#bit frustrated with myself and the whole fucking world and im going to a protest of sorts and getting buzzed after but i have a full

[milflewis]

i generally walk around like 🫤🙃😐 but tonight i’m like. fight me 🙄 what is going onnnn

[cassyapper]

OKAY IVE ACTUALLY PLAYED TWO SESSIONS SINCE MY LAST POST SO IM GONNA COMBINE THEM HERE SORRY FOR THE LENGTH BUT,,IVE COME SO FAR I DONT WANNA STOP NOW

this is gonna be very messy cause i WILL be jumping back and forth as things come back to mind so uhh pls enjoy this absolute ramble <3

anyway. i continued playing omori and boy do i have some Thoughts

so first session; i went through the pyre(something i forgot the full name sob) forest/sprout mole village/sweetheart’s castle in one go and let me TELL YOU. DOING THAT WAS FUCKING INSANE I WENT NUTS holy shit.

so anyway.

pyre forest!!!! the lil race against the big spider coming after u for disturbing the smaller spiders mechanic was very fun i had a lot of fun figuring out the best routes to take. i know normally mechanics like that lead to ppl getting frustrated cause u have to keep retrying but i had a lot of fun!!!! sum annoyance but good natured type, th kind that just makes u try harder u know? i just enjoyed it JKFN;FN; candles in the foggy forest....now That is an aesthetic

the rare bear scared the fuckin shit out of me i remember it didn’t attack me straight away so i was like “aw (:” but then when i press x on him it takes me to a BATTLE SCREEN AND SUDDEN THAT MF IS TERRIFYING I WAS LIKE WHWHWHWHWKJDNJ. very funny i honestly wished i recorded my reaction

also omori is afraid of drowning...................................i am breathing heavily. i think whatever happened to mari is related to at least one of the things omori is scared of. so either heights, spiders, or drowning it seems. spiders doesnt seem super likely as a contributor to her death, and while falling from a height is more realistic, such a senseless way of dying doesnt seem to rlly fit ? with the vibe i get from the kiddos in the real world. which makes me think maybe drowning/otherwise suffocating is how she died...but we’ll see. also due to the forgotten library part, we know omori explicitly feared spiders/drowning before mari died so it’s also probable im jus talking out my ass here but still,,,,thoughts

also this motherfucker?

literally fucking terrifying. IT’S BODY IS MADE OF SUCC’D SPROUT MOLES...i still have no idea what exactly it was doing to them but jesus h christ!!!! evil and fucked up. do not feel bad for curbstomping it

sprout mole village!!!! very cute, im v excited to send that one dude his brother’s care package. i like how, when theyre not lost, sprout moles can be real endearing lil guys,,,theyre not my fav lil enemies but (:

also for some reason omori is the first game ive played where i really care about getting achievements ? so i literally did the back and forth on my save file just to get all the season sprout mole achievements JKDJFJ;. i ended up sticking w spring tho before moving on for real cause spring is my fav season irl (:

also i felt SO BAD for cutting down that one sprout mole’s chistmas tree he was just trying to celebrate but i wanted to see that present and coincidentally becoming a christmas ruiner was an achievement so all’s fair in love and war i suppose

ALSO. th fuckin plant monster thing under the scientist sprout mole’s room. major little shop of horror vibes from the design, absolutely adored it!!!!! originally i did  just cut the wire holding the piano over it, ending it in one go, but i was very curious abt it so i reloaded a save file to actually fight it and

i know it only spread that gas to make the kiddos happy cause being happy reduces attack i think ? it decreases attack/defense but seeing the kiddos smile so much was nice (:

however

omori...sunny....son boy.........u good ?

and now. sweetheart

the way the sprout moles completely adore and depend on sweetheart gives me such awful evil vibes and combined with such a luxurious background was fucking incredible

sweetheart herself, speaking of. bitch (sorta affectionately, certainly not derogatory)

i talked to every sprout mole in the audience before taking my seat and i literally dont know why. even when i picked up the pattern of where the unique dialogue could be found (usually the sprout moles farthest right) i still talked to all of them......just in case ? i have no idea. i dont know why i did that. i feel it’s important that i note it tho

LMAO SO WHEN SPROUT MOLE MIKE DID THE MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR YE OLD SPROUT MOLE

I LITERALLY FELT SO FUCKING BAD LMAO I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD NO!!!!!! I DID THAT!!! I KILLED HIM!!! OH MY GOD!!! I WONDER HOW AWKWARD OMORI KEL HERO AND AUBREY FELT IN THE AUDIENCE HOLY SHIT THEY HAD FRONT ROW SEATS TO SPROUT MOLE MIKE’S MOURNING!!! MY GOD FJKFN;;

also sprout mole mike describing 3′7″ inches as ”towering” was the FUNNIEST shit i have ever seen. also i have to wonder, since sweetheart made up the whole show of sweetheart’s quest for hearts in the first place, if she was seriously down to marry a sprout mole if one suited her fancy. jus v funny to me honestly. SPEAKING of sweetheart’s dating patterns I NOTICED THOSE FEM SKELETONS IN THE DUNGEON!!!!! BI SWEETHEART!!!! SHE’S JUST AS DOWN FOR GIRLS AS SHE IS BOYS

i know TECHNICALLY not everyone is in the dungeon for failing to be a good enough suitor but STILL...COME ON. THIS WAS BEFORE WE KNEW THAT. SWEETHEART BI I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

anyway

when the lights when out and lightning struck the third contestant, i knew Immediately something was gonna go down. and when the mustache sprout mole was like “oh yes!! u!! in the striped pjs!! u absolute beast ur perfect!!!” i KNEW hero had just been selected as the replacement i was goign completely fucking nuts i was like OH MY GODNFNG; HIS HEART IS ALREADY TAKEN BY MARI!!!!!!! STOP

i ended up taking so many screenshots during this part cause i was going feral so here take a glance just cause i love, uh, hero

