This weekend I am visiting San Francisco with my mother. To ensure that we will always maintain our sacred mother-daughter time, we have decided to take a trip at least once a year. Past trips included Europe, Mexico, Hawaii, New York City, Colorado, Las Vegas, and even San Fran..Future trip will likely be determined by climate change patterns and geopolitics, I suppose. I hope to create similar traditions with all of the people in my life that I love dearly but see rarely.
On this particular trip, I began thinking about the importance of locally based patriotism for creating a city about which residents and tourists can give a damn. In other words, a city with some s-o-u-l. And when that city has too much soul or conflicting souls and ideologies, districts eventually emerge, procreate, and, particularly when they become so soulful that young, poor, diverse crowds begin to thrive, they frequently (and woefully) begin to...shudder.... gentrify! Venice Beach in L.A., the Central District in Seattle, and the Mission District in San Francisco are classic examples of this phenomenon of gentrification. I wonder how districts with the most artistic expression, vibrant nightlife, and noncommercial associations can flourish without ultimately being bought out by the very people who destroy these characteristics.
A final food for thought cooked up by my weekend getaway is the preponderance of people in dire need of mental health care. Walking around Union Square today, I was struck by the masses of severely mentally ill people. I can’t say that I was surprised by the amount of overt mental illness; after living in L.A. and the U-District of Seattle, I am certainly desensitized to the visual and auditory sights and sounds of mentally ill Americans who should be receiving meaningful treatment. As national health care policy begins to take shape, with all of its compromises and shortcomings, I only hope that this administration finds a way to restore and improve the asylums closed down by previous presidents (thank you, Reagan). We have too many veterans, survivors of abuse and neglect, and people with treatable, yet highly dysfunctional, mental disorders roaming our streets to not take action. In the meantime, locals and tourists around the States will continue to look on with pity, guilt, disgust, or not at all.
You are an Urban Champion!
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