residents are forced into suburban neighborhoods that offer limited job opportunities and social assistance programs.
This increasingly stark residential income segregation can also be understood through the lens of education. Last year, the New York Times analyzedgentrification rates by looking at which cities witnessed the largest influx of recent college graduates between 2000 and 2012. Nashville, with an increase of 48 percent, was near the top of the list. Drawn by jobs and a wealth of amenities, highly educated young workers are increasingly concentrated in a handful of big cities, exacerbating geographic segregation. As Emily Badgerpoints out at the Washington Post, “College graduates in America aren’t simply gaining access to higher wages. They’re gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air.”
3. Los Angeles
For decades, Skid Row was known as ground zero for L.A.’s homeless population. An industrial neighborhood lined with warehouses, dive bars and pay-by-the week motels, Skid Row was where the city’s poorest residents lived. Today, the area is gentrifying at lightning speed, as developers buy up large tracts of land, converting them to luxury apartments, designer stores, and upscale restaurants and bars. Though the neighborhood has witnessed previous waves of gentrification (AlterNet reported on the changing face of Skid Row back in 2007), what’s happening today far outpaces anything that came before. According to Politico, more than 23,000 new residents have moved to Skid Row in the last seven years alone.
What makes this area’s gentrification particularly striking—and disturbing—is that it is reliant on the criminalization of Skid Row’s low-income residents. Los Angeles has the highest percentage of homeless who have no shelter whatsoever, and the city leads the nation in the number of chronically homeless, as Politico reports. But this population, many of whom suffer from physical disabilities, addiction or mental illness, has been vilified by local authorities and police officials, who view them as a blight on the city’s downtown. In 2006, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-LAPD chief William Bratton collaborated on the “Safer Cities Initiative,” a broken-windows policing effort that involved arresting offenders for petty crimes such as jaywalking, going to the bathroom in public places or sleeping on the streets. Essentially, it criminalized people for being homeless.
Though activists challenged the initiative in court, the forced marginalization of Skid Row’s most vulnerable residents continues. Just last year, the L.A. City Council unanimously approved a real estate mogul’s plan to construct a pedestrian bridge connecting two halves of his new luxury condo, preventing upscale residents from having to walk on the sidewalk below. His reason? To reduce “potential incidents that could occur during the evening hours when the homeless population is more active in the surrounding area.” The poor are being shunted aside to make room for the rich.
Those who downplay the effects of gentrification say that longtime residents often benefit from the revitalization of their neighborhoods, and that the number of people who are forced to move out is overblown. But this is not the case in Skid Row, or in other L.A. neighborhoods like the Latino enclaves of Highland Park and Boyle Heights. In an interview with the L.A. Times, Moses Kagan, president of Adaptive Realty, defended his company’s massive condo development project in Highland Park. “Nothing is permanent,” Kagan told the reporter. “Including where we live.”
4. Baltimore
In Baltimore, local authorities are also facilitating the process of gentrification, though they are doing it through development grants rather than policing efforts. City officials, led by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, have approvedmajor tax breaks for developers to spur new housing construction, and aregiving developers $400 million in public subsidies to build a massive new office park on the Baltimore waterfront. The project, which was strongly opposed by local community groups, unions and activists, will make room for the offices of the energy company Exelon, as well as a Morgan Stanley facility, residential towers and stores.
In an article for Salon, Sally Kohn outlines the dire consequences of these grand acts of municipal benevolence. “Private companies are tricking public officials into sweetheart deals that never pay off for the public…. The private development of mass gentrification, made way for by public policy including public financing, not only systematically ossifies but intensifies the economic inequality within our nation’s cities.”
Yet local authorities are also turning to public-private partnerships to mitigate the city’s affordable housing crisis, as Dusty Christensen reported for AlterNet last year. Their two-pronged strategy involves selling public housing units to private investors, and the enforcement of an initiative called Vacants to Value. In neighborhoods with fewer vacant houses, which are deemed “strong,” landlords are pressured to fix their properties or risk losing them at public auction. Areas classified as “weak” are transformed into “community development clusters,” allowing developers to buy up entire blocks of both city-owned property and houses that have been pushed into auction. What they choose to build is out of the city’s control.