OUR HERO IN SHINING ARMOR DJLBH;KFJB

also GOD FUCKING DAMMIT IM SHORTER THAN HERO

hero shaking on the stage when he was introduced...oh my HEART....IM SO FOND FOR THIS BOY WTF!!!!! DKJDN;N

this is not really NEWS to me since it’s implied hero is tall but like come ON..... sorry just every time i find out a character is explicitly taller than me i need to huff about it, moving on,

HERO FUCKS

sorry i just have so many screenshorts during this aprt cause i was going fucking crazy but

literally terrifying! sweetheart bathes in that shit!! christ!

is blood good for ur skin? i imagine, so long as like...gore isnt in it and it’s solely blood it cant be BAD necessarily......but good ? regardless very fucked up. besides the fact that well, uh, BLOOD, blood is also sticky as hell. ur telling me sweetheart willinglhy bathed in that shit? disgusting. at least thin it out

anyway I HAD SO MUCH FUN DOING THE PUZZLES AT SWEETHEART’S CASTLE....FROM THE DUNGEONS TO THE KITCHENS TO THE BALLROOM TO THE LIBRARY TO THE GARDENS JUST EVERYTHING!!!! IT WAS SO FUN I ENJOYED FIGURING IT OUT SO MUCH IT WAS LITERALLY DELIGHTFUL...I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH THE GAMEPLAY IS SO FUCKING EPIC I LITERALLY HAVE SO MUJCH FUN.......OH MY GOD I JUST. INCREIDBLE!!!! FUCK

also the lil sir maximus bit.........i honestly felt really awful over having to kill them ): i think i even tried running once but it wouldnt let me...it hurt man ): they were just a family....

um but anyway,

i think it was rlly sweet how aubrey protested to the wedding cause she was worried abt sweetheart,,,like i cant rlly explain it idk how to put it into words,,like sweetheart is clearly not mentally well and having an episode, and aubrey being the only one to say “hey what ur doing is self-destructive and isolating” just mmmh. she cares a lot,,,and *i* care aubrey

also sweetheart’s battle theme fucking SLAPPED...SO GODDAMN HARD IM STILL QUAKING OVER IT....FUCKING BANGER YO!!!!!! INCREDIBLE

ah but alas

BASIL........I NOTICED THAT IT WAS HIS GHOST/SHADOW DURING THE EXIT FROM OTHERWORLD AS WELL BUT JUST FUCK

im so worried about basil ):

and it being so obvious that none of the others can see...........them asking omori if he’s okay.....oh my god. i go nuts

and then...the forgotten library part

i literally cried, again, oh my fucking god

these kids loved each other so much they ADORED the time they spent with each other and im QUAKING to know WHAT HAPPENED TO MARI......HOW DID THE FALLOUT GO. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

i know there are multiple endings to this game and on god i am not QUITTING until i get the happiest ending there is for these kids im literally a goddamn fuckign mess oh my god

MARI SHWOING UP IN THE LIBRARY AT ONE POINT AND LEADING OMORI...........IM LTIERALLY GOIGN INSANE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD HE LOVED HIS SISTER SO MUCH HE’S SO CLEARLY LOST WITHOUT HER I CANT FUCKING DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

GOD

okay sorry i just. ive said ti before but the grief in this game is so real and palpable and it aches, it aches so bad. also the white egret orchids in the library...i see u

but regardless.... session two real world electric boogaloo

LOVE that kel is like “so i need to run errands but u wanna come with me right? of course u do!” like fuck i rlly do. kel is just so delightful i would literally do anything to spend time with him

ALSO i noticed u can just refuse to open the door both times kel’s knocked now and it makes me wonder....if u could choose to ignore kel ? and then venture out urself or just ? i wonder what would even happen if u chose to not open the door. im CERTAINLY not doing it myself at the very least not this playthrough but i am curious...i bet that’s how u get a bad ending, by not talking w kel

but anyway....

aubrey and her gang not saying anything in the pizza parlor........i jus think abt that is all

ALSO!! pet rocks!!!!!!!!! LOVE this lil thing it’s so cute. jus rock paper scissors it babey

speaking of lil bits, love all the mini quests in the real world...it’s just rlly fun and builds up this cute lil town........it also makes me think that whatever happened to mari cant have been anything except an accident, bc no one comments on what a tragedy it was to omori. like if it was murder, there’s no way such a horrific situation wouldnt engulf the town for a bit and sweep over it for weeks at least, but that just doesnt seem to have happened. this is def me reading too into it tho;; point is neighbors nice (: also i got the seashell necklace and i go apeshit

ALSO......THE FUCKING...........CHURCH. I VISITED WITH KEL ON A COMPLETE WHIM CAUSE I WAS CURIOUS IF THE PASTOR WOULD TALK MORE ABT AUBREY BUT NO. INSTEAD HE TALKS ABT THE WEIRD VIBE FORM THE GRAVEYARD HE’S GETTING!!! AND THE DUDE WHO CHILLS IN THE GRAVEYARD SAYS SHIT ABT THE SPIRITS GETTING READY FOR SOMEONE TO JOIN THEM!!!! BITCH WAHT THE FUCK

THERE’S NOF UCKING WAY THIS ISNT ABOUT BASIL. THERE IS NO!!! WAY!!!! I SWEAR ON GOD IF BASIL DIES I WILL LOSE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ESP CAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY HE COULD DIE EXCEPT SUICIDE THAT’S WHAT IT HAS BEEN IMPLYING OVER AND OVER I GO NUTS I GO APESHIT NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK

