Christopher Heredia, San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 2009
When Robert Lemon, a UC Berkeley landscape architecture grad student, was a community planner in Columbus, Ohio, he noticed that despite the car-oriented landscape, residents of the city’s Latino community, for the most part, liked to get around on foot and bicycle and, as a result, were bending the neighborhood to their collective will.
Taco trucks and open-air produce markets popped up in vacant parking lots on one of the city’s main shopping thoroughfares. The bicycle was a key mode of transportation even though there weren’t dedicated bike lanes, and colorful murals appeared on the walls of large buildings. The neighborhood had the feel of small-town Oaxaca, the Mexican state from which many of the city’s Latinos hailed.
After moving to California, Lemon found similar changes occurring in Oakland’s Fruitvale and Chinatown neighborhoods. He is conducting a formal survey as part of a fellowship. He said he has gone through Oakland’s diverse neighborhoods, walking up and down the streets asking people questions.
{snip}
The questions on his survey are wide-ranging. He’s asking residents to identify the closest street intersecting their own and how they perceive accessibility to city services—from parks to public transit. He’s seeking their opinions about community safety and neighborhood traffic. He wants to know whether it’s easy or difficult to walk from one place to another.
Reminders of homeland
Preliminary results show that people—especially in Oakland’s ethnic neighborhoods—want bustling neighborhoods with services that remind them of their native land.
Residents in the heavily Latino Fruitvale district enjoy the pedestrian-friendly International Boulevard, where sidewalk vendors sell everything from tacos to toys. In Chinatown, residents say they like the elbow-to-elbow crush of people on the sidewalks shopping at produce stores and other shops, and they like the cacophony of cars and bicycles because it reminds them of big-city life in China.
{snip}
Designing districts
Eric Angstadt, deputy director of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency, said while he hasn’t seen Lemon’s findings, planners are moving toward designing neighborhoods with local character in mind.
{snip}
Galen Chiu, who helps run his family’s flower shop in Oakland’s Chinatown, said his experience jibes with what Lemon is finding in his study. People flock to the neighborhood for the $3.99-per-pound crab, the crates of fresh produce stacked on the sidewalks and the Sunday morning dim sum.
{snip}
Ironically, many of the traffic signs are in English only, in spite of the neighborhood’s large native Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking community. Chiu said one area that could use improvement is neighborhood safety. Most businesses close at 6 p.m., and police are less visible at night, he said.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Christopher Heredia
at cheredia@sfchronicle.com .
(Posted on March 18, 2009)
Comments
Ironically, many of the traffic signs are in English only, in spite of this still being part of the United States…
This is just the beginning, in a few years the author of this piece can write another gleeful article extolling the virtues of above ground sewage and local cockfight tournaments that bring a little bit of home to the local residents.
And what do white Americans like? Or do we even count?
My guess is we like spaced out neighborhoods with relatively large tracts and domiciles where a single nuclear family lives, not crowding 30 people in a trailer to drive housing and rent prices way up.
Where are the underclass, working class, and middleclass/lower-middleclass white neighborhoods? Oh that’s right, there aren’t any anymore. This evil simply had to be erradicated. But when it comes to every single other race, even those from another entire country, they have them here all across america. It’s something for them and the ‘enlightened’ whites to celebrate and educate themselves about.
“and open air produce markets popped up in vacant parking lots”
There are 203 sovereign nations in this world. So
The local Chinatown in my city was taken to task for the deplorable appearance: garbage piled behind restaurants, and buildings which are not being maintained. Yet somehow they want to fund an enormous monument to mark ‘their’ territory as Asiatown.
As always, they will probably seek funds from the white community.
Always expect an argument from a non-white. They are our country’s law-protected minorities, and they believe they are priviledged in any social or public scenario.
You can take the dark-skinned immigrant out of the third world, but you can’t take the third world out of the dark-skinned immigrant.
“And this is mine.” I never cease to be amazed at how people who know they don`t belong there can get confrontational with people who do.”
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 7:08 PM on March 18
—It’s easy Tim - they’re not afraid to break the law because this is part and parcel of their identity and what they are - especially here. They’re fully aware that Whites back down and do nothing. They know they’ve got us on the run.
Does anyone believe any fallout will hit the speaker Pelosi after her self inflicted wound today in front of all the illegals?? She should be removed from her position as speaker NOW.
Aaahhh! As the owner of a vacant building not likely to sell, 70 miles from home, permit me to educate readers
At least the property cannot be stolen, you’re lucky you got your truck back. But don’t touch any illegal, since recent court cases and the judgements in those cases, show that your property CAN BE TAKEN from you and given to those same illegals!!!
