SAN FRANCISCO -- One morning not long ago, aspiring musician JasonBowman awoke to discover he was yuppie scum.
The words were spray-painted right there on the outside of theloft building where he lives and works in San Francisco's Missiondistrict: Get Out Yuppie Scum. Bowman, 26, said he tried not to takethe message personally and made no plans to move.
'I don't make enough money to qualify for the yuppie label,although I'd sure like to,' said Bowman, whose computer-based danceband is called Memory Man. 'But anything that looks new and shiny isa target, and I guess my building qualifies as one of them.'Other targets include sushi bars and sport-utility vehicles,anything that stands out as too upscale, too ostentatious, for one ofSan Francisco's last working-class neighborhoods. To longtimelocals, they symbolize the Silicon Valley cash and stock marketprofits that are pricing them out of their homes. Every BMW, everycoffee bar, stands as a reminder of the squeeze on affordableapartments.Although many regret the vandalism, not even city officialsdispute that a class struggle is taking place in the still-gritty,heavily Hispanic Mission district on the east side of the city.Similar battles have been fought, and mostly lost, across SanFrancisco, which now boasts some of the priciest real estate in thenation. Mission renters worry that their neighborhood is next,leaving them with no place to live in a city that claims to celebratediversity of all kinds. It stands as a kind of emblem of theunderside of the economic upsurge in cities across America -- theever starker divide between those who own and those who don't.'People in the middle are being squeezed, and the people at thebottom are being squashed,' said Richard Marquez, a tenant activistwith the neighborhood group Mission Agenda and Eviction DefenseNetwork. 'But we could still turn the tide in the Mission.'For Marquez and many organizers, that means more subsidizedhousing, more mixed housing and more rights for tenants, businessesas well as families. In a city that prefers its politics served upstreet-theater style, it has also meant the emergence of a tiny groupcalling itself the Yuppie Eradication Project. Considered humorousby some, dangerous by others, the group has opted to use threats toraise awareness of the housing crisis and frighten away the youngInternet moneymakers who discovered the Mission three or so yearsago.Until their leader was arrested, in the hours before dawn,allegedly covered with wallpaper paste, project members spent sixmonths plastering the Mission with fliers encouraging the bombing of'yuppie' bars and restaurants. They urged people to strike out atnewcomers by breaking windows, slashing tires, and scratching painton yuppie cars, specifically Lexuses, Porsches, Jaquars and SUVs.Spray-painting their newly remodeled live-work spaces was offered asanother alternative. 'Trash them all,' the fliers said.'People started screaming about the number of lofts coming on themarket for $300,000 to $500,000, which is hardly starving artistrange,' said Jason Teplitsky, who opened Blowfish Sushi in theMission 2 1/2 years ago and has been a target of the group. 'Theysay now the neighborhood is all about people who make money. . . .But this kind of provocation -- let's bash cars and destroy property-- is definitely not speaking for anybody except the lunaticfringe.'On the advice of legal counsel, unemployed temp worker KevinKeating declined to claim credit for the anti-yuppie crusade. Butfew doubt he was behind the fliers signed Nestor Makhno, the name ofa Ukranian anarchist who killed landlords during the RussianRevolution. In mid-May, police raided his apartment and arrestedKeating, 38. No charges have been filed, but police said theinvestigation continues.'If the language in the posters was any less provocative, nobodywould have paid attention,' said Keating, who has lived in theMission for 11 years and pays $800 a month for what he described as alarge single room with low ceilings. 'But what we really need is alarge organization of all of us together to preserve the neighborhoodfor the working class.'Seated in the Atlas Cafe, which, like many of the newerneighborhood establishments, used to have a Spanish name and serve aHispanic clientele, Keating clearly relished the outcry his allegedhandiwork has caused. But threatening posters aside, the rush ofmoney into the Mission may be impossible to stop. Even at $500,000,lofts in the neighborhood are relatively inexpensive by San Franciscostandards. At $350,000, a two-bedroom fixer-upper is considered asteal.'It's not just about the new housing; it's about changing the waya neighborhood feels and looks and whether poor people are evenwelcome here anymore,' said Matt Brown, director of St. Peter'sHousing Committee in the heart of the Mission. 'The one constant, nomatter which group lived here, was that it was a working-class,blue-collar place. Now it's newly hip and fashionable and people whoare newly six-figured are taking advantage.'Citywide, the median sale price for a three-bedroom house was$361,410 in 1998; a two-bedroom apartment typically rented for$2,008. In a city where more than two-thirds of the residents rent,the vacancy rate was a minuscule 1 percent. As city plannerCharlotte Barham explained, even many middle-class people can nolonger afford to buy a first home.'Clearly you don't want to force everyone who doesn't make$100,000 a year out of San Francisco,' said Paul Zeger, president ofPacific Marketing Association, which sells properties throughout theBay Area and sold 45 Mission units costing $220,000 to $695,000 in asingle weekend. 'But if you shut down the forces of growth, thingsare going to go down and down and down for the city.'For now, at least, the young urban professionals who bear thesobriquet 'yuppie' appear to have the upper hand in the Mission.Every renter seems to know someone who has been evicted by a landlordwho wants to move into the newly hot neighborhood or convert hisbuilding to condominiums -- often unlawfully, activists claimed.At the same time, rental vacancies are almost nonexistent; over atwo-week period last year, Ted Gullicksen, manager of the SanFrancisco Tenants Union, said he saw only one Mission rentaladvertised in local newspapers, although as many as 80 percent ofneighborhood residents are renters.'There is actually a downside to prosperity,' said P.J. Johnston,spokesman for Mayor Willie Brown's reelection campaign. 'We're inthe midst of one now. It's a draw for people who want to live inthis city, and it's driving up real estate and housing prices.'Many newcomers to the Mission, however, resent being madescapegoats for the city's economic turnaround of the last 10 years.When the San Francisco Weekly covered Keating's cause extensively andsomewhat sympathetically, it was flooded with complaints fromyuppies. The newspaper's response: a fake June 6 rally where so-called yuppies carried signs decrying discrimination and hate crimesagainst them. Some 200 people fell for the prank.'It was two sets of people behaving ridiculously butunderstandably, if you understand San Francisco,' said SF Weeklyeditor John Mecklin. 'Hell, yes, I consider the housing and rentalmarket problems serious. It's probably the number one topic oneveryone's minds.'Keating, along with the housing activists who tend to oppose histactics, said they know they can't save everything in the Mission.Their more modest goal is to save what they can, and preserve as muchof the vibrant, economically and racially diverse neighborhood aspossible. Otherwise San Francisco will lose some of its soul, theysaid, with the Mission becoming just another bedroom community forSilicon Valley commuters.'Gentrification has hit the neighborhood hard, but there arestill things worth fighting for,' said James Tracy, an organizer withthe Eviction Defense Network. 'It's going to be too late shortly.It's not too late now.'