OKAY SORRY I JUST. HHHHHHHHHHH

baby has acquired baby

kel’s family is rlly cute,,,,v heartwarming. i trust them

i do worry abt like...the stark difference between recognizing kel’s accomplishments and hero’s...i just idk. i just keep thinking abt that bit in kel’s story abt hero’s depression when his parents focused on hero and ignored him, and i just. kel’s family is good People but i worry if kel has a good support system...i jus........): i am watching

ahh THE BASIL MISSING PART MADE MY HEART LITERALLY FUCKING DROP..I WAS SO FUCKING PANICKED I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD THIS IS IT BASIL IS DEAD

THANKFULLY HE WASNT BUT HOLY GOD HOW THAT WHOLE SITUATION PANNED OUT MADE ME GO NUTS!!!!!!! BASIL...AUBREY...HER GANG.......FUCK OH M YOGD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

THANK G O D I SNOOPED AROUND KEL’S HOUSE BEFORE LEAVING I WOULD HAVE H A T E D TO FIGHT THEM ALL AT ONCE IM GLAD I WAS ABLE TO JUST PEPPER SPRAY THEM JESUS CHRIST

oh my god kim like asking for aubrey all concerned before deciding to trust her and leaving.....kim i diagnose u with lesbain

the whole fucking. basil almost drowning scene. i seriously feel like ive changed like as a person over it. i am thinking . i am thinking. i am only evee thinking about mari and how omori just loved her so much and how the thought of her gave him strength. th pic of her ghost holding omori’s hand in the water made me cry

MMMM BUT. HERO!!!

I DIE I DIE I DIE HE’S SO PRETTY FUCK ALSO HIM PICKING UP BASIL WOOOOOOOO THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT YEAHHHHHHHH

god i feel so bad about leaving aubrey tho. shes so clearly not okay and she so clearly did not mean to push basil in and oh my GOD I JUST...PLEASE....PLEASE CAN WE JUST TLAK TO HER I NEED TO TLAK TO HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED TO FUCK

the ghosts of omori and aubrey on the swings made me cry out like i had been physically assaulted

AHH BUT THEN TAKING BASIL HOME AND WHILE HE’S IN HIS BED HE JUST SAYS “oh sunny...there’s not way out of this...is there?” I LITERALLY GO BUCKWILD APESHIT INSANE STUPDI!!!!!! BASIL YOURE PUTTING UP A LOT OF ALARMING FLAGS HERE!!! PLEASE DO NOT FUCKING DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK. CHRIST. HELL. SHIT. THIS GAME IS DRIVING ME FUCKING CRAZY

GOD

oh my god but the day ending with hero and kel sleeping over at omori’s house...im kdnd im jkdim im not uhm okay THEY BUILT A BLANKET FORT PLEASE..I LOVE THEM

goddd hero going into the piano room....playing sum........and then asking omori abt the song he and mari used to play on violin...and then THE TITLE SCREEN MUSIC STARTS PLAYING....HI. HI HELLO HI YOU CANT FUCKIGN DO THAT HI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK YOUFBJFGJNGN;EJNE; IM GOIGN NUTS

also the name omori comes from the piano.............interesting...i wonder why sunny likes being called omori in the dreamscape...

god but omori not having a srs hallucination cause he’s w his friends and he feels safe...im gonna sob

However. i did glance into the bathroom mirror. AND INSTEAD OF THE EYE MF IT’S A DISTORTED AS HELL GHOST MARI???IM SO FUCKIGN SCARED. IM SO SCARED. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK? CREEPY AS HELL!!!

ohh my god this GAME

so finally i ended up in whitespace again. do NOT like that omori is completely alone in the world!!! what the FUCK!!!!!!!! I AM SO SCARED AT ALL TIMES. im literally about to go play sum more tho after dinner so i will see what happens. god i jsut......this game is so fucking good it has me by the balls dude. SO glad i decided to play it bruh

anyway thanks for reading all of this if u did, it’s an absolute monster ik and ur a real one

[adambstingus]

Gentrification X: how an academic argument became the people’s protest

In the first of a special series on the impact of gentrification on cities around the world, Dan Hancox meets victims and beneficiaries of this highly emotive issue and finds that the anger is real, and resistance is coming to a head

When Amal had stopped crying, she apologised. I wake up so sick, you know? I have to go to study but I feel so sick. A victim of domestic violence and now a single mother, she lives with her three young children in grimy temporary accommodation in Tooting, south London. She was telling me that Wandsworth council, which has a legal obligation to house the family, tried sending them to a rented flat on the outskirts of Newcastle, then suggested West Bromwich. Shed never heard of either place. I said to them, I already told you, I have a job interview in London, I am studying in London, my children are at school in London, my ex-husband visits every week to help with the children.

West Bromwich, the council insisted, was her last chance. Otherwise she would be declared intentionally homeless, and be put out with her young children on the street. They said, just one option: West Bromwich. If I said no, they wouldnt give me another chance.

This was one London councils response to the housing crisis to spend £5m on properties for their poorer families, hundreds of miles away, while across the borough, the Meccano scaffolds rose up for the £15bn development of Nine Elms, where most flats will cost more than £1m.

The same year I met Amal, in 2014, on the other side of London the now notorious Focus E15 Mums were stepping up their campaign to remain in the city where theyd been born. Nine billion pounds on the Olympics and theyre telling us and our babies we have to go live in Hastings, lamented 19-year-old Adora Chilaisha during their occupation of East Thames housing association offices, as the hokey cokey played out in the background. Theres no way Im going anywhere, she said. My boy Desean is one, and I dont want him to grow up away from his family, from his home. I dont know anyone in Hastings.

An elderly man walks past a regeneration project hoarding in Elephant & Castle, London. Photograph: Richard Baker/In Pictures/Corbis

Two years later, both Amal and Adora and their children are still in London after a long and exhausting struggle against the authorities to simply stay where they are. Meanwhile, those same authorities prostrate themselves before luxury property developers, Chinese business conglomerates and buy-to-let rentiers.