We should declare March as Mexican-American Gang History month in order to celebrate the important contribution to American culture and history that these gangs have brought to the American landscape and to celebrate the rich, colorful diversity that they bring to this nation.
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 7:08 PM on March 18
I always find it interesting that the people who have socialistic ideas about communal property and ownership, never seem to have anything that I want.
Always expect an argument from a non-white. They are our country’s law-protected minorities, and they believe they are priviledged in any social or public scenario.
Why? Because they know they can get away with it.
I lived in Oakland during the 1960’s. Fruitvale Avenue was a respectable area where we used to walk in the evening with our small children. Oakland China Town also was very clean and safe.
The whole area is now a ruptured septic tank. Thank the liberal politicians who are corrupted by big business for ruining this whole nation.
Many areas of Cal. such as Oakland, L. A. etc. actually make 3rd world contries look like paradise.
Unless and until AMERICANS say ‘to hell with it’, roll up their sleeves and do a job our Government refuses to do… this cancer (immigration) will just keep spreading… and spreading… and spreading!
I’ve become accustomed (not really) to feeling like a visitor in parts of my own country, and I enjoy going to the Fruitvale section and eating the authentic and delicious tacos out of the the little “step-van” kitchens parked on “vacant” lots, and sitting and talking with the Hispanics eating there.
It accomplishes little to cower inside our domiciles in front of our computers b**ching and moaning about cultures that are still driving forward, pressing their life into whatever space they find.
White culture and society is sick unto death in this country, in Europe, in Canada, wherever it lingers—we’ve lost our way.
Who can see the way out? Hopefully our younger people, under the press of the increasing insanity of what’s demanded of them, will develop the same arrogance and disregard for niceties that this thread so laments in these foreign invaders, and will begin to thrust outward themselves.
A visceral dislike of being dispossessed, felt by young whites scarcely able to articulate that feeling, but disposed by their nature to act on it, may get the ball rolling.
When people like those of us who post here have become irrelevant, we’ll know progress is being made.
The easiest thing to remember is this. Third world countries (and neighborhoods) are third world countries because they are populated by third world people, and that Like, Likes, Like. Except when it comes to White People that becomes a Hate Crime.
Take heart! If you look closely, you can still find us. I am middle aged, white, and happily married. We live on two clean, well kept acres that back up on natural wetland. Our ‘subdivision’ is very small, less than 30 homes, all on 1+ acres. We are all white. Some are retired, some have children, all are well mannered and helpful. We are ‘off the beaten path’, but close enough to town (small, 99.9% white) that I don’t drive more than 10 minutes for groceries, but have to drive 30 minutes to a mall or Walmart. Perfect.
Yeah, it happened in my old neighborhood, too. There the Indo-Caribbeans now celebrate their yearly hindu festival “Phag Woo”, where they run around covering each other with some kind of dust or flour, and their Festival of Lights, where they spread a whole bunch of candles around those old frame houses and have caused fires galore in those overcrowded once single family dwellings. Sikhs had taken over an old Presbyterian church for their temple, decided they didn’t like it and torched the place for the insurance (yes, the fire was suspicious), after which they built this monstrosity straight out of Calcutta. They can be seen there today, with their long beards and white robes, staring down anyone not them.
Archie Bunker was right.
I lived for about a year in the Fruitvale district. Here are some memories: Locking and loading the rifle every night, getting mugged 3 blocks from home, police helicopters all night, every night,an old black woman “trick-or-treating” for alcohol while she dragged her granddaughter behind her, a neighbor’s car getting torched over a drug deal. I’d stood outside yelling “Fire!” for about 30 seconds before calling the Fire Department. I was the only one who called. After it was put out, I told the captain that I’d been yelling “Fire!” at the top of my lungs. When he asked the “victim” if she didn’t hear me, she said “I heard somebody yelling, but I didn’t know who it was.” Glad I moved out…
>>>White culture and society is sick unto death in this country, in Europe, in Canada, wherever it lingers—we’ve lost our way.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! On several counts.
Firstly: White people have NOT lost the way. But simply and stupidly bought into the liberal dogma that “all races are equal. That we OWE the rest of the world to share our wealth. The lifestyle Americans worked for generations to achieve.”
Secondly: Because White people are intelligent enough to limit the size of their families to what is convenient or to the number of children they can properly provide for… this is seen by third-worlders as creating a vacuum… for them to fill.
