Gentrification

 Before you find a home you buy a house.  A house is nothing but a box made of wood, nails and glass.

It sits on a piece of land called a parcel.  Many such adjacent parcels with their own boxes constitute a community.  Hope of a home buyer is to find said box that is to their liking in terms of the holes it has (windows and doors) and the position of said holes as well as the surfaces inside and few appliances that sit inside this box to make life comfortable.

All this plus what is around the community and who is in this community matters.  Are there going to be eclectic food purveyors aka restaurants in a few mile radius?  Are there opportunities to get outdoor for a walk?  Is a commercial hub not too far?  What about getting to an airport? Oh and what is the crime rate in this community or town?

Hmm.  All good questions for someone on a house hunt wanting to find said house and then make it their home.  We are in the boat so to speak.  Looking for change in lat long in the coming months after many years on the left coast.

So in this quest we looked at a new state.  Mid size cities in it and discovered Gentrification.  This signifies the change of the aforementioned boxes to some newer looking and sounding kind.  Barbers become complicated spellings and services hard to decipher... Exqweezeet Salon as an example.  Took me a while to understand I could get my hair cut.  A  Bao food truck when you least expected one.  You might also start seeing brown and other colors among the denizens wandering around you.  This place we were in still leaned heavy Caucasian.  And a good bit of them were Trumpers.

Local mom and pop pub or diner gives way to an international brand selling pricey caffeine aka a lifestyle.  Suddenly vegan food is everywhere.  Then the landscaping changes.  Literally.  Better curbs and manicured yardage welcome the visitor wanting to find an oasis amidst the newness.

Unnecessary sculptures or welcome signs abound along the roads indicating the name of the city you are driving in as if to say - are we marketing it hard enough?

And if you are lucky they do get rid of the folks that were earlier found shooting up a shot at odd hours and urinating wherever when the urge came.

To me the last bit is truly a change in making life safer.  The rest is matter of taste and comfort and what you want to breathe in esp in these days of Covid.