5. Denver
Like Nashville and Boston, Denver is becoming home to a growing number of highly educated, affluent young adults, and is building the amenities, nightlife opportunities and centrally located housing to draw more of them. More than 25,000 new housing units have been built along the city’s light rail lines in the last 15 years. But as Jonathan Thompson makes clear in a piece for the High Country News, this new development, much of which is being built on the path of the rail lines, has done little to benefit Denver’s longtime low-income residents. “Denver doesn’t just need more housing, it needs more affordablehousing,” he writes. “And the free market has no incentive to provide it.” Rents went up 10.8 percent in Denver last year, the second highest increase in total rent in the country after San Francisco, according to Zillow.
Areport by the local chapter of the National Association for Working Women looked at the role public transportation is playing in the city’s gentrification. It found that bus and commuter-rail fares are too high for most low-income residents. As Zoe Williams, an organizer with the group, told the Denver Postin an interview, “Low-income communities and communities of color pay for the transit system. Their neighborhoods face major changes with build-out. The bus routes they rely on get cut out. They can’t afford to ride light rail, and it doesn’t go to places they need to travel.” This means that even as low-income residents get priced out of downtown, more remote neighborhoods along public transportation lines are becoming similarly out of reach.
I’m late to the game - but someone (Jason Read) has recut that creepy Redrow luxury apartment building advert (notes on that here) with American Psycho, as it so richly deserved.
Shit, this is astonishing. Redrow, a luxury apartment builder, have made this creepy, completely dystopic, half-American Psycho advert for the new London they’re currently metastasizing all over the city. Its protagonist lives in a world of almost continual night, with the hungry eyes and dead affect of an Ayn Rand wet dream: his world is constituted of chrome, glass, a palette of white-to-taupe, a spatter-pattern rug and one book, a single book, on graphic design. ‘Luxury’ is so often a code for this – double-glazed, polished steel, hermetically sealed in the back of a cab. Our man does not have conversations, but stares out at the city from the fifteenth floor (he does a lot of staring). The concept of conversation is alien to him, though he is shown having a screaming argument; as you see from his inventoried shelves, he has a passion for objects and this is how he treats women, as well.
Flat-toned, void affect, social cancer in a suit: a model for London living. Here’s a curious honesty about it all: houses in the suburbs are marketed still for the smiling happy family, all oak tables and smiling coffee mornings (in zone 4, the dog never even barks, let alone bites). In the central zones, having been cleared of many of their inconveniences (families, communities, *life*), now deadboxes are marketed to the single (wannabe singular) sub-Thatcherite dweeb who manages his violence only on a balance sheet, who wants to take life, pin it, and crush it behind plate glass. Let us burn it down.
This is amazing. There needs to be a word for the kind of text that deconstructs itself, that contains its own negation so nakedly on the surface.
“They say nothing comes easy - but if it was easy, it wouldn’t feel so good. [Now I have to tell myself it feels good. It feels good. I am a valid human being]
*Cutaway to a shot of the cut-glass tumbler of whiskey he drinks each morning before work*
"To look over the city that could have swallowed you whole [ / that swallowed your soul], and say, ‘I did this’, [I allowed myself to be swallowed by dreams of achievement & accumulation that were in no way individual, however much I doth protest] and stand with the world at your feet [still so distant from me.]”
The comments on Vimeo are great:
Does this remind anyone else of American Psycho?
100% No
COSMOPOLIS PSYCHO.
Followed by “Sorry, comments have been disabled by the owner of this video.”
Listen in the past the poor have had to improvise cheap food the rich never wanted as a means to survive. And over the many years of innovation made the food taste good until eventually the rich where like: “Oh hay you actually like that garbage? Why on earth would you like it?” Then they try it, love it, start buying it, and then drive the price up so much it becomes a luxury good.
They do this and its devastating, the food typically never becomes affordable again. It don’t matter how cheap the foo dis to produce, it doesn’t matter if there is almost no meat on the bone or its super difficult to eat and messy. Once the poor discover how to make some bit of cheap food taste good, the rich take it away via driving the price of it up.
THEY DID THIS TO RIBS.
