I’m not a big fan of Kotkin, but I have no reason to disagree with his observation that:

“Neighborhoods go through what you call a sweet spot,” said Joel Kotkin, author of “The City: A Global History,” who is a critic of some forms of gentrification. “It’s safe, it’s a nice place to live, it still has unique shops and hangouts.”

But this mix rarely lasts forever. “The ecosystems of these neighborhoods are very fragile,” Mr. Kotkin said. “Over-stimulation, and, in a recession, under-stimulation, and you have dangers.”

This is the problem at the center of what I think is the most common form of urban gentrification (it takes other forms in different types of communities), the kind where the old guard are forced out by rising prices and by a so-called “artistic” class with enough cash to set up funky, off-beat retail and service businesses, catering primarily to other members of their class.  In some sense, this is a good thing, because the old guard can be a high-crime area, or an area with significant blight that, after a few years and a few million gallons of sweat and paint, becomes a nice place to live again.  But not for the people who were cornerstones of the neighborhood and who know the neighborhood’s history (I would argue that knowing a place’s history is an important part of really living there, which is why I’ve always felt more at home in Sacramento, even though I spent the first 15 years of my adult life in Portland.)

In Sacramento, the symbol of this kind of gentrification is the gallery.  In article after article about urban renewal you will see phrases like “galleries, restaurants, and retail.” People seem to forget that galleries are not museums, they are retail establishments, and, like any retail establishment, they need customers.  Art galleries have a very small customer base to begin with and, in a recession, the people who want to patronize art because it’s the cool thing to do no longer have money to do so. I’m afraid we’re going to see some closures, unless all of the galleries are owned by people with trust funds. Now that would be interesting.

This kind of gentrification is ephemeral because it is based on the whims of a relatively mobile class of person (young, generally childless, urban professionals with higher than median incomes and/or assets) and a class that is very sensitive to recessionary pressures.  A job that paid high-five figures a few years ago may well be going for a lot less today, and there will be a line out the door of people wanting it. So these people do one of two things: they retreat to their homes and seek entertainment from Netflix and food from grandma’s cookbook, or they move. Neither is good for the funky businesses that depended on their funky clientelle.

Which leads me to a plug for what I think might be a new (renewed?) model for face-to-face social interaction. Today’s Bee had an article about the Sacramento Institute of Fun, which has events about once a month based on the idea that people can get together, have fun, and learn something (and drink).  The price tag may seem high at first, around $25-$30/person for each event, but when you consider that a typical night out at a nightclub, which is a lousy place to be social anyway, will cost easily twice as much (the cab ride home will cost as much), it’s a good deal.

And it’s different.  Maybe my impression is colored by the fact that the instigators are my friends. Maybe it’s because I don’t think of them as bourgeois hipsters (though they are certainly hip). Or maybe it’s because it’s something that hasn’t really been tried before, at least not in this laid-back, non-institutional format (the name notwithstanding). In some sense what the IOF is trying to do is reinvigorate the idea of the salon, but in a much more accessible way. It’s a lecture series for the masses.