Comments on: Valencia n' 18th: This Looks Like Hell

By: Douche LaDouche

Douche LaDouche — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:36:12 +0000

Regardless of the politics in the comments, this is one ugly design. I hope the interiors fare better. I take it that if this will be a rental situation, that they’ll be exorbitant for what could have been a more attractive plan that fits in more with an actual program for the area.

By: pixeltan

pixeltan — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:45:20 +0000

Judging people on their principals seems more important than judging them by dialect.

By: pixeltan

pixeltan — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:43:14 +0000

You’re more or less correct— meaning that private interests are guiding public policy (as in city planning). It happened quite a bit with Willie’s administration.

As for private people using “their land and resources” for better use, that is debatable.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by:

“We would all be way better off than the shitshow we have today in SF”

Care to explain?

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:14:38 +0000

More or less how they always have; private people use their land and resources for better uses.

Do you think all that housing in the Mission that we live in was provided by the government or went through the silly process we now call “planning”?

We would all be way better off than the shitshow we have today in SF

By: pixeltan

pixeltan — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:26:32 +0000

I’m curious, how should cities grow?

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:10:34 +0000

You’re “super” non violent? Anyone who speaks like this shouldn’t be in adult conversations

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:09:29 +0000

“The same thing happening to the Mission happened to the Fillmore and Western Addition in the 40s and 50s ”

No the same at all. Replacing paint stores and used car lots with market rate housing has nothing in common with redevelopment

This is a terrible misundersanding of how cities should grow

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:06:13 +0000

“Faux bay windows?”

Who do you think builders are appeasing with this?

Why are so many new buildings in SF squat and boxy (e.g. Mission Bay?)

Tell the developers you want a higher standard but streamline the process and you would get more interesting buildings(and some losers)

As it stands now they are just happy to get through the process

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:03:30 +0000

I think this one looks ok

What do you have in mind?

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:02:13 +0000

This is really not true

The process in SF, being so open to public comment leads to medicore buildings because developers play it very safe.

You will get fewer interesting buildings and fewer monstrosities.

Lots of bland stucco and set backs

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:00:33 +0000

“Presently, 50 percent (=majority) of the Mission’s inhabitants today are Latin American. So I would venture to say it hasn’t reached the point of gentrification just yet.”

The Latino popultion is SF has been pushed south of Mission (but they are losing ground there), out of Bernal and down Mission Street into the Excelsior and Daly City. The census in 2010 will show this is be very pronounced

Not a good nor bad thing to me.

I am middle class and am thinking about having a kid and living in the Mission

By: Zig

Zig — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:56:56 +0000

Ethan,

This is what cities do. Gentrification is mostly a good thing. Trying to stop it is counterproductive on many levels

Move out to the the bernal stretch of Mission or if that is getting to expensive try the Excelsior stretch of Mission or San Bruno Ave or 3rd street or Uptown Oakland

I am not telling you to get out just telling you there are possibilites

I promise you Valencia was different when I was a kid and it was different when my grandfather was a kid

By: pixeltan

pixeltan — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:58:55 +0000

I’ve worked with architects in the past also, but I can’t really say that they’re to blame considering, like many jobs, those in control of the account control the design process. Of course, you could say that these firms could just say no, but hey, bread and butter jobs is what keeps people employed.

I’m not a big fan of the brutalist style, but that particular building on Valencia and 18th only cops certain aspects of the movement. I don’t think they had faux wood paneling and florescent green in mind.

By: Neo Displacer

Neo Displacer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:18:35 +0000

This is a problem of architecture not gentrification. I work in the building trades and work closely with architects. There aren’t many good ones. They are wrapped up in phony aesthetic talk and lack imagination.

Architects designing in the middle, not the big grand public structures, but the average ones did a better job in the past. I’ll call it yeoman’s architecture — the kind seen in shops, apartments, flats, and schools. Something bad happened around Corbusier. Any discipline that can foist the brutalist style upon us is corrupt. Architecture has lost its way.

By: Lizzie

Lizzie — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:10:04 +0000

This discussion reminds me of the grumpy burning man purists who experienced the festival when it was less than 500 people large and can’t seem to accept that Burning Man, like all things, is ever-changing. They choose not to go because there are too many attendees, or too many voyeurs, or it’s becoming to mainstream-there are too many world famous DJs and people with money, all the while disregarding the myriad other amazing, spiritual, mind-blowing, eloquently artistic factors ripe for the uncovering in the festival’s present, ever-changing state.
While I understand that the Mission back in the day, like Burning Man back in the day, were something to behold, I think making blanket statements like “the mission is dead” is narrow-minded and uninformed.
Before the Mission was up-and-coming and becoming gentrified by upper middle class hipsters and young white families, the mission was inhabited by a primarily Latino population. And before that, in the 40s-60s (according to wikipedia) the area was a booming hub for commerce run by a crossroads of European immigrants and residual business owners who had moved to the Mission in the wake of the 1906 fire. So the district has pretty much been changing ever since it emerged in the late 1700s.
Presently, 50 percent (=majority) of the Mission’s inhabitants today are Latin American. So I would venture to say it hasn’t reached the point of gentrification just yet.
While it may be true that “anyone here longer than 10-15 years can tell you Valencia has become an entirely different street,” that sentiment doesn’t mean that it’s worse for the wear. I suppose this discussion has to do with perspective. I am a relative newcomer to SF and the Mission and I am still wide eyed with wonder when I walk down Valencia. I lived on Hill and Valencia for six months and was perpetually distracted by the street’s variety of food, weekend garage sales, run-down beauty, and the culture clash of its location parallel to the much seedier Mission Street.

And Evan, why are you on this website if you are hating on “rich kids who buy their cool” who read it? Take your haterade to some other website, some other district in some other (sic) lackluster, homogenous city. Or, if you’re going to stay on this website, at least check your facts before making uninformed statements.