Ribs were garage meat. Just look at them, there is hardly any meat on the bone, you have to eat them by hand usually, and they are messy. They where an undesirable cheap source of junk meat. But the poor being the poor made them taste good. (Because they don’t have much to choose from.) The rich discovered the meals the poor made with them and decided they liked ribs too. People discovered they could sell a few ribs to rich people and make way more money then selling lots of ribs to poor people and the price was driven up.
DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO CEREAL!!!
They did the same to brisket. You used to be able to get brisket for less than a dollar a pound, which meant you could get a twenty pound brisket fairly cheaply. And then you smoked it, sliced it, and had meat for weeks if not a full month. And it was tasty. I grew up eating brisket at least once a month because my family could afford it.
It was a cheap meat because no rich person looks at the dangly part of the neck of a cow and goes ‘ooh, that looks tasty!’.
But then Food Network started showcasing things like barbecued brisket. Rich people started showing up at places that weren’t just Rib Crib to get their barbeque. And the price of brisket went up. A lot.
I regularly see it for over five dollars a pound in stores now. And while yeah, that might not seem like a lot when you’re talking only a pound or two of meat, brisket is normally sold in ten to twenty pound sizes. It’s become completely unaffordable to the people that made it delicious.
Sushi used to be really cheap, too, until it became ‘trendy’. Guess why you’re now paying twelve dollars for your order of California rolls? Because rich people discovered something that poor people had been eating for ages.
Noticed the prices of fajita meat, chicken thighs, or ham hocks has gone up recently? You guessed it. Rich people are taking our food and now we’re scrambling to afford the things that we grew up eating.
Lobster is a perfect example of this phenomenon.
For hundreds of years, lobster was regarded as a sort of insect larvae from the depth of the sea. It had zero appeal as a “luxury food” until people living in NY and Boston developed a taste for it. Before the 19th century, it was considered a “poverty food” or used as fertilizer and bait - some household servants specified in employment agreements that they would not eat lobster more than twice a week.
It was also commonly served at prisons, which tells you something about prison food.
Only by cleverly marketing lobster as an indulgence for the privileged made it cost so much. It became a vehicle for enormous profit spawning a multi-billion dollar global industry in the process. This mythical affection for lobster flesh - not its practical value in terms of taste, nutrition, or any other reasonable consideration - drives its value.
LMAO. Wait.
Anyone else’s eye twitchin?
Food gentrification is a long standing practice and it’s some of the most evil shit I can think of. It’s why I refuse for example as someone living in the US to buy things with Quinoa in them. It is specifically pricing an indigenous population out of their prime staple food. It’s a horrific invasion of one of the final requirements of staying alive.
this happened to bacon too, and the story behind that is super interesting if you want to look it up
not just lobster but monkfish too. monkfish was garbage fish, often known as “poor man’s lobster.” feel free to guess what happened.
The price of oxtails near me has exploded in the last few years, which sucks for the several Carribean communities who live around here.
Also kale is confusingly used as a symbol of yuppies and gentrification, but it’s a shining example of food gentrification in the US, since it was stolen and co-opted from Southern Black Soul Food
Have you all seen Starbucks and places selling overnight oats for stupid money because rich insta people decided it was in fashion but it’s basically porridge oats left to soak overnight
Porridge was poor people food in Victorian times and often called gruel
I love Trader Joe’s, don’t get me wrong. And right now I live next-door to one, which certainly makes day-to-day planning a big convenience. But my family didn’t shop there much growing up - it didn’t carry bags of rice large enough or offer discount gotta-go frozen meats or stock industrial jugs of Kikkoman; and honestly we thought of it as “fancy” (in fact, we thought of a trip there as a special treat and one time my sister was asked what her favorite restaurant was and she responded “Trader Joe’s”).
Times have changed, obviously. As Trader Joe’s has expanded, the prices have gotten more reasonable and they’ve started including more cultural foods to reflect changing palates and demographics - though their shoyu sucks (and comes in some tiny ass bottle….like is it for dollhouses????) - which seems nice and inclusive in a lot of ways. But I have to admit I definitely paused when I saw generically boxed Mochi Cake Mix, something I grew up calling Butter Mochi that was made by my mom from scratch, being sold to the exact kind of people who looked at me like I was eating a greasy slab of rubber when I was a kid. And I felt that same feeling creep up again when I saw the Chili Lime Flavored Rolled Corn Chips….which are just basically Takis Fuego but packaged to be more approachable to white people, I’m guessing.
