Hollow City- MLK

What I was most struck by in Rebecca Solnit's Hollow City was the stuff about race in the "shopping cart and lexus" chapter, and the Yerba Buena chapter.  What Solnit described in these chapters was the white, racist, elitest attempts on: urban renewal and gentrification.  Most of San Francisco, according to Solnit, has been devistated by urban renewal (nick-named 'Negro removal'), where colored communities were speedily annihilated from the city, and replaced by urban, American businesses.  I was really struck by the Maya Angelou example.  Maya Angelou grew up in San Francisco during Wold War 2, and her poetry described how the Japanese businesses and residents all disappeared as the Japanese were taken into internment camps.  "The Yakamoto Sea Food Market quietyly became Sammy's Shoe Shine Parlor..."(44)  

  The author also described how the westside of the town was the "black" side back in the day.  "FIllmore street had become the Harlem of the West, where jazz clubs..."(46)  Their living conditions, however, were much below most of the white and middle-class residents, with a high level of disease and poorly made houses.  Instead of helping the poor families, the city began urban renewal (negro removal) around Fillmore street, and completely turned the area around.  The new population was predominantly white, male and upper-middle class.  There were no more jazz clubs, only raised buildings and parking lots.

  Then Yerba Buena center was constructed.  Apparently, originally it was a vacant lot and then a performance space before it was the Martin Luther King tourist monument that it is today.  Solnit described the monument as, "a fountain of big concrete slabs... the place has a strangely dislocated, airport ambience..."  I used to go to Yerba Buena center a lot.  I used to go there sometimes when I was in poetry shows there, or I would watch poetry shows or go to workshops.  I always thought it did have a kind of blocky, aloof feel to it, though I knew I was supposed to feel pride and allegiance towards MLK.  The fact that Solnit pointed out that inside is a Starbucks and a Microsoft store adds to the irony of it.