Change the Name of the Arts District to the Luxury District

There Goes the Neighborhood

WNYC Studios and KCRW

History, City, Nyc, The, Nation, Documentary, News, Brooklyn, Gentrification, York, Boroughs, Real, Race, New, Estate, Society & Culture, Business News, Wnyc

4.8 • 543 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2017

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are artists victims of gentrification? Or the perpetrators of it? Artists move into empty post-industrial spaces and poor neighborhoods, save on rent, create their work, build up studios and communities — and then find they're priced out. Lisa Adams was evicted twice from L.A.'s downtown Arts District and is worried it's about to happen again. Thirty years ago the area was home to light manufacturing and warehouses. Now it's one of the city's most expensive places to live. "Artists are willing to put up with things that other populations won't," says Lisa, “You are a kind of forerunner to what is to come."

Transcript

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0:00.0	The owners of the galleries don't want to analyze the impact they're having in the neighborhood
0:09.7	where they are locating.
0:11.3	We've been told, oh, we're bringing art to your community.
0:14.0	Well, that's very insulting to imply like we've never had art here in Boyle Heights before.
0:17.7	Of course we have.
0:18.7	I'm not going anywhere.
0:19.7	I mean, I've been here in downtown area for the last 25 years.
0:24.5	I'm not going to go away because somebody tells me to just go.
0:29.0	You know, I'm home.
0:31.8	I just wish that there was a way where we could have a conversation
0:35.6	between what they would like to accomplish
0:38.6	and what the resources that we have available to us as gallery owners, but they were very clear
0:45.6	on the fact that we just need to leave.
0:48.8	Basically, a lot of people feel that they're being outcast because you have all these
0:53.9	millionaires coming in, and they wanted more like a more
0:58.0	Swab, a Rodale Drive kind of thing. It kind of baffles me to be honest to you that that's going on
1:05.5	on.
1:08.3	There goes the neighborhood. There goes the neighborhood. There goes the neighborhood.
1:11.6	There goes the neighborhood.
1:12.6	In LA's Mexican-American Boyle Heights neighborhood, you hear Mariachi's at weddings, family reunions, and kinsignettes.
1:30.2	But this is the first time I've heard them perform to celebrate the demise of something.
1:37.1	After months of protests, anti-gentrification activists have forced a small non-profit art space,
	...

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