[WS:] It is funny indeed, but something in it rubs me the wrong way. Is it the Starbucks/Apple subliminal commercials? Or perhaps the egotistical focus on "me?" Or maybe defining that "me" by a consumption style? Or maybe I am just becoming an old fart? Or all of the above?
Wojtek
On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 5:19 AM, Angelus Novus
<fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> joel schalit:
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>> there are folks who move there to work, too and that they tend to get
>> overlooked
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> To be honest, I just mentioned the hipsters as an excuse to post that video, which I think is really funny.
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> In fact, I really don't even like the discourse around "gentrification", which I think too often expresses a moralist "us-versus-them" mentality among leftists as well as a real lack of reflection about their own role in pricing up neighborhoods. It's really clueless to see leftist/post-autonomist/antifa bars in Neukölln that are really spearheads of "gentrification" that nonetheless serve a clientel that no doubt regards itself as "resisting" it.
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> A friend of mine recently related a story about, I think it was Hamburg, where a leftist initiative started some lame culturalist "street art" graffiti action against "gentrification". Some local politicians wanted to move against it, but the real estate developers themselves actually wanted to keep the anti-gentrification initiative going, since that sort of thing helps to keep the neighborhood "hip"!
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> So I am really for rejecting the whole culturalist "gentrification" discourse. I think rather it's better to be focused on a practical movement for rent control or something.
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>> One building he was selling units in, on Karl Marx Allee
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> That is funny. I remember when Karl-Marx-Allee was basically a retirement ghetto for SED functionaries. I mean, the "gentrification" of Friedrichshain started early around the whole Boxhagener Platz area, but Karl-Marx-Allee between Alexanderplatz and Frankfurter Tor seemed to hold out for awhile. Now it seems to be changing as well.
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> In retrospect, it's amazing that didn't happen sooner, given the proximity to Volkspark Friedrichshain.
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>> I saw that Leipzig piece. It was in the New York Times early in the
>> summer, if I remember correctly.
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> Have you been to Leipzig? What do you think? I thought that Times article was just a desperate grab to find something that could function as a "hot tip", now that Berlin is no longer really cutting edge. But Leipzig really is a joke. At least Dresden is secure enough in it's self-image as a Toytown Christmas market kind of city. Leipzig seems desperately trying to recreate itself as "little Berlin", but doesn't really have the demographics or the infrastructure to achieve it. And I find many the people there unpleasant (as a rule, there are exceptions).
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