A New Take on the Gentrification of San Francisco

There has been no shortage of hand-wringing and spilled ink on the subject of gentrification, a fact that Vinson Cunningham acknowledges at the beginning of a recent essay titled "San Francisco": "I’ve heard stories, read things; complaint is a favorite genre of mine, and there’s no lack of it these days on the topic of the Bay…"

The writing of the essay that follows is thoughtful, musical, and inconclusive. We recommend it as a change of pace from the typical fare on this particular subject.

The San Francisco essay is the most recent installment in a series that now totals ten essays. Here is how McSweeney's introduces the series:

"Vinson Cunningham has always been fascinated by America’s signature brand of whiteness: a weird, haphazard collage made pretty by a series of artful, often barely perceptible thefts from black people. Call it flattery, call it appropriation, call it inevitable—things, and places, are always changing hands. Field Notes from Gentrified Places is the record of Cunningham’s visits to the sites of these transfers—geographical, cultural, and otherwise."