Singaporean University Students Seeking Community (in National News) Japantown Bowl Fight Not Over Yet (in Bay Area News) Vietnam: An Emerging Market (in Business) Dan 'The Automator' Nakamura (in A&E) Death and Birth of a Hood: Hunters Point (in Opinion)

Voices from the Community

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Death and Birth of a Hood

By Charles Jones/PNS

I was born into Hunters Point and I have lived here half my life. I shop at Foods Co., I eat at B&Js in the morning, and I wince every day on my way to work as the 15 bus rolls past the McPlaything that used to be the Tic Toc Drive-in.

Hunters Point is a city within a city. I was 17 before I even saw downtown. A predominantly black population shares its housing projects or works in the warehouses along the back streets.

Over the years, Hunters Point has changed. It has seen the early stages of urban renewal, lost community landmarks and gained Asian American and white new arrivals. These changes marked the end of the ghetto I was born and raised in. Alarmingly poor (with the highest percentage of black-owned businesses in the city), Hunters Point has always had its fair share of criminal activity. Most of it was money motivated, but over the past year, homicide, rape, and aggravated assault as well as robbery and burglary are all on the increase. The only other time when murder eclipsed money was in the 1980s, when the Hunters Naval Shipyard was closed down and cleaned out.

Now with Third Street — the main artery of Hunters Point — receiving a facelift, and the black population dwindling, what will be left of one of San Francisco’s last inner-city environments?

MAY 2000

When someone does something, or has something done to them in Hunters Point, six times out of 10 I know the doer and/or the done to. Starvel Junious and Jarvis Baker, shot down this month, were childhood friends of my younger brother. Kenneth Gathron, killed in April, is a different story altogether. His younger brother and I are like brothers ourselves — we’ve been friends since 1991. Joe and I have done nearly everything together and have thankfully lived to tell the tale.

So I know these people, and when they die I grieve. But when I pick up a newspaper and see their lives trivialized, when I read that they were “reportedly” vanquished over something as petty as who the premiere local rap act is, I get upset.

It almost seems like no one wants to explore the real community issues surrounding the deaths, like the toxic waste in the shipyards, the lack of drug treatment and employment training facilities, or the accessibility of guns to youngsters. Instead, the media opted to simplify Starvel’s killing, to spit on his attempts to lead a positive life. Police get to generalize and “profile” low-income housing residents, the reporter gets the story in on time, and once again rap music becomes the scapegoat.

Starvel and Jarvis died because the air in Hunter’s Point is thick with fear and tension, and everyone knows that everyone else is strapped — carrying a gun. Nearly any incident here can end up with you losing your life.

JUNE 2000

This month De La Soul headlined another tour through San Fran, sharing the stage with many veterans and upstarts who are changing their career direction. All brought messages of self-awareness and spiritual uplift to the black community.

“Look at this,” rapper Common stated. “We all here together: black, white, Asian and Latino. For hip hop, y’all. Hip hop did this.” And as he spoke, my eyes wandered around the room, but rather than approval or pride in the diversity of the audience, I almost earled. I used to believe that hip hop was universal, but now I feel as if something is being stolen from me.

The 20-something dot-com crowd was far too well represented. Rewind to the beginning of the show: Talib Kweli of Reflection Eternal, a black power spiritualist group, made a passionate plea for solidarity with the fellow black man. There was nearly no response, not because of a lack of black enthusiasm, but because there were so few black bodies in the audience.

I’m proud that hip hop has reached these heights. But does mainstream success have to come at the expense of its core and creators, inner city black and Latino youth? It’s bad enough that no local artists can play at the venue, but now I have to compete with dot-commies to get tickets to any event in the city. hip hop has been from its inception — and always will be — a poor black American’s music and culture. So why are poor black people’s presence being compromised for mainstream acceptance?

JULY 2000

For years it stood, a symbol of hope and self-reliance. “The Gym” at Newcomb and 3rd was a safe haven from the streets. Now it’s little more than a memory, closed for months.

While there are other gyms, programs, and recreation centers in the neighborhood (though not nearly enough), most of them belong to the city. This one belonged to the people. It was a makeshift facility (a house, a storefront and a gym, all in one) with a raw, urban, “ghetto” feel.

A look inside would reveal hard bodies of every age and size — sweating, grunting, flexing and smiling in approval in one of several cracked mirrors. I used to lift there, when I was re-conditioning my left arm after I separated my shoulder in high school football. I couldn’t afford the hospital rehab, so I did it there at the gym the best way I could.

One day I was packing to go home when I heard someone ask from behind, “Spot me?” I turned and stared directly at the navel of the Incredible Black Hulk. I looked down and saw the weight he wanted me — weight 160, age 17 — to hold for him. It was at least twice my weight!

Sensing my lack of confidence, he assured me, “Man, you got that!” and laid back on the bench. He easily did 10 reps for three sets, but in the fourth, the bar slipped from his sweaty hands. I barely had the strength to hold the bar and remember, I only had one fully functional arm.

In the quarter-second I could keep the bar up, he managed to roll out to safety. He sat there for one second, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Whoa! Good lookin’ young blood!” He was thanking me when I felt I’d almost killed him.

Think about that story, and you’ll understand the most important function of the facility. It gave the people of Hunters Point a connecting point: a place where relationships could be built around self-improvement and trust with people you really didn’t have to know.

OCTOBER 2000

It’s hard to explain the complexities of life in Hunters Point to some who’s not from there. But you have to make the decision for yourselves as to whether or not it really matters to you.

I’m not fighting to preserve the sanctity of ghetto America. I like seeing more people than ever on the bus with me going downtown to work and school every day. My beef is that the city is quietly pulling off one of those urban renewal-removal moves, reconstructing a community that has been in dire need of attention — while relocating its real residents.

All this, rents getting higher, police presence and arrests increasing dramatically and no one can figure out how to cool everyone’s jets to stop the violence. The city government twiddles its thumbs. Filmore, Japantown, the Mission have all been culturally stripped naked, gentrified. Whether we want it or not, Hunters Point is next.