This morning, at 10:30 am, I saw four busy people congregating on my corner. The first, a tall thin woman dressed in casual-corporate garb, scurried around to each of the four cardinal points of the 22nd/Florida crossroads with her camera, taking pictures of 992 Florida street, a six-unit apartment building that houses hipsters, immigrant families and long-time Missionites. She walked off. Three men, dressed in banker’s drag, ambled up the street behind her and stopped below my window. They were mid-conversation, but it was clear that the subject of discussion was my little corner of the world: The East Mission, or as Jay and I privately call it, the Ea-Mi. (Everyone else makes up stupid names for old neighborhoods. So we did, too.)
I heard one of the men say to the other two, “San Francisco is the one place where you can get away with doing what you do- selling apartments without…” before a noisy Honda drowned out his words. They talked some more but the street noise prevented me from hearing what they said. The men walked off. My heart beat fast. I sat down to digest what I’d seen, and what I’d heard. Pictures being taken. Casual conversations on street corners. The neighborhood reviewed, assessed.
And as I sat thinking, another guy wearing a white shirt and a blue tie walked into the middle of the crossroads and raised his phone. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. You could hear the soft warble of the tiny camera capturing 992 Florida Street and swallowing it whole.
I’d had enough. “Excuse me,” I called to him in a hoarse voice. (My voice is barely audible because I’ve been ill.) “Excuse me!” The man looked startled, but, upon seeing me, pocketed his camera and walked over to my window.
“Why are people taking pictures of this neighborhood?” I asked him in a nice voice. He looked like he was preparing to dissemble.
“Oh, well…we’re doing an inspection of the neighborhood,” he said.
“An inspection? Who are you with?”
“The Bank of Guam. We’re looking at buildings.” He clearly wanted to leave.
“Are you looking at that building?” I pointed to 992 Florida.
“Uh, yeah. Yep.” His face was much younger than mine, but his stance and expression were solidly middle aged.
I looked at the 6-unit apartment building, my neighborhood nemesis. Its inhabitants have kept me awake for more nights than I care to remember. I’ve called the police on Sophie, the tenant who lives in unit 992, at least six times to bust up her MDMA-fueled late night raves. I’ve yelled at Manny the affable house painter, who loves to blast the stereo in his truck to shut the fuck up, man, it’s 11 o’clock at night, some of us are trying to sleep, where the hell is your sense, etc…
(…sometimes, early in the morning, the tenant in the lower unit will open the window, particularly if it’s a sunny day, and play dreamy love songs in Spanish. She wakes me up. I feel cranky. Then I look at her, bustling busily around apartment with her capable arms and know it’s time I was awake.
…..another time, late at night: the same woman opened her window to a young man on the sidewalk who was pleading his case. “Te amo,” he said in a stage whisper over and over again. She laughed and told him to go home.)
I’m pretty sure that the ex-gang member who used to live in on the second floor threw a firecracker through my window on the 4th of July because I asked him to stop blasting music for hours on end from his bedroom. (I was born here, he told me.)
I looked back at the nervous guy below my window, a mere foot soldier in the campaign to dislodge the Mission of its long term residents. “Thanks,” I said flatly. He walked off.
So he was taking pictures for the Bank of Guam. Really? Is that tiny country really looking for profit in the streets of the Mission?
I called the Bank of Guam at their office on Montgomery Street. The nice lady told me they weren’t looking for residential properties to purchase in San Francisco, only commercial properties.
I’d been lied to. The foot soldier had dissembled: made some rapid calculations (how much should she know?) and done some fast talking, which would make sense, since real estate speculators in contested areas like the Mission must develop a keen sense of how to obscure, disguise, confusticate and deny. To lie- at first. Later on, there’s no need to lie.
Be careful what you wish for is the moral of this story. I have wished, fervently for quiet. And this is okay: there’s nothing wrong with needing sharp distinction between the noise of the day and the lovely hush of the night, even and especially in a big city. As San Francisco strains towards density, living arrangements between its projected 969,000 inhabitants will have to undergo a series of re-negotiations; between motorists and pedestrians, between locals and newcomers, light and dark, noise and silence.
But the people who have lived in these spacious multi-unit apartments for many years- for entire lifetimes and many generations- need protection. And the machinations of real estate speculators must be exposed to the bright light of scrutiny.
Today, I glared at the foot soldier. In the larger scheme of things, this is a meaningless action, free of consequence for him (it was nice to see him so visibly nervous) but, conjoined with my still-in-the future-action of contacting Eviction Free San Francisco, my momentary intervention into the speculator’s seamless act of swallowing whole neighborhoods may prove to be challenging (to them).
I feel good about stopping his smooth shark-like movements on the streets of my neighborhood and asking him a basic question: what are you doing? And why?
The above image is my re-working of a metaphor-rich WPA poster I found in the Library of Congress archives earlier this week: Displacement strikes like a man-eating shark led by its pilot fish the common speculator.
And as for my frequently expressed umbrage regarding the occupants of 992 Florida Street? I’ll let Sondheim have the last word:
Careful the wish you make/Wishes are children
Careful the path they take/Wishes come true, not free
Careful the spell you cast/Not just on children
Sometimes a spell may last/Past what you can see
And turn against you
Careful the tale you tell….
That is the spell
See any pilot fish in your neighborhood? Contact your local housing activist.
Elizabeth Creely 