Polk Gulch itself is going through a transformation. For the last 6 years or so it has become the chosen place, by default, for developers to built the cookie cutter condos that are all the rage now. In many other parts of the City developers have been stopped from razing whole sections of neighborhoods like mine. The dot com laid the ground for that as during that time Soma was all but destroyed by redevelopment. Almost all of the post '06 history was wiped out in huge swaths putting the Leather community among others who called Soma home, under pressure from the forces of gentrification. The developers, whose only intention in my opinion was the making money, destroyed much of Soma. In the ensuing "peoples revolt", the City has backed down in the "wipe the slate clean" mentality of redevelopment. However, they have lost their way in the process. Polk Gulch and the ending of CH is a prime example of this.
Everywhere you look, buildings that even sniff of being underutilized are being targeted by developers. That was the case with an old church building behind The Cinch. It was replaced by condos and it is those residents who are complaining about the noise.
We have lost much here in my neighborhood and with each passing day and with each building lost, we the residents here continue to lose a part of ourselves and our community.
But I can't lay the entire blame at the feet of developers or the steps of City Hall. We, the gay community, are to blame too. Not because we didn't fight long or hard enough, but because we are gentrifying too. It is evident everywhere you look. We, I suppose, have been seduced by the promises of freedom, equal rights, and the ability to live openly anywhere we chose. But at what cost?
Polk Gulch had been, in the 1960's and early 70's, the first true Gay neighborhood before The Castro became the place to be. At it's heyday there were 25 plus bars and tons of gay owned and operated businesses. That is why I moved here. But Polk wasn't just a gay neighborhood. There was a distinct feeling of rootedness here. Of history. Yes, the old Polk was wiped out in the great Quake and Fire, but it's reincarnation still lived and breathed it's history. If you listened closely you could still here the cable cars trundling up and down the Polk, Sutter, and Larkin Streets. You could hear the clip clop of the horses as they came out of their barns before making their way up to the Mansions on Van Ness. You could smell the grittiness of McTeague's back alleys. It was all there for me and I dare say probably for many others too. That connection to it's roots, the ones so many of us were torn from when our family's of origin denied our existence, became our rootedness, our family. But that attraction, that pull towards community and visibility has all but gone here on Polk; and if we are not careful, the Castro too. Not because of redevelopment, although it has hastened it's death, but because we have in many ways achieved what were have always fought for. The right to, for the most part, live freely and openly whereever we chose. The problem with that is we, here in San Francisco, have achieved what the rest of the country has not. And in the process we are losing our community and our meeting places, the very ones we fled to when we were escaping our own hells.
I feel if we are not careful we may very well loss what we have fought for so hard. I feel that when we move out of our neighborhoods, spreading out across the City and Bay Area, we loss not only our connectiveness but our visibility too. In a sense we are willingly going back into the closet from which we came just for the sake of saying we have arrived. That we have made it. But again I ask at what cost?
I feel strongly that we still need our communities like Polk, Castro and in it's smaller incarnation, Charlie Horse, not only for it to be a beacon to the kids everywhere who want to live the dream but for ourselves too. For our sense of community, rootedness, and more importantly our need to be visible.
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