Gentrification is an intensely emotive issue with almost endless potential for argument. That shouldnt be in the least bit surprising it speaks to fundamental questions of home, identity and community, how those places define us, and how we define them. The process of displacement of societys poorest members is, of course, not a new thing. You can trace it back centuries, to a time when there was a literal gentry responsible for social cleansing; when the bailiffs were on horseback and artisanal was a descriptor of a pre-industrial social class, rather than vogueish hipster branding.

Nonetheless, there is something of the zeitgeist about gentrification. Until a few years ago, only academic geographers and housing campaigners used the term. In recent years, however, the subject has entered the mainstream, and the word has become increasingly ubiquitous in what seems like almost every city across the world. But it is not only the debate that has intensified: opposition to gentrification is rapidly becoming less marginal, and more organised. While it is easy to locate historical rent strikes and neighbourhood uprisings to what you might call gentrification avant la lettre, for the first time, gentrification itself is a serious point of political contention and resistance.

The tipping point in the UK came last autumn, when members of Class Wars so-called Fuck Parade, flaming torches in hand, daubed SCUM on the windows of east Londons quintessential hipster cafe, Cereal Killer. The restaurant was already castigated by Channel Four News for serving £4 bowls of cereal in a borough in which thousands of poor families cant afford to feed their children. Although several people, myself included, argued that the bearded cereal entrepreneurs were hardly gentrifications true villains, the news was reported around the world not just as a riot that launched a thousand hot takes, but as the expression of a rising tide of anger. The issue had leaped into the mainstream.

The Cereal Killer Cafe in protest in Shoreditch, London. Photograph: @jamieosman

Last month, the pre-Christmas episode of This American Life featured an astonishing segment about a San Francisco dad going to see his six-year-old daughter in her school play, and discovering that the entire show was a fierce polemic against the malign influence of tech companies making the city a sterile playground for the rich. The play culminates in a huge demonstration outside city hall, with the young children holding placards reading resistance = love of community and singing that the city is not for sale.

So why now? The short answer is demand and supply: demand for well-positioned urban space is higher than ever, while the supply of housing options for the urban poor, and the strength and willingness of the state to provide them, is weaker than in decades. In urban policy, we are witnessing the triumph of the market and the capitulation of the state. If an area becomes desirable to those with money regardless if it was hitherto undesirable or dominated by public housing then sooner or later, the wealthy will get what they want. The problem, said Yolande Barthes from Savills estate agents at a Guardian Live debate last month, is the area of London that people want to live in hasnt expanded at the same rate as the population.

As Londons affordable housing crisis deepens spurred by the collapse of new social housing construction, and the sale of hundreds of thousands more social flats under right-to-buy the galvanisation of the British capitals local communities has been astonishing. This customised Google Map, created by Action East End, drops pins on the map for each hyper-local campaign. From Save Chrisp Street Market in the east to Save Portobello Road Market in the west, the campaigns many formed only in the last year range from demands to protect existing social housing, to protests against new luxury flat developments or against the destruction of community assets such as much-loved markets, nurseries, pubs and small businesses. At the time of writing, there are 53 different campaigns.

Focus E15 Mums fought eviction from the Carpenters Estate. Photograph: Jess Hurd/Guardian

One is Reclaim Brixton, who formed in March 2015 in opposition to the rapidly accelerating gentrification of the south London area. Co-founder Cyndi Anafos mother used to run a Ghanaian grocery in the covered market that has recently been rebranded Brixton Village, a target destination for food tourists and wealthy Londoners. Via social media, Anafo and friends arranged meetings, leading to a carnival-cum-demonstration in Brixton town centre that drew thousands and attracted widespread national media attention. For about 20 years its been on the edge of gentrification, Anafo says. But the last five or six years its all come to the fore Reclaim Brixton came about chiefly through frustration.

While the transformation of Brixton is visible in the proliferation of more expensive shops, bars and restaurants, and the influx of a non-resident, affluent demographic visiting places like Champagne + Fromage, Anafo is clear that the cultural and commercial changes are not the main event. It all comes down to housing, she says. Being a kind of accidental activist, and getting to know all the existing housing groups, made me realise the severity of the situation on the ground in Brixton, meeting people who are on eviction lists. People moan about particular types of businesses or shops, or estate agents like Foxtons, but my feeling is that rent stabilisation is something that could help everyone.

Last June, Berlin made headlines when it began enforcing rent controls for all, limiting landlords to charging new tenants more than 10% above the local average. The previous year rents had gone up by more than 9%. We dont want a situation like in London or Paris, said Reiner Wild of the Berlin Tenants Association. Such strident legislation to protect poorer citizens does not just drop out of the sky, of course. It emerges from a history of equally robust civic campaigning on housing, gentrification and the right to the city.

The Tacheles in Berlin was formed in the 1990s as a squat by artists seeking to save the building from demolition. It closed in 2012. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty

Nottingham University geographer Alex Vasudevan, author of a recent book on the subject, Metropolitan Preoccupations, says Berlin is in a sense diametrically different from London its a very poor city, where wages are one-third lower than its western German neighbours. In the wake of unification Berlin has seen waves of gentrification, while remaining very poor by German standards, says Vasudevan. Before the fall of the wall, there were subsidies given to squatters to renovate buildings, and they would be legalised as a result a kind of compromise. But that programme ended in 2002, and since the wall came down Berlin has become this laboratory of neoliberal urban governance.

As in London, Vasudevan says, funding for social housing collapsed, and simultaneously thousands of what used to be social housing properties were privatised. Berlin tried to become a financial centre. It failed. So then they went with the whole creative city agenda, or at least a version of it, connected with touristification and this kind of Airbnb urbanism. Theres a great Aibrnb map of Kreuzberg: until recently there was only one property in that neighbourhood that was available on the normal rental market everything else was Airbnb.

