In an old bar on U Street in Washington, DC-a place that was once a centre of black life and is now an inferno of hipster-dom-Jay, the bartender, is talking about how the area has changed over the past decade or so. "They ain't got barmen any more," he says, with a grin. "They got mixologists." What happens in Washington, he explains, is that young white professionals move in, bars open, "and then you know that all the bodegas and liquor stores on every corner, they ain't got long either." Such gentrification obsesses the bienpensants. In November the New York Times instructed its journalists to stop comparing everywhere to gentrified Brooklyn. A Saturday Night live sketch showed a young man in a tough neighbourhood talking about his "bitches"-only to reveal that he runs a dog-walking business, and even knits matching sweaters for his bitches. In Philadelphia and San Francisco, presumed gentrifiers have been the target of protests and attacks. Elsewhere, the term is used as an insult ("I would hate to be a gentrifier," says one young professional in Detroit). Yet the evidence suggests that gentrification is both rare and, on balance, a good thing.
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