Rich-Wite People Store "Jack Spade" lies to get beyond zoning requirements so they can gentrify Valencia Street
I sincerely believe a lot of indigenous culture has been gentrified from San Francisco, California. The people who are still around are scraping for money just to stay in the neighborhood they grew up in. Almost in every neighborhood from Mission, Potrero Hill, Hunters Point, Fillmore, and Chinatown has been taken over by people with a lot of money. In every one of these neighborhoods the elite is starting to take over, and poverty stricken people are being unheard, and unrecognized. They have torn down projects in Hunters Point while telling the tenants they can come back, but after the buildings are built they raise the rent ridiculously high so black people cannot afford to move back in. In any one of these neighborhoods people offer a lot of money to the tenants for their homes and then resell the land for a higher rate. Despite all of these horrible factors, as a poverty scholar at Poor Magazine when we had NewsRoom in August a man by the name of Andy Blue came and spoke of unknown problems the Mission District is going through from the inside.
Andy Blue is a rare person because he identifies with having the white class privilege of passing through racism without a problem. He grew up in the Mid West and has lived in San Francisco for sixteen years. He discussed how, when he moved to San Francisco it was diverse and full of good people, but he also discovered the injustices of the communities. Andy consistently said everything he does is a learning process, and he is honored to have the privilege of working with people of color in all aspects of the dilemmas we as poor people go through.
He has been a San Francisco schoolteacher and has volunteered in various campaigns including fighting the sit/lie law, which was viewed in part, as an attempt to criminalize right of poor homeless people to exist in public spaces of the city. A friend of his, Nate Miller, co organized the “Sidewalks are For People” days that involved thousands of people in more than one hundred events on the sidewalks around the city. He gestured and said “I knew we were doing something right when Poor Magazine became involved and did an amazing event art, music, and people power on the sidewalks are for People Day!”
The major problem in the Mission District is Jack Spade. Jack Spade is a high-end corporate men’s clothing and accessories retailer based in New York. Jack Spade is the upstart men’s brand of Kate Spade, a high-end women’s designer with some one hundred eighty nine stores in the United States. Jack Spade is a rich company for rich customers who are happy to pay nine hundred duffel bags. This company wants to move into the Mission for the cool factor that the neighborhood can give to the company. They also see the high priced condos sprouting up all around the neighborhood and see a growing market for their $900 duffel bag, but available storefronts are few in the Mission and Jack Spade has its eyes on the location where Adobe Books was twenty-five years. Adobe book was a pretty special bookstore and community based. The store is a family room of sorts, for the neighborhood and people could hang out there for hours browsing the shelves and reading in the comfy old chairs. For some of the folks living in SRO’s along 16th Street, this was a priceless sort of quasi-public space, like a public library branch without all the rules and with later hours.
Jack Spade wanted the location for their fancy store and was happy to pay triple the rent so before long the buildings new landlord gave Adobe Books the boot and welcomed Jack Spade with open arms. In order to move in, Jack Spade needed to get permitted by the City’s planning Department. Voters actually passed a Formula Retail ordinance in SF, a few years back that is intended to make it more difficult for big chain stores like Jack Spade to move in to places like the Mission. Jack Spade presented that they only had seven chain stores and they were very little. This was the lie that allowed them to come into the neighborhood, and take over. They are putting these high-end expensive stores in which poor - people of color cannot afford. The whole law was to make sure family owned businesses could still remain in the mission as a culture. They are driving local stores out by raising the rent and threatening people to back off, or they will report them to immigration. Now since the rent is high, people of color are moving to Antioch, Sacramento, Richmond, and Oakland.
On October 9th a hearing on the appeal of the appeal of Jack Spade is scheduled,.Tune in to PNN for updates