Grassroots resistance in Berlin has revolved mostly around very local geographies, such as saving one particular building, park, housing project, or even fighting the eviction of a much-loved Turkish grocery store. Nonetheless, Vasudevan explains that each victory has galvanised the city as a whole, and made gentrification even more of a common talking point than it is in London. The challenge now has been scaling up, making connections, and sharing information between neighbourhoods, and even internationally.

Theyve managed to get the rent cap by just being incredibly well-organised, and absolutely dogged and they are also good at talking to each other. You have local working-class Germans who remained in Kreuzberg, and Turkish migrants collaborating; so everything is written in both German and Turkish, theyre all networked.

The gigantic crocheted tribute to Wes Anderson which appeared at Bushwick Flea Market in Brooklyn. Photograph: London Kaye

Theyre also talking to the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) in Spain, the grassroots group whose phenomenal success of blocking thousands of evictions propelled its spokeswoman, Ada Colau, to become mayor of Barcelona. Spains housing crisis has been so destructive that the PAHs use of community self-organisation and support, and direct action to block evictions, has been copied across the world. Ive seen Spanish parents in tears in PAH meetings, being comforted by their foreign-born (often Latin American) neighbours, before rallying to take on the banks trying to evict them. Ive also seen Sí Se Puede, the PAH documentary, screened to housing activists in London. The international sharing of both tactics and inspiration highlights globalisations double-edged sword: property developers and investors may be operating simultaneously in Berlin, London and Barcelona, but the people resisting gentrification in these cities are beginning to network themselves, too.

What remains to be seen is whether campaigning against gentrification will grow into any city-wide protests. Certainly, the G word has been tapped as the new culprit for a lot of urban tensions emerging from the influx of younger, whiter, wealthier people into city cores. After a yarn-bombing artist, with the support of the hipster Brooklyn Flea market, put up a 15ft crochet homage to Wes Anderson on the exterior wall of his family home in Bushwick without asking for permission, New Yorker Will Giron wrote: Gentrification has gotten to the point where every time I see a group of young white millennials in the hood my heart starts racing and a sense of anxiety starts falling over me.

***

The argument that gentrification represents a kind of urban neocolonialism is hard to miss. Spike Lee made it clear with his viral rant against Christopher Columbus syndrome in Brooklyn. Indeed, after decades of white flight to the US suburbs, since 2010 American cities have seen increases in white populations. Protests in 2014 targeted Microsofts corporate shuttle buses in Seattle; not only did they raise rents, went the argument, they didnt integrate, adding to social tensions in a city where working-class African-Americans were being pushed out. That same year, a video went viral of (older, whiter) Dropbox employees trying to get rid of mostly Latino young people from a football pitch in San Franciscos Mission district. (The Latinos protested, and won.)

It is surely the higher-profile, less sensitive invasions that get the headlines, but they speak to a deeper malaise of newly arriving communities with no interest in connecting with the existing populations they are displacing. Dont let the door hit you on the way out, they seem to say.

The Strata tower in Elephant & Castle, London. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Inevitably, the rise of anti-gentrification sentiment and action has provoked a counter-attack, either to defend the process or deny it exists. Critics of gentrification romanticise working-class poverty, goes the main line of argument. They hate change, and fetishise urban decrepitude. Dont you want the area to look nice? Dont you want poor people to have better lives? Giles Coren characterised anti-gentrifiers last year as middle-aged, middle-class dinosaurs who are determined to keep London shitty. Why? A mixture, he said, of aesthetics, nostalgia and condescension: Snobs [who] like the thought of people less well off than themselves scoffing rubbish [food], so they can keep on looking down at them for it.

This shit but real versus polished but soulless dichotomy was borne out in Hackney in London in 2009, when the boroughs mayor, Jules Pipe, condemned opponents of regeneration for wanting to keep Hackney crap prompting a tongue-in-cheek campaign proposing to do exactly that. The sad irony is that local community groups calling for positive state intervention to regenerate a local area for example, to make a local park safer, improve litter collection or fix transport will often have to wait for the area to become more affluent and desirable before those changes will take place. And in a grim example of the law of unintended consequences, where urban communities dosucceed in changing their neighbourhood for the better, the result is often higher rents, more interest from developers, and the gradual displacement of the very people who forced those changes into being.

Another argument used against anti-gentrification campaigns is that they are fighting a force of nature. Gentrification is a process as old as time itself, and you may as well just protest against the changing of the seasons. There is a tendency, as with anything, for older, more experienced commentators to take a puff on their pipe and remark, Oh you hot-heads, do you think any of this is new? This kind of response, while containing some truth, is often used to stifle action. This has all happened before carries with it an unstated corollary, … and is thus an organic, inevitable and inexorable process and, presumably, since we are both standing here today having this discussion, with all of our limbs intact, and roofs over our head, not an especially harmful one.

It is true that the feared mass exodus of poorer residents from inner London since the Conservatives introduced the bedroom tax and benefit caps has not occurred. Anecdotal evidence from charities and food banks suggests many are staying, paying more rent and just getting poorer. But the numbers of those forced out are still increasing substantially. Many people who are placed in temporary accommodation in outer London and deal with some horrendous conditions, jars of bugs and all are travelling enormous distances to work or school. Perhaps the most dramatic single visualisation of how gentrification is changing our cities is this map of the displacement of former residents of Elephant & Castles substantial social housing project, the Heygate Estate.

As the critic Jonathan Meades wrote in 2006: Privilege is centripetal. Want is centrifugal in the future, deprivation, crime and riots will be comfortably confined to outside the ring road.

The architects of gentrification are extremely careful not to talk about it. Given the word was coined by a Marxist, and is most often used by opponents of the property industry, this is good common sense on their part. When in 2014 I was asked to interview a property developer about gentrification, I worked through seven or eight before I found one willing to return my calls. Though I was careful not to scare them off by uttering the G word, their PR departments were too good at obfuscating until someone at property giant Bouygues Development agreed to speak.

