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neighborhood colonialism
Aug. 3rd, 2008 10:19 pmAt the furniture store this afternoon, Tim the sofa guy's cheery response to Willie's address was "Oh, you're a colonist!"
Me: perplexed look
Me: Oh, you mean that I'm gentrifying North Church Hill? [While I didn't say this, I like to think that Richmond's neighborhoods are in a different cycle (NCH 50-100 years ago was a predominantly white merchant class suburb), and I like the idea of living in a mixed-race, middle class part of the city proper. They are rare, these parts.]
Tim: But it sounds so bad when you say "gentrifying"! You're an adventurer! An early adopter!
Me: Right, cause "colonist" brings to mind such wholesome images of smallpox-infested blankets and wholesale slaughter!
Tim: Everyone has their own perspective!
Tim, by the way, got more exclamation points than I did when they were handing out punctuation.
I do dig the neighborhood in NCH. It's definitely urban, but peppered with people who really care [Possibly to the point of fabulous insanity - their house is kitty-corner to mine, btw. Yay, neighbors.] in a way that evokes the military burbs of my childhood if they'd been populated by the sort of historians who own broadswords. In a word: awesome.
Me: perplexed look
Me: Oh, you mean that I'm gentrifying North Church Hill? [While I didn't say this, I like to think that Richmond's neighborhoods are in a different cycle (NCH 50-100 years ago was a predominantly white merchant class suburb), and I like the idea of living in a mixed-race, middle class part of the city proper. They are rare, these parts.]
Tim: But it sounds so bad when you say "gentrifying"! You're an adventurer! An early adopter!
Me: Right, cause "colonist" brings to mind such wholesome images of smallpox-infested blankets and wholesale slaughter!
Tim: Everyone has their own perspective!
Tim, by the way, got more exclamation points than I did when they were handing out punctuation.
I do dig the neighborhood in NCH. It's definitely urban, but peppered with people who really care [Possibly to the point of fabulous insanity - their house is kitty-corner to mine, btw. Yay, neighbors.] in a way that evokes the military burbs of my childhood if they'd been populated by the sort of historians who own broadswords. In a word: awesome.