No one cries as loud or as long as the new residents of a gentrified neighborhood about the inconvenience of fireworks every 4th of July. If you Google it, it's happening in every major city across the country where gentrified neighborhoods experience an exponential uptick in 311 calls.
They not only cry to each other.. But to the police.
In social media neighborhood pages they let tirades loose among posts which usually consist of lost cats/dogs, furniture for sale, and posts asking, “what weeds are these in my yard?” They never go up to their neighbors and ask to have a conversation about it. One neighbor posted a Fox 31 news story about how they're illegal and prefaced it herself with, "Sadly, new residents are afraid to confront their neighbors because of rising violence." Actual recorded violence or the fear of? I asked, she deleted my comments.
The belly-aching in my neighborhood group started in mid June and yet, the day after the big holiday, they’re still going. And going strong. The comments get nastier and more, blatantly if coded, racist as they go along.
One stating, “I wonder how much money went up in smoke last night. Poverty? Looks like they have money to burn.”
And another, "Sorry to say, but the Section 8 people near me must not have jobs in the morning."
In social media neighborhood pages they let tirades loose among posts which usually consist of lost cats/dogs, furniture for sale, and posts asking, “what weeds are these in my yard?” They never go up to their neighbors and ask to have a conversation about it. One neighbor posted a Fox 31 news story about how they're illegal and prefaced it herself with, "Sadly, new residents are afraid to confront their neighbors because of rising violence." Actual recorded violence or the fear of? I asked, she deleted my comments.
The belly-aching in my neighborhood group started in mid June and yet, the day after the big holiday, they’re still going. And going strong. The comments get nastier and more, blatantly if coded, racist as they go along.
One stating, “I wonder how much money went up in smoke last night. Poverty? Looks like they have money to burn.”
And another, "Sorry to say, but the Section 8 people near me must not have jobs in the morning."
What I wonder is... if they really think these private whine sessions will convince generational residents, who’ve been lighting fireworks outside as neighborhood block parties for as long as anyone can remember, to suddenly decide that being outside making noise with their neighbors is inconsiderate and will now stop doing so?
If anything, I think the complaints on Facebook, putting up flyers encouraging neighbors to call the police, and the visible disdain for the traditions of the neighborhood, the very same area the whistleblowers chose to move into, is actually encouraging the longtime residents to push back. After the undoubtedly “loudest fireworks display” in neighborhood history this July 4th, it seems plausible. Like the massive BBQ that took place at an Oakland California Park the week after internet famed BBQ Becky called the police and harassed a family for two hours about their perfectly legal BBQ. Yes, in this case fireworks are illegal in Denver, that's not new. But the tattlers are. Last night was like a giant F- You to the haters.
No one cared about what people wanted in this neighborhood for decades. Let alone what endangered them. The city could not come up with a single clear well-funded mission to correct the wrongs of redlining and revitalize a part of the city long allowed to fall into poverty. When homeowners and community owned businesses struggled to get loans to keep up with aging buildings and targeted coding violations, the city offered no solution. The city’s clear solution in fact was to allow property values to plummet until they were prime picking for developers to come in and sweep up large swaths of the neighborhood from retirees and their children struggling to maintain. Along with them came the suburban dwellers looking to take advantage of the extremely affordable option to move back into the trendy urban areas, bringing their suburban living expectations of peace and quiet for themselves and their beloved pets with them into a sometimes noisy city.
Given the last few years of extreme displacement and the ink coffee type blatant flaunting of gentrification, the residents who have found a way to stay in a neighborhood they no longer feel welcome in, despite it being one their families built, are sick of tip toeing around the feelings of the new residents. The ones who seem to love pets more than people. Keep in mind, our children have to deal with those pets, many unleashed in our parks, barking constantly, and despite many claiming otherwise, the ever present pet waste in public spaces which of course, is a health hazard. We have to deal with the sudden influx of bars and breweries in the neighborhood that bring tons of foot traffic, parking issues, and drunken behavior that does not seem to warrant the same police presence that our local establishments did in the past or even up to present day. We lost Cold Crush, but gained numerous “RiNo” named bars/breweries who have no problem staying off the police radar. Perfect.
It’s disheartening for generational residents to see that suddenly the police are supporting people in this neighborhood like a customer service line for inconveniences and loud noises. However, it’s not the long-time residents getting support. In fact, they are most often the target. There was talk of calling the police on a black man sitting in his Audi TT idling his engine and apparently “watching people.” At first people mentioned they’d seen him occasionally, then exaggeration took hold once there was push back and now suddenly he’s sitting in his car idling his engine several hours per day, several days per week, for four years. I’d say with that frequency, that man lives on that block more than they do. It was a sickening thread of how creepy he was and how he had “darkened windows.” I think those are standard on the expensive Audi TT. Nevertheless, he couldn’t just sit in his own car on a public street without bothering new residents. Residents who barely acknowledged the potentially dangerous outcome of police interactions with a "suspicious black man."
People in the local neighborhood association Facebook page seem to conveniently turn a blind eye to the impact they’ve had on this neighborhood. While developments fit their tastes and lifestyle with aesthetic and sanitized modern architecture and businesses, it’s just as detrimental to the long-time residents as the fireworks they complain about, except their impact is year round and for some life long due to displacement.
Generational residents who are, for the most part, invisible in their wants and needs i.e. affordable housing, support for local community owned businesses, preservation of the culture that spawned the neighborhood moniker, Harlem of the West, and the desire for existing neighborhood schools to receive funding instead of closing and turning into charters. These people are once a year clearly visible and their long-held tradition of being outside with their neighbors, shutting down the block and lighting fireworks lives on for as long as they can stay residents. It’s empowering. It’s audible. It’s part of a longstanding tradition. It’s gone on for generations. And all the pleas of “it’s illegal, the fire danger, the pets, the environment,” fall on deaf ears for actual human beings that are mostly, themselves, overlooked or shunned in their own space.
-Moved from my poetry blog
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