Richard Fagg, deputy managing director, was neither hostile nor evasive, but still chose his words carefully. He denied that their building of expensive new blocks of flats would lead to any displacement. Instead, he suggested that poorer areas would benefit from becoming blended communities.

In the poor parts of London where weve been working in the past, they have been and I use this term politely but they have been social enclaves, Fagg said. No one buys homes there, because your money will probably depreciate. But thats changing. So hopefully, the likes of where were working in Barking, people are taking their hard-earned cash, investing it in a mortgage, buying a property because there youre getting good capital growth over time in the future. Yes, its starting at a low base. But youre going to get good growth, because the whole area is changing. Its not gentrification. Its just becoming a more balancedcommunity.

Fagg was not factually wrong about the demographic composition of London areas such as Barking, north Peckham or Elephant & Castle. In fact, many are concerned that whats happening to the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle will become an example that is replicated in the years to come. As the 1950s and 1960s tower blocks reach the end of their life a decline hastened by years of disinvestment and failure to address poverty one popular development model says they should be demolished and replaced with mixed use developments. Social problems are supposedly reduced if you dont have enclaves.

Simon Elmer from Architects for Social Housing points to Andrew Adoniss report City Villages: More Homes, Better Communities, which is the basis for Conservative housing plans, embodied in the housing bill currently going through parliament. The report recommends recategorising all social housing estates as brownfield land. In greater London, that amounts to 3,500 estates, 360,000 homes and more than one million people. The concern, says Elmer in a paper entitled The London Clearances, is that these ageing estates will be demolished and replaced with the same mix of luxury flats and affordable housing that have cropped up in Elephant Park, the new private development being built in place of the Heygate, and in which a two-bedroom flat will set you back £659,000. This past weekend David Cameron gave further shape to this plan when he announced a blitz on poverty, suggesting the demolition of sink estates in favour of more homes for private rent.

A protester smashes the front window of the Foxtons estate agency in Brixton. Photograph: Pierre Alozie/Demotix/Corbis

The property industry, meanwhile, has become markedly more sophisticated in how it readies the ground for demographic transformation, by engineering the change in atmosphere that will draw in young creatives to a new area. (Again, the colonial language is always bubbling just under the surface.) Sometimes this is called place-making, and amounts to extravagant marketing exercises that seek to brand (or rebrand) an area, to follow in the footsteps of the advertising industry and sell not just a product, the bricks and mortar, but an entire aspirational lifestyle.

We dont think its good enough to build a lovely flat, anyone can build a lovely flat anywhere, Fagg told me. From the very first moment, even before seeking planning permission, marketing is at the heart of your strategy. What are you offering over and above every London borough, every other developer? Particularly in London, when everyone is competing for your hard-earned capital to invest in their new location? In some cases, place-making has meant going to extraordinary lengths: in poor parts of Harlem, estate agents bought up vacant street-front commercial properties and opened four trendy coffee shops, in an unabashed attempt to instigate gentrification themselves.

Newham council released a promotional video, Regeneration Supernova, to encourage development in the borough.

It isnt the most flashy cultural manifestations of gentrification, the cereal cafes and the hipster baristas, who are the most influential actors in this process. Indeed, they are a distraction from where the most important decisions are taken. It is often the less glamorous and headline-grabbing developments, such as the granting of planning permission, the cynical redefining of affordable housing to mean 80% of market rate (it used to be more like 50%), the payment of cash to struggling councils by developers wishing to avoid their legal section 106 requirement to build affordable housing, or the eviction of poor families with no access to the media, that go under the radar, and where the real pain of gentrification resides.

Saying that, the cultural manifestations of gentrification do matter. It is partly about symbolism, about a change in atmosphere that tells poorer residents that, soon, they will no longer belong. Or, in areas with an explosion of attractive bars and clubs, it is about the behaviour of the new arrivals; where that sense of belonging is indirectly seized from poorer families by revellers, students and nightlife tourists who drunkenly smash their beer bottles on the pavement.

A new independent boutique coffee shop may be benign in itself, but does it help usher in a new clientele to the area, even as a bridge-and-tunnel, just-visiting crowd? Will other hipster businesses follow suit? Will this surge lead to a buzz, to press coverage in newspapers aimed at middle-classes with the money to buy property, or help to entice buy-to-let landlords, property developer interest, and estate agents revaluation? Does this then entice bigger chain shops and cafes, lead to small businesses closing and rents rising? As the hugely telling place-making videos make abundantly clear, for the money-men, a proliferation of art galleries, hipsters and small independent businesses are a great sign. Indeed, for the sharper investors, by the time Starbucks arrives, youre already too late.

***

Last year I saw standup comedian Liam Williams tell a joke which went broadly as follows: Everyones talking about gentrification at the moment, and I can understand why. But its a difficult one, isnt it? There are so many pros and cons. On the one hand, your local area is nicer, safer, cleaner, there are cool new shops and cafes and bars to go to. But on the downside, you have to feel guilty about it.

A man makes coffee at a boutique cafe in Brixton. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

It was delivered sardonically, undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek, but was also a useful pointer to white, liberal, middle-class feeling. It was also an unintended guide to what we talk about when we talk about gentrification that the filter for the media conversation remains depressingly narrow. The rise in volume of media coverage of gentrification in Britain has not been accompanied by a rise in awareness that minority citizens are more likely to be victims of displacement. The neighbourhoods on the receiving end of racial profiling and stop-and-search by police, or aggressive raids by border agents, are the same ones transforming into places ready to have the word village added to their name. For every story about the Focus E15 mums there have been two more along the lines of Im middle-class and even Im being pushed out of London.