So. I’m just gonna go ahead and share the “original” version of some of these TJ’s products because I think it’s just as good to support the companies or the groups that have been making and enjoying this stuff for years, as it is your favorite grocery chain.
Mochi Cake Mix < Hawaii’s Best Hawaiian Butter Mochi Mix
While Butter Mochi requires only mochiko, eggs, butter, sugar, and milk - you can always opt for the mix from Hawaii’s Best which has been pumping out variations on the ono treat (and other local desserts like kulolo and haupia) for years. Not to mention, it’s a Hawaii based company that employs local Hawaiians during a time of financial decline for native Hawaiians in their own homeland. You can buy it from Hawaii’s Best directly, but it’s also available on Amazon or, even better, on Snack Hawaii (another family owned and operated company that has been selling local goods out of Hilo for 25 years). And - shameless plug - I’ve been buying from Snack Hawaii for a long time, so if you need a discount link, HMU.
The company that makes Takis was founded in 1978 and has been pumping these guys out in different flavors since then. And while Trader’s only offers one flavor, the Takis from your local convenience store come in Fuego, Guacamole, Fajita, and Nitro. The company was founded in Lerma Municipality, Mexico, but has since moved to the US. And for me, this is less of a “support your local company” plea (because Barcel is a big corporation) but more of a “support your local culture” plea. Takis is one of those foods that has existed for a long time in specific cultural circles and so, gets looked down on as a marker of being poor or lower class. Which is utter bullshit and which makes the TJ’s version feel like gentrification in snack form. So instead of buying the “safe” version, maybe instead broaden your horizons and support your local Northgate Marketplace, and grab some homemade tamales or visit the panaderia while you’re there? Also, hot tip, Takis cost $1 while the Trader’s version will set you back $3.99.
So this one specifically depends on if you’re looking for Indian, Israeli, or Middle Eastern Amba and Trader Joe’s doesn’t really specify which one they’re aiming for here. But Galil has been selling their Amba since 1985 and has been family-owned and run since then. Their Amba is also Kosher, and you can buy it on Amazon as well as this awesome site called Super Kacher that specializes in Middle Eastern and Israeli specialty food. If you want a more Indian Amba, try Ship Brand, which has been made by Poonjiaji’s Spices in Mumbai since 1883. The bottle looks crazy generic and if you live in LA, can be easily spotted at Bharat Bazaar at Samosa House, or again - available on Amazon!
All this to say, don’t knock the originals because you have to go to H Mart or Tehran Market to get them. Maybe you haven’t been to those places before or maybe you just don’t have time to hit two markets (in which case, I have provided you with links for online shopping) - but give the cultures that have provided fodder for your favorite chain a fighting chance to prove why they were good enough to be appropriated in the first place.
On a sunny morning in March, Marcus Westbury brandished his iPad as if it were a window into another world. The screen depicted the street we were standing on in downtown Newcastle, Australia, circa 2008. Decades of suburban flight, a devastating 1989 earthquake, and the implosion of the city’s steel mills had left the center a ghost town. More than a hundred empty storefronts lined the commercial strip. The neoclassical post office and the Victoria—Australia’s second-oldest theater—both sat vacant. The street could have doubled as a set for The Walking Dead.
Now the sidewalks were bustling. The windows of the David Jones department store, another recent casualty, were filled with sculptors, milliners, jewelers, and stonemasons publicly plying their trades. Families sipped flat whites and leisurely ate breakfast at outdoor cafés. Compared to the desolate scenes of just a few years ago, the transformation was startling, especially considering it all stemmed from a bit of legal sleight-of-hand.
Industry along the Lachine Canal in the Saint Henri neighbourhood of Montreal lasted from 1825 until the closure of the canal in 1970. The canal was reopened in 2002, with pedestrian and cyclist paths. The factories have been replaced by condos and businesses.
