South End under attack by rich white people having babies

my, you're awfully angry! did someone put a starbucks in your neighborhood?

Lets see, where have I lived (in no order)...Brighton, West End, Beacon Hill, Fenway, Brookline Vilage, Coolidge Corner, Los Angeles, Newton. We can't all live the high life of Row Neuman (Hey Ron, how many somerville blogs have you been banned from again? Didn't the Somerville news ban you for over a year?)

You can live in self denial all you want; when you see a report on the news about a crime, please take a note of the person's name, race, and where they live. Then you can turn that high handed, keen power of introspection on yourself.

Wow, you are right! Here is a palace in Rozzie for 289K! Two units, check cashing adjacent!

realtor.com/...&srcnt=46#Detail

Wow, you sure showed me! I am so humbled really!

I am here merely to remind you, of how your idea of social change is to piss and moan about things that are outside of your itty bitty life. For me, this is a random distraction and my civic duty. Though I suppose if the sheep are busy here, they won't be out causing trouble for the real people in the city...think of me as your babysitter. =) After all, someone has to keep the kids in line!

Gentrification goes a couple of ways. Sometimes it means wealthier people moving in. Sometimes, it is the wealthier people moving out.

For decades, if not centuries, black people were restricted in their neighborhood choices. While those folks may not feel comfortable in all places now, they are not as restricted in their choices as they once were. Like everybody else, blacks want good schools and safe neighborhoods and will move to them as they can afford them. This is a huge demographic influence in places like Atlanta. Thus the shift to tidy, traditional working-class enclaves that used to be nearly exclusively white.

If you're talking strictly on a census basis, I assume you're speaking mainly of the little forms they send out once inawhile..which the last time I took one (1999 I think) it seemed most of the questions were trying to make sure I wasn't hispanic, which was kinda confusing because I speak Spanish, and enjoy burritos and corona.

Some of the more interesting things are not what a census says, but what it does not say...like for example, the triple deckers in Charlestown where 30 guatamelans live. Could some of the differences in the year include more honest reporting, as well as deaths, or is that factored into crime rates?

Part of census data which may or may not exist, would be things like the amount of crime in an area, and the racial mix and residency of criminals, or if the population reduced due to people say, being killed, joining the army, etc.

As for the matter at hand, the article we're all talking about and that you townies are all riled up over is barely what I would consider journalism (I didn't realize some anecdotes by some dim broads who can't understanding a parking law or having children within a city may not be as convienent as out in the burbs) and the 'horros of gentrification' that loom in most stories where, to be blunt, a shitty crime ridden area of the city gets better or changes genetic makeup is hardly worth all the hub bub. When my wife used to live in the south end (closed to the Mass Ave end) two things woke us up at night - loud black kids screaming and cursing at each other, or the gay couple upstairs in their 40s arguing and then making up once a week.

Here's a tip - if an area has low property values, people who make less money tend to live there. City services become of shoddy quality, so crime breeds. Is someplace like Somerville full of nightly gang shootouts and crack vials? I don't think so. Does it having some good ethnic restaurants or some crappy farmers market make it a great city? No, I don't think so either. Is it someplace I'd want to live and send my kids to school in? Nope. That doesn't mean you shouldn't. Is a starbucks or higher priced condos the end of the world and the oppression of the brown people? Nope.

You live in a city full of promise and social issues - the difference between here and say, LA, is that people like to pretend there are no racial tensions, race issues, or biases. So all the lilly white people who try to act all PC and bleeding heart can go back to their starbucks on their metrosexual macbooks or live in their crappy duplexes in parts of town I wouldn't visit and feel all smug and all good about themselves, but at the end of the day, try to make your own life better before you try to get outraged about people who, frankly, could care less about you.

As for me? Well, I've been blessed, so I do my part for race relations - I married an Asian girl. ;)

Glob writers who spin anecdotes into trends, but a stroller invasion is not inconsistent with family flight. If they're in strollers, they're too young for school. Perhaps when they are five and six, their moms will no longer think the South End is so golden.

Their bubble popped two years ago, when they began looking for schools for Nate, who is eligible for kindergarten this fall. After a disappointing slog through public and private schools all over the city, they found themselves considering leaving altogether. "Before that, we never thought twice about it," says Stephen. "You never realize it's going to happen to you."

Maybe the stroller invasion will turn tail and run as soon as it's bicycle time, and the South End will be home to only the newly married and the nearly buried.

"I would have said I'd be in the South End forever," says Leslie Kaplan, who runs an advertising agency and who moved to Brookline when she and her husband decided to switch their son out of an expensive private school in the Back Bay. "It's ridiculous money when you think about it. I was talking with people going on vacations and taking their kids to Paris. If they didn't go to private school, I could do that with my kids."

Or perhaps the moms are so rich that they had private school in the plans from day one, and they won't blink an eye. Either way, you can bet on a follow-up from the front page lifestyle section, based on a single anecdote.