No subject

[Tyler Durden]

Tim May wrote...

"I said I saw the same thing in Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Both are said
to be "progressive" communities, but in both places the so-called
community garden areas are essentially for hoboes and deadbeats to
scratch at."

Well, there's a selection effect that's going to take place in many of the 
cities under discussion.

In NYC both rich and poor live in the city (sometimes within blocks of each 
other, though $$$ are pushing non-$$$ to the outer boroughs). In a lot of 
American cities, your "inner city" is inhabited by lower income folks and 
carless down-and-outs almost exclusively. So of course you'll see community 
gardens overrun.

In NYC the phenomenon is entirely different. First of all, the gardens are 
almost always gated and barbwired. For two, its primarily the non-drugged 
members of a community that are working the garden, and a prime reason for 
creating the garden is to pretty up and otherwise crappy looking block. The 
flowers and produce of the garden are almost tertiary.

In addition, in NYC we see a lot of abandoned properties that remain 
brick/rat/garbage lots for years and years, and so the locals decide to do 
something about it and clean it up. (Sometimes its city property, sometimes 
'private').

Of course, we could talk about philosophy and what these people "should" do, 
but if I were living in one of those areas and didn't have the $$$ to move 
out, I'd definitely try to fix up our community, and to hell with 
philosophies of "collective ownership" statism, communism or so on. You want 
your block to look nice, and the locals DO something. How simple is that? 
And then, after years of working the garden, the neighborhood starts to 
look/feel better and then all of a sudden an "owner" appears who wants to 
bulldoze your garden. Fuck that. I'd be pissed off too, and try to fight the 
'dozers. If Tim May or somebody like him tried to sit me down and explain 
his philosophies for a few hours and why I "had no right" to stop the 
'dozers, I'd probably say, "Well, I'm not smart enough to understand your 
theories, but I wish you well with them. Hey--there's the bulldozers, gotta 
go!"

-TD

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