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The amount of gentrification in the Mission varies a lot based on where you go. I volunteer on 24th st. weekly, something I've been doing since 2019. The crow

The amount of gentrification in the Mission varies a lot based on where you go. I volunteer on 24th st. weekly, something I've been doing since 2019. The crowd at the volunteering is mostly immigrants. I am white, native English speaker but I speak decent Spanish. It's mind boggling to me sometimes how the two communities exist in nearly the same space but don't often overlap. I remember one time I went into a restaurant and they engaged with me in Spanish right off the bat, we never switched to English, I got a table to dine-in and they waited on me and it felt pretty much like dining at a restaurant like in travels I've had in central America... A few months later I brought a friend to the same place and I ended up getting a 100% gringo restaurant experience. Another place down the street and the cashier is like some very pale upper midwest looking hipstery guy who looks "whiter than me", and it felt like a totally different world, one that didn't overlap at all with description above.

loxias 2y ago
Just offering another point of data, your observation of the "same space with no overlap" and the anecdote about the restaurant hits so true for me! Almost the exactly same thing happened to me, Spanish nearly the whole time. Later, with a coworker, 100% gringo experience. Hilarious! The alternation between places like this as you walk up 24th always struck me as notable. This couldn't have been later than 2011, at which time the zeitgeist was replete with jabs at the ongoing gentrification. :)
- bigiain 2y ago
  Had to re read that last sentence several times, initially assuming you were talking about the biker/dive bar down on Valencia and Duboce.
  - worstspotgain 2y ago
    That's funny, I was heading uptown the other day, sipping on an elixir and thinking about shaving another kilowatt off my bill, when some casanova got out of a phone booth and asked me for directions to the daytona 500 club or some other make out room. I lolo'd out loud and docs clocked him in the teeth. Pretty sure he had to change his napper tandy after that.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      you really clinched the zeitgeist of the mission district, are you a professional writer, part time? I'm just grateful to be in your orbit. that kind of success will cost you a mint. I'd wake up in a fit of delerium. What's the ABV of that drink you just gave me? But okay, let's get down to brass tacks. it's last call, and I've got work to so I'm not going to go on a bender. I'm not a flying pig so let's just sit down where the willows and the sycamore trees meet and hideout there and wait for someone to give us last rites.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> mind boggling to me sometimes how the two communities exist in nearly the same space but don't often overlap You may enjoy China Miéville's The City & the City [1]. The less you read about it ex ante, the better. It's one of those books that gives you a mental model and language that proves surprisingly useful in describing what you saw. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City

loxias 2y ago

Just offering another point of data, your observation of the "same space with no overlap" and the anecdote about the restaurant hits so true for me! Almost the exactly same thing happened to me, Spanish nearly the whole time. Later, with a coworker, 100% gringo experience. Hilarious! The alternation between places like this as you walk up 24th always struck me as notable. This couldn't have been later than 2011, at which time the zeitgeist was replete with jabs at the ongoing gentrification. :)

bigiain 2y ago
Had to re read that last sentence several times, initially assuming you were talking about the biker/dive bar down on Valencia and Duboce.
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  That's funny, I was heading uptown the other day, sipping on an elixir and thinking about shaving another kilowatt off my bill, when some casanova got out of a phone booth and asked me for directions to the daytona 500 club or some other make out room. I lolo'd out loud and docs clocked him in the teeth. Pretty sure he had to change his napper tandy after that.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    you really clinched the zeitgeist of the mission district, are you a professional writer, part time? I'm just grateful to be in your orbit. that kind of success will cost you a mint. I'd wake up in a fit of delerium. What's the ABV of that drink you just gave me? But okay, let's get down to brass tacks. it's last call, and I've got work to so I'm not going to go on a bender. I'm not a flying pig so let's just sit down where the willows and the sycamore trees meet and hideout there and wait for someone to give us last rites.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> mind boggling to me sometimes how the two communities exist in nearly the same space but don't often overlap You may enjoy China Miéville's The City & the City [1]. The less you read about it ex ante, the better. It's one of those books that gives you a mental model and language that proves surprisingly useful in describing what you saw. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_%26_the_City