— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Colin M Day, White Walls resident filmmaker, takes a look at the history, and future, of Treasure Island with street artist D Young V. They talk about all sorts of good stuff: building the island out of earthquake rubble, the World's Fair, its naval history, and even its gentrification. Yes, white yuppie tech workers can even gentrify a place with two convenience stores and almost no residents. Go figure.
[via White Walls blog]
Comments (5)
Mos def an amazing place from which to watch the sun set behind the SF skyline. (Also great Blue Angels viewing.) The next chapter should be interesting…
I lived there last year for a month and a half with four taiwanese art students that didn’t speak english.
Speaking as one of the first batch of people to live there after they opened it to the general public, I can tell you that there was absolutely no “gentrification”. Rather the opposite, there was (and is) an on-going process of ghettoization due to the city’s stupid placement of section 8 people on separate streets/areas of the island. That is, in stead of interspersing the Section 8 housing amongst all the market rate housing, which seems like it would be the obvious and sensible thing to do, instead they have made entire streets/courts either ONLY Section 8 or ONLY market rate, which means you end up with these little mini-Ghettos.
That, combined with the fact that the maintenance has been cut to nearly nothing in the light of the fact that all the current housing is going to be demolished, means that the place is a complete mess. Boarded up houses, siding and roofing falling off, etc. It’s really sad to see how much the island has gone downhill since I left there back in 2004.
TI was not built out of earthquake rubble. It was built out of sand dredged out of shipping channels
This piece feels a bit like a clever plant by the developers, their lawyers, and lobbyists to disarm the dull headed Mission people who will oppose the project forever. It’s the rich and manipulative reaching out to the stupid.