Photo: Neal Santos: City Paper
City Paper’s cover story takes a look at the state of the Italian Market. Ninth Street is a place of color and tradition– a walk amid discount shops, meat stores, veggie stands, old men, and boisterous families will show you this much. The Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I;) has started to enforce laws that have been overlooked until now. The result: closing shops and angry store-owners with generations of history in the Market. And then there is the perhaps inevitable tide of gentrification. Will stacks of cardboard boxes, bunches of grapes, and too much trash turn into pristine streets lined with bank branches and Starbucks? That’s a sad prophecy. [City Paper]