Hard though it clearly is for them to believe, gentrification is not about newspaper columnists who want a bigger garden having to move to zone three. It is about people like Maria, a single mum of three forced out of Westminster into damp, cold, asthma-inducing temporary accommodation in Haringey. Although she is pregnant and has back problems, when I met her Maria was taking her kids on the 90-minute, three-bus journey back to their school in Westminster every morning, just to retain a modicum of stability. She would then spend the day sitting, penniless, in Westfield shopping centre, to keep warm.

At other times there is a risk of chauvinism and outright xenophobia. Anti-gentrification artist Gram Hilleard had his sardonic postcards featured in the Observer last year, and in an accompanying interview lamented that his family had been in the same area of London for the last 200 years, but now the indigenous Londoners have been moved out. Its not only suspect to talk about indigenous people in a major cosmopolitan city, its also a misunderstanding of what a city like London has always been.

Today, more than 300 languages are spoken and 36.7% of the population were born overseas; the proportion of people who can claim their family have been in the same area of any major city for 200 years continuously must be microscopically small. Legitimate coverage of super-rich Qatari, Chinese or Emirati investors buying up high-end properties in London and then leaving them empty can easily be taken out of proportion, and spill over into the misguided notion that the problem is wealthy foreigners, not wealthy investors. But what about our plucky homegrown rentiers, not to mention those granting planning permission to luxury flats and hotels rather than concentrating on building genuinely affordable homes?

Gentrification is a viscerally emotive subject. People take it incredibly personally. As the debate grows louder, fingers will be pointed wildly in every direction. I think I first noticed gentrification, before Id ever heard the word, when the branch of the discount supermarket Iceland in Balham, where I grew up in the 1980s, closed and was replaced by an organic supermarket called As Nature Intended.

In my childhood, this part of London wasnt particularly one thing or the other; neither particularly posh nor poor, central but not that central, mixed by race and class and age, the kind of area that thrived precisely because it didnt have a particularly clear identity. A couple of years after the organic supermarket opened, I saw a property advert on the tube that had created annoying alliterative couplets out of different London place names. Balham was Bankers Balham. I have rarely felt so ashamed. But I also know that none of this is at all important, in the scheme of things that places change, and they should change, and getting a bit sentimental about the fact you cant go home again is part of growing up.

The challenge for the citizens of the 21st century is to decouple this kind of personal sentiment from the generally unheard or ignored stories of displacement and suffering, from the resounding triumph of private profit in civic life over everything else trampling, in particular, the idea that shelter and the right to the city ought to be fundamental human rights. Gentrification is becoming one of the defining issues of our age.

As rich and poor people alike continue to flock to cities like London, Berlin and San Francisco, either for work or a better quality of life, the controversies will only intensify and multiply. Apologists for gentrification can continue to pretend a city is a force of nature, and displacement of poor people from their homes just ripples on the tide, but the rising popular sentiment against social cleansing is not merely a fabrication of leftwing activists, academics or journalists. The anger is real, and the determination to resist is growing.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/gentrification-x-how-an-academic-argument-became-the-peoples-protest/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181391054767

[papatens-blog]

Ten || Oh Sweet Verona (f.)

