My Neighborhood

I reside in San Francisco a few blocks off Geary Street in the middle avenues of the Richmond District. It looks like nothing special, at least to an outsider. Let me tell you about it.

The Richmond’s middle avenues are a place of tight ethnicities and tight purse strings, where Chinese men chat all day at the Golden Donut, where Russian men who look like Boris Yeltsin and tiny stooped women and Jewish men in yarmulkes swarm the grocery to buy apples for 59 cents a pound, where Joe’s Pharmacy is only two blocks away from Joe’s Ice Cream.

But all that only masks the uneasy economic currents circulating through the neighborhood.\

A few months ago the Jeff’s Jeans on the corner ceded half of its square footage to a Peet’s Coffee, and immediately that chain store had a line out the door, served by a cheery band of baristas shouting, “Can I help the next guest?”

A move is afoot to recall the local supervisor, Jake McGoldrick, for supporting things that would be a shot in the arm to the local economy, like light-rail and tourist attractions at nearby Golden Gate Park. One suspects that’s because the locals like things just the way they are, such as easy street parking and a community garden by the school.

They might like to see more of the Chinese women who walk around carrying their obligatory plastic shopping bags and less of the likes of my new next door neighbor, who drives his golden retriever around in an SUV and carries golf clubs, if he carries anything at all.