Read this article today from the local paper about a strip mall I visit near my house. I feel like an old hippie, coming of age in the late 1960s or the 1970s, but that article and the quotes were rather shocking. The word "Gentrified" actually appears early on in the article and is the second of a slew or off-putting phrases. "The right fit" was the first one. So the owner name drops the desirable retail space that's already there. Which he already kicked out the barber shop that had been there forever, and he neglects to mention Ci-Ci's pizza (not that I'm a fan, but apparently they're too "low-end"), Baskin Robbins (it's not fancy we can all agree but that's some insanely good ice cream), nor did he mention the pet store run by an Asian family. Seems fishy (no pun intended, ya know, pet store. Anyways...)
That's red flags number three & four. The use of the term "low-end" in conjunction with only naming the desirable retail spaces. Red flag number six is the term "boutique bowling alley". What does that even mean? We have a bowling alley and a bowling alley is a bowling alley. Will this one be themed? Because really all I can think with the word boutique is that they will sell pink, feathery, frilly things and high heeled shoes. Red flag number seven is that he wants the one billionth and one home decor store. Lord knows we need another one of those like we need another hole in our heads! I'm not saying it should be something trashy like a dollar store or like what Etsy became, but the way their talking it would be something so fancy no one could afford to go and shop there and that, ladies and gentlemen is Gentrification. Mr. Miagi with his Bonsai store would probably be turned away. I'm not saying he couldn't afford the rent, but looking at the store he chose, it's doubtful. And that Robert St. John guy owns like eight restaurants in town. They're all exceedingly expensive for the food you get. They're also all the same. It's like McDonalds in a way. It's all the same stuff, but this one's written in Italian and this one's in German so the prices are different, but it's all the same. And just imagine if McDonalds charged you $15 for a hamburger. I mean his food is better than McDonalds, but marginally. This is the man who (he writes articles in the newspaper and local magazines) stated that he always goes to Paris and knows all about Paris, but couldn't tell you that the French guy who opened a French bakery was the real deal. I'm sorry, but if Little Miss Nobody from po-dunk Mississippi, whose only ever been to New Orleans, once to Montreal (to a French (Canadian) bakery) and took four years of French in high school knew the guy and his goods were the real deal from the get go, then can one really take Robert St. John's words with a grain of salt? I mean dude had to state in his article that he went in to this French Bakery, thought the guy was a sham basically; didn't think anything about the place was real for real French. Then goes back to Paris shortly afterwards (and it's like his 30th trip) and only then did he state that the guy was for real (& encouraged people to go there, because for some reason people in this town like him and follow his words on food like they are law?). Just walking in and I knew this guy was the real deal. It could have looked like any place in Mississippi. It wasn't anything special, so didn't seem very Parisian and French, ya know like what you imagine or see in films. But the whole energy in the place screamed, "NOT American". Then you had the guy, who also didn't look American, and was speaking fussy French while baking things in the back. His accent was not French Canadian. It was France French. And I can't tell you how the first taste of the croissant told me it was perfection. This is why I'm always saying, "Past life?" Because I've never been to France in this life time. I've never had breads or patisserie prepared by a French person, or by French standards and yet I knew, this was the winner. THIS is what a croissant should taste like. Not that it was the best croissant I've ever had in that way that a country bumpkin thinks a croissant from Walmart is the best thing ever and perhaps they just haven't tasted the real deal yet; No, I knew it was the real deal. I'll go to Paris one day and have a croissant and say, "Yep, this is just like that real for real French guy that had a bakery in Hattiesburg for a hot minute." I went to a "French" Bakery in New Orleans a few years before this guy (I can't remember his name, started with a J) and upon entering the entire energy screamed, "NEW ORLEANS". The food was good, better than Walmart, but it wasn't right. It wasn't French. It was an American made croissant. I can't explain it because I don't know the French standards of baking, but things like lamination, or they didn't use good butter, or it was overworked or over baked. They used some other recipe or had the stuff shipped to them from somewhere else. It just wasn't right. There wasn't that zing to tell me, "Holy hell this is it!" Or the time we ate at an African cafe in New Orleans. Bennachin; with fare from Cameroon and Gambia. We stepped inside and the energy screamed, "NOT American!". It wasn't the decorations or the interior, it was just the people that owned it, their energy was very un-American, very un-New Orleansian, very something I'd not experienced before. It wasn't even the fact that they had foreign accents. It was the way they walked, the way they handled things, waited the tables. All of the seemingly ordinary and mundane things were not navigated in the same fashion as that of people born in America. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. The owners of Bennachin were lovely, their food was terrific. And I don't mean they touched our food or anything else akin to a health violation. I can't even remember how things were different, they just were and you knew, without hearing them speak or eating their food that this was the real deal. They weren't born and bred Americans who have no ties to Cameroon or Gambia dabbling in the food, just as you knew that the French Bakery guy wasn't some dude from Michigan with Scottish and German ancestry dabbling in French patisserie. Which is why I have such a problem with uppity Mr. St. John whose authority and word on food (& anything he fancies to tell us to follow) rubs me the wrong way. It already did, but that article solidified it. "You've been to fucking France and eaten their food on thirty or more trips and you thought this guy was a sham? But now that you deem him worthy, you'll tell us all to eat there? I don't know fucking shit about anything Parisian or French on a first term basis and I knew the guy was legit just feeling the energy he exuded into his place of business. Asshole." That was five years ago, but while I never try to seek him out, he's always in my face regardless (like him popping up in this article). But he recently opened some cafe. He stated that he wanted it to feel like it had been there since the 1940s and it was a place everyone could feel welcome like it was the regular old place. Pretty much he's charging high prices for Waffle House food. That's bad enough, but then when you saw pictures it bothered me to no end that this place that was supposed to look and feel like it had been there since the forties, in fact looked like a hipster tried to recreate the 1970s. Does he even know anything about anything? He just keeps looking like an idiot and I feel like I'm the only person who can see him for the sham that he is. It's like if I went around and told everyone things about math (a subject I know nothing about). Perhaps in real life he has charisma and that's why people believe him and fall for his bullshit? He only exacerbates the Gentrification going on in this town. I'm all for nice and clean and green spaces, but when you start upping it far beyond fancy and only monopolizing jack asses can afford the rent (or the goods offered), then won't we just live in an upscale Pottersville of Biffco Land? Or perhaps the majority of us will be living in Pottersville or Biffco Land while the minority of the wealthy people live in Gentrification Land?
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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