FRINQ MW 12:30
Gentrification Write Up
Kenton seems like your ordinary town. With small business, and homes, and a nice little park, it fit your everyday vision of a home town. That is, until realize that your going there by lightrail. A little home town wouldn�t have mass public transportation going through it like the lightrial. One would have to wonder about that, and what this town is really like.
Stepping off of the Max, coming from city center, the first thing you see is Dancing Bare. A nice strip club advertising wet t-shirt contests and free table dances on Mondays. Definitely not a good first impression. I didn�t find that very appealing at all. It makes me wonder that if they are trying to �improve� this area, then why is the first thing you see coming off of the Max, a strip club.
Walking around Kenton was actually quite enjoyable. The area around the lightrail looks very nice. Its been cleaned up, and it looks pretty new. The sidewalks are nice and done, and Paul is very clean. We were told, while interviewing a man who works at the Wells Fargo behind Paul, that people go and clean him every once in a while. I thought that was very neat, because that means that the city, is trying to keep things looking nice and new.
Other parts of Kenton weren�t as �nice� as the first part we were in, but there was still its good points. The next place we stopped at was Kelsey�s Korner, a very small little store at the corner of a long building. It looks slightly run down, and looks like it has been there for a long time. The woman inside, running it said she has been in the area for 10 years. That might be why it looks like that. Also, she told us that the lightrail has caused more problems then bringing good. She told us that the past 4 to 5 years have been pretty rough and she is still waiting to see an improvement. I have to wonder if the lightrail will do anything for the area.
About a block down from Kelsey�s Korner we found Kenton Park. Kenton park is very nice, with a few different baseball fields, and a basketball court with 6 hoops, and a playground with swings and teeter-totters. There were lots of kids with their parents here playing. It was nice to know that there was something for kids to do that was safe and good.
About the house in the area though, that was interesting. A lot of the older houses were getting old. You could tell, because they were starting to look worn. There were also a lot of fences around these houses, and dogs. Big, mean dogs. One had run off of its porch towards us, but lucky for us, it was on a chain. But when you got to the newer houses, which were in different places, but in some spots concentrated, they all looked the same. Like tall boxes, but different colors. They really didn�t look very good at all, and these houses were so small and put so close to each other, that there looked like there was no yard, and these houses didn�t have fences either. It made me wonder if they were doing this on purpose, to try to give Kenton a better �feel�.
Overall, I enjoyed this project. I liked going someplace new and seeing what it was like. I enjoyed talking to the locals and taking pictures and seeing the differences that can reside in one small area. But I liked Kenton and I had fun.