+in which the art of the artist admires the art before her+ "Ohhh sweet Verona, with your blue and gold horizons how you dance upon me with all your glory....Oh....Sweet....Verona~" I sing loudly on the secluded cliff. "You know, it would make my job a lot easier if you didn't move so much!" Someone yelled to me from behind causing me to jump from the shock. Turning around I noticed a boy around my age sitting in front of a wooden easel, he held a paint palette in his left and a paint brush in his right. "Oh im sorry I didn't see you th-" I was about to stand up to leave but I was stopped immediately by the artist. "Sit there for five more minutes at least!" He called, I gave him a confused look before turning back to my original position on the edge of the ledge. Ignoring the boy I put on some music to try to forget that he was there. Sighing with a smile I began to concentrate on the scene before me. 'Oh beautiful Verona how lovely you are~' I sang in my head this time. I leaned back and propped myself on my elbows in order to admire the beautiful aqua ocean and the golden blue sky. I twitched slightly at the feeling of two fingers tap my shoulder lightly. Taking one of my earbuds out I turned around to greet whoever was pestering me only to see the artist once again. Standing up I dusted my white pants and stood face first in front of the beautiful being. "Ah, hello there beautiful miss. Here you are~" he said in a sing song voice. Nodding I took the rolled poster from his arms. "Ten! We have to go buddy! Tell your lady friend goodbye and get your ass over here!" One his friends I assume yelled in our direction. "Oh um I guess you have to go?" I spoke quietly, he just chuckled leaving me really confused for a moment. "Why no darling not without knowing your name I shall not go." He flashed me the most beautiful smile ive ever seen with my own two eyes. "My name is y/n, and thank you by the way for this." I smiled at Ten before turning to the rolled up poster. "No problem! I think you'll like it." He smiled as he collected his easel and paint supplies. "Open it when you get to the hotel," he grabbed my hand before giving it a soft loving kiss, I couldn't help but blush as he lingered towards the end of the kiss, "I shall see you again maybe?" He asked, I couldn't help but notice how excited he sounded at the idea of seeing me again. "Definitely but I-" "Fantastic!" He cut me off before running towards his impatient friends. "I leave in a week...." I frowned. Hearing my class tour guide whistle I sighed and gathered my belongings and made my way to her. "Now! How was your free time? Did you guys have fun?! Great! I did too! Now we will all head to a nice restaurant here in Verona for dinner where we will obviously fill ourselves up THEN we are to go straight to the hotel HOWEVER if I'm feeling generous I shall give you guys more free time depending how late we are!" She smiled, none of us could protest at the fair offer. "Now on to the bus you go!" She ushered us in, however just as I was about to enter she pulled me aside. I gave her a quizzical look but stopd with her anyways. "Y/n," she said after the last girl got in, "we have a problem...." I didn't say anything as worry filled me completely. "Your seat will kind of um taken." Widening my eyes I pull away from her grasp. "What?! Am I going to be stuck here?!" I shrieked. She smiled gently as if telling me to calm down to I did exactly that, "No sweetie you will go with the other class they're waiting for you over there," she pointed to the tour bus behind our bus where people were still getting in. "Can I know why?" I asked, "Of course! Well you see they had to separate a couple if you know what I mean...." She gave the thought a disgusting look. "That's fine I guess, see you all at the restaurant?" I was hungry hopefully we would eat together or something, "Why yes! You can meet us there!" She smiled and ushered me to the other class' bus."Everyone this is y/n she will ride with you guys for now! Now please she is really nice so please refrain from being mean!" I cringed at the sudden load of attention being dumped on me. I waited until everyone got on the bus so that way I could see where my seat was. After the last boy got in I stepped inside the bus myself and looked around for a moment to find my seat, after finding my seat I gingerly walked towards it. "Hey kiddo my name is Jaehyun, now please enjoy my girlfriends old seat!" I could easily recognize the sarcasm in his voice therefore I couldn't help but give him what I got. "Aww thank you! I hope you enjoy your lonely ride to the restaurant!" I smiled, he looked angry for a second but then started cracking up in laughter. "Nice my ass you're a cold bitch." Giving him a sarcastic smile I spoke, "What can I say, I give what I get." Rolling my eyes I looked out the window. Sighing I plugged in my earbuds and ignored his angry rant towards me. I couldn't help but feel a bit heavy, I felt as if someone's gaze was upon me. I tried looking at that Jaehyun kid to see if it was him giving me a glare or some shit. He was playing games on his phone before noticing my stare and turning off his phone. "What do you want?" Ignoring the harsh tone of his voice I decided to ask what's been lingering in my head since I sat down by him. "Am I the only one who feels it?" He widened his eyes and backed away. "Sorry kid I have a girlfriend I-" "No. I'd rather drown than even think of liking you that way, I mean, do you feel it too? Like some if staring at us, have you noticed it too?" I whispered closer to his ear. He gave me a look and decided check out the bus only to lean back on his chair with a chuckle, I couldn't help but give him a weird look. "No fucking way buddy, you know he told me he met a beautiful girl earlier and we were all curious about who he was talking about, clearly he DID forget his contacts back in the hotel!" Jaehyun laughed loudly. I wasnt even curious anymore, I was hurt. Hurt because this kid doesn't even know me that well but he's so fucking mean to me. Usually when people said shit like this I didn't really give a fuck, but I don't know when a stranger just assumes terrible things about you it's annoying and frustrating. No longer wanting to speak to him for my own sake I turned my whole body to I was facing the dark sky of Verona. Jaehyun's phone was on our shared seat so when it began to vibrate furiously I felt it. The person texting him must've been really angry or excited who knows to be honest. I took one last look of the beautiful streets of Verona before shutting my eyes. Feeling two light taps on my shoulder I awoke from my slumber only to turn around and see Jaehyun was gone along with everyone else from the bus except for, "Ten?!" I smiled and jumped up to give him a massive bear hug, boy was I happy to see this guy! "Woah there!" He laughed and returned the hug. I pulled away and gave him a relieved smile, he smiles back and ushered me out of the bus. "I apologize for Jaehyun, he doesn't hate you he's just salty his girl was moved to another bus." He smiled after. Just as we got off the bus we were greeted with a loud squeal of excitement. "Y/n! I see you've made a friend! See it's not so bad!" My tour guide exclaimed to us with the happiest smile I've ever seen on her. "Don't bother sitting with us now go along sit with him!" She gave me a wink before skipping over to our class. Looking back at Ten it was easy to see how red his pale cheeks were, smiling excitedly I led him inside the restaurant. The restaurant was beautiful, the walls were decorated with different types of oils, flowers, gods, angels, pictures of random families together....it was a stunning place. "C'mon" Ten tapped my shoulder gently against this time taking the chance to put his arm around my shoulders. I didn't notice who we were seated by until it was too late, "Ten!" Our attention to eachother was distructed by the wails of one of the girls in my class. He looked back at me and gave me a reassuring look for what ever reason, and for some reason I was angry and for some other reason....Ten calmed me down with just that look. He sat right in the front of the girl despite her pulling him towards the seat beside her, it made me feel content. He gave me this cute smile, a smile that could cure any sickness in the world, a smile that could leave on blind from the impact of the beauty. Oh this feeling....what is this feeling? Oh sweet Verona.... Despite her various attempts to talk to him they all went unnoticed. I was happy, happy because I felt as if I was being worshipped by royalty, me, a commoner. I was rich with his attention while others yearned for it. I felt....I dont know, special, for once. The waiter came up to us with a smile, I couldn't help but take in his features. He wore fine tailored black slacks, pearly white buttoned up shirt, very fine and expensive looking leather dress shoes. He was stunning, like a model, but why was he working as a waiter? After taking Ten's order he looked at me but didn't say anything, it was as if he were admiring me?? "Miss, why you are very beautiful I must say so. Because it is only so rare to see such a goddess walk into these doors, here in Verona.... whatever you get I will make it on the house my lady...." he reached down and held my hand only to lay a ginger kiss right on my knuckles. There was a bunch of 'woos' and 'ooos'. The sudden attention caused my cheeks to change color on their own. This was bad but I was too flustered to say anything much less do anything. After taking my order the godly waiter left and left me with Ten and the girl along with her tragic friends. Taking a sip of my water I glanced at Ten who seemed kind of flustered. "Are you alright? You seem-" he stood up out of nowhere and zoomed out of the restaurant. What was his problem? -Admin I've decided to make this part 1 bc im too lazy to finish it all in one