Gentrification is Sparkling Colonialism
They paved paradise and only made fruited sours.
A couple of times a year, my husband and I talk about opening a brewery. Do not worry; this will not happen because we have eyeballs, and we see that the near future for a craft brewery is pretty bleak. Also, I *may* have some expectations conditions that some may brand as “unrealistic” or “not an actual way of running a brewery.”1
Most of the time, these conversations occur when we drive by a commercial building for sale that looks like it would be a good space for a brewery. We’ve been having this conversation for years, across all the different places we’ve lived.
Aside from my dream of owning a brewery where I don’t have to deal with divorced Untappd dads, homebrewers, and the entire population of the world in general, one of my non-negotiables is that I live in the community where my brewery is located. Not the city or its suburbs, but the actual neighborhood and community where I do business.
Breweries became a cornerstone of community redevelopment and revitalization projects in the 2010s. This may still be happening here and there, but given ::gestures to the hellscape we currently live in::, I’m guessing that has slowed down in the last few years. Towns looking to bring their citizens into refurbished mills or warehouses often had space set aside for a brewery. A brewery’s second location went into an old industrial building alongside a coffee shop, a natural wine bar, and a brunch restaurant with retro, sassy advertising.
City neighborhoods with authentic hipness came into the crosshairs of real estate developers. Rents in those neighborhoods went up, and the genuinely cool places, the places that made the neighborhood cool - used bookstores, tiny ethnic restaurants, dive bars - were forced out. Developers gobbled up the properties and either razed them or retrofitted them for social media-ready boutiques, niche fitness studios, and cheugy restaurants.2 The streets began to be lined with beige and gray 5-over-1s, townhomes, and condos, mostly full of empty AirsBnB or perhaps housing a Netflix reality show.
And, of course, no neighborhood is properly gentrified unless and until a brewery opens up in it. Gleaming stainless, chalkboard beer menus, pothos and spider plants abound, and lumbar-destroying Lancaster chairs.
Coming soon! BlackRock Brewing brought to you by The Carlyle Group and WeWork.
But are those breweries actually part of the community?
Does the ownership/leadership get in their cars at the end of the day and drive home to the suburbs or across town?
Can employees afford to live in the area where the brewery is, or do they have to endure commutes that can stretch into an hour plus each way?
How much money and other investments are being returned to the community, rather than online shopping or the chain restaurants and big box stores that litter the suburbs?
Do their customers live in the same community? Or are they ride-sharing into town to day drink on weekends?
How far away and widespread is their supply chain and procurement? Do they utilize local vendors more than a couple of times a year?
I can continue to ask a bunch of hypothetical questions, but I think you get the point. Many breweries opened in areas targeted by cities and other local governments for revitalization. Because breweries are “cool” and can act as anchors to attract other small businesses that exist for a very narrow slice of the population.
And by a very narrow slice of the population, I mean (mostly white) people with money and economic mobility.
The target audience, more times than not, is decidedly not the people who already live in the neighborhood, some of whom have lived in the neighborhood for years.
Why is/was this happening? I’ll give you one guess, and it’s racism. As part of FDR’s New Deal, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation created maps of “residential security” that indicated how safe an investment would be in a particular neighborhood. This practice is now commonly referred to as redlining. These maps were created on the basis that the race3 of the people living in a neighborhood indicated the quality of the neighborhood. Redlining led to the incentivization of developing suburbs, where white people were moving to.
Another major reason gentrification is occurring is the U.S.’s steady march toward the oligarchical consolidation of power and gutting of social safety nets. What has emerged are systems of support that benefit people with money. Not just money - a lot of money. Now, very few individual people have the capital to participate in gentrification or even in actual economic development projects like community land trusts. Who has that capital? Real estate developers and our current economic boogeyman, private equity.
Please know that if you live in one of these areas or own a business there, I am not demonizing you. Yes, you’re part of the problem, but so am I. And so are most of the people reading this.
We now find ourselves in this predicament, so what can we do about it? There are large-scale economic possibilities, such as improved public transit, fairer housing, and more equitable schooling. These all rely on people who want change to get involved in local governments, which can range from attending zoning meetings to running for an office. You can and should look into how you can get involved in your local government. As we’ve seen, telling people to vote harder doesn’t work.
You, as an individual, can do several things to help support the community. You can purchase from businesses in your gentrified area that are owned by historically excluded communities. Maybe head to the halal restaurant at lunch instead of the white-owned franchise. Use public transit - if governments cared about reliable, safe public transit for non-white people, we would have reliable, safe public transit. But they don’t, so leverage your white privilege and social capital and take the bus.4 Find neighborhood organizations and causes and get involved. Making your space available to them for functions and meetings for free is a nice start, but it’s only a start. Gentrification inordinately affects older, low-income, and disabled adults. How can you support them? Find out what community services are available to them and donate your time.
A key point in getting involved in your brewery’s neighborhood is to find out what the neighborhood needs and support those needs. It’s NOT just advocating for bike lanes, holding animal shelter adoption events, or participating in neighborhood cleanups once a year. It’s understanding that there needs to be safe crosswalks, better community resources for harm reduction that aren’t calling the cops, and well-lit streets and public areas.
And for fuck’s sake, get rid of your cashless policy. I get it, I get it - during the pandemic, cashless made sense. Being cash-free is a great way to ensure that the 25 million unbanked and underbanked households in the U.S. can’t patronize your business. I’m betting you can guess the demographics of unbanked and underbanked people,5 but here are stats to help:
23.8% of Black households are underbanked, and 10.6% are unbanked
21.7% of Latino households are underbanked, and 9.5% are unbanked
10.75% of Native households are underbanked, and 12.2% are unbanked6
Hmmm, those demographics sound an awful lot like the demographics of communities being displaced by gentrification, don’t they? People of color and immigrants with undocumented status typically have less access to credit and formal financial institutions. People with fixed incomes, such as seniors and disabled adults, many times use cash to track spending and budget.
Don’t want people of color, seniors, and disabled adults to patronize your business? Keep your cashless policy. But maybe remove the “Everyone is welcome here” sign from your brewery window.
And finally…
Thank you to those of you who commented, emailed, DMed, and texted me about last month’s newsletter. That was a big fucking scary thing to share with the world, and I was extremely anxious about publishing it. Hearing from people about how they can relate made me feel less alone in my experiences. The support and affirmations I’ve received from you have helped me start to move through the world differently, with more confidence, compassion, and strength.
My dream brewery has no taproom, no cold storage, and bottle-conditioned only beers. The beers are ready when they’re ready; the only way to know when they’re ready is to be on the email list. Basically, I want the Floodland Brewery experience. And someone else has to deal with the customers because I will not.
My cheugy restaurant would be called Lowercase Verb Punctuation Mark™. NOT something like “gather.” or “sip!” written in Helvetica - literally Lowercase Verb Punctuation Mark.
Race is a social concept, not a biological one. Race was invented and implemented specifically to oppress people - a way to categorize and dehumanize people.
If you think public transit is unsafe and for people who can’t afford cars, spend some time unpacking why you think that. Is it because public transit is for “poor” people? Is it because an unhoused person is sleeping, and not bothering you, but you are uncomfy when confronted with poverty and inequity?
Unbanked means not keeping money in a bank or credit union. Underbanked means a person may use alternative “financing” institutions like payday loans or check-cashing stores.
Thank you Jen! As someone who is about to launch our brewery, I am listening.