Thirdly: An artificially engendered mind-set among our White people is that manual labor is only for non-Whites. That Whites should not demean themselves with manual labor jobs. Thus there is a shortage of unskilled labor in our country. Blacks being notoriously lazy and unwilling to work at such jobs.
The result is our stupid government opened the floodgates to immigration by third-worlders… from Latin America, Mexico, Africa, as well as Asiatic countries… China, India, Pakistan, Korea, etc., etc. Do we NEED that many unskilled labor immigrants? Hardly. But the warcry by restaurant owners, food processing industries, healthcare facilities, etc., for example: They’ll be forced out of business for lack of people willing to take the jobs. That they demand people wanting to work for minimal, even sub-minimal wages being a given.
The end result of this misguided and shortsighted national policy is the mess we find ourselves in today. Massive demands on healthcare infrastructure and welfare infrastructure to support those swarming here. Overburdened public school systems trying to educate the offspring of third-worlders. Third-world slums springing up in our communities like weeds. An overall sharp degradation in the quality of American life for White people.
The answer… really the ONLY rational way to resolve this mess? Other than that touted Civil War II some posters have talked about over the years… NOTHING! The genie having been let out of the bottle, is not about to meekly go back in. Nor would those from the third-world countries leave voluntarily.
So, unless there is truth to both the Nostradamus AND the Mayan calendar prophecies… the whole schmear will wrap up in 2012, America will slowly but inexorably sink to third-world status. Which just so happens to be the liberals’ cherished dream.
“This is just the beginning, in a few years the author of this piece can write another gleeful article extolling the virtues of above ground sewage and local cockfight tournaments that bring a little bit of home to the local residents.”
Posted by Eric at 6:18 PM on March 18
Are you kidding? This has long been the exact state of affairs!
When we tolerated them waving their flags and celebrated Cinqco de Mayo with them, we sealed our fate with our tolerance and permissiveness.
I have gone hoarse and been threatened with arrest on my own property for going ballistic over trying to stem the flood of humanity OF ALL RACES tresspassing on my commerical property.
You need to post your property “no trespassing” in accordance with state law if you haven’t already. That probably won’t keep these people off your property, but at least they won’t have grounds for a lawsuit if one of them injures himself while he is there.
Does anyone believe any fallout will hit the speaker Pelosi after her self inflicted wound today in front of all the illegals?? She should be removed from her position as speaker NOW.
Posted by SKIP at 9:13 PM on March 18
This coward can’t see what illegal aliens are doing to this country. She is not fit to be the protector of this country. Why doesn’t she try to represent white people and their interests. And she will probably be elected again in a landslide. Just remember, the most dangerous individual is a white person in the voting booth.
“When people like those of us who post here have become irrelevant, we’ll know progress is being made.”
I imagine I’ll feel a bit resentful as young people express their race consciousness more and more and pass us by. I wonder if it can only begin with organized resistance however. It can be draining enough just posting in here, with the feelings of guilt afterward sometimes, and we’re the ‘victims’, ‘right’, whatever… People don’t even have the heart to talk to each other nowadays. I wonder if we’ll need those working for these identity groups before we can begin to really make a difference.
If these immigrants love their home country’s culture so much, what are they doing here?
America was supposed to be a melting pot, not a salad bowl.
This coward can’t see what illegal aliens are doing to this country. She is not fit to be the protector of this country. Why doesn’t she try to represent white people and their interests. And she will probably be elected again in a landslide. Just remember, the most dangerous individual is a white person in the voting booth.
It’s even scarier to realize that this traitor is 3rd in line for the throne of America!!!
We need to keep demanding the illegals out of our country. Eventually our voices will cause this issue to come to a decisive event - and we win either way. If the nation collapses over illegal foreign invasion then that is far better than continuing down a path of ruin for all of us. I say there are even legal people in America that were legalized illegally and they too need to go home. Where is our sovereignty?
These people love their culture and want to live in a place that reminds them of their culture, then why don’t they go back to their homeland????
I’ve become accustomed (not really) to feeling like a visitor in parts of my own country, and I enjoy going to the Fruitvale section and eating the authentic and delicious tacos out of the the little “step-van” kitchens parked on “vacant” lots, and sitting and talking with the Hispanics eating there.
You feel like an outsider? Then why do you go there? Why do you patronize their businesses? You complain that you feel like a visitor in your own country, then you say you “enjoy” it!!!
Today’s immigrants (legal and illegal) are a far cry from those erstwhile immigrants that were attracted to “Americanism”. Some are so spoiled that they can now have “Designer Neighborhoods”, tailored to their own preconceived wants and desires.
