For the younger crowd, Tempe is an exciting locale filled with hip watering holes where we can drink our nights away and meet attractive members of the opposite sex. But for those of us who've hovered around Tempe for four years or more, the town is drying up.
Gone are the exciting establishments of our youth, replaced by the intentionally hip, overpriced, overcrowded bars that used to be seen in Scottsdale.
The change in atmosphere doesn't just affect my ability to enjoy my favorite bar. It reflects a much broader change in Tempe that is troubling.
Let's start with the bar, though. Casey Moore's Oyster House on Ninth Street and Ash Avenue is in a friendly old Maple-Ash neighborhood house. Casey's, when I began frequenting it, was a haven for proudly tattooed lesbians, leathered-out bikers with shaved heads and goatees, and skinny emo hipsters wearing too-tight jeans. Then there were the scholars, the leftists and general freaks.
Casey's was the counter-culture establishment of Tempe, where at four in the afternoon you'd likely see your anthropology professor sitting next to your favorite dealer.
Today, however, Casey's has been gentrified. The students who were exiled when Dos Gringos moved are now infiltrating one of the last bastions of authentic culture in Tempe. The weekday crowd now consists of the relatively square people who used to only show up on the weekend.
The weekend crowd can't be distinguished from any club in Scottsdale. Now, instead of professors and drug peddlers, the bar is infested with business students who are just looking to get laid.
The gentrification is not limited to the bar alone. Tempe is rapidly moving out of the price brackets of all but the wealthiest among us. The median home price has increased to nearly $300,000. Many houses in the Maple-Ash neighborhood sell for hundreds of thousands more than that.
As home prices rise, the poor and the middle classes are hit hardest. The urban poor, who usually make far too little to buy homes, are reduced to renting. As real estate values rise, those costs are passed on to renters. The poor simply can't afford it and are forced to move away to areas where rent and convenience are low and, often, crime is high.
Likewise, with rents rising small business owners find it harder to turn a profit. So local restaurants and bookstores give way to P.F. Chang's and Borders.
The sad story is that this happens all too often around universities. Rich kids show up with their money, and developers and investors see a chance to make a buck.
In a university like ASU where "social embeddedness" is prescribed, administrators have an obligation to ensure that an influx of students doesn't displace local families and businesses.
Instead, the cold reality is that universities serve as a wellspring of elitism leading to gentrification under the guise of urban renewal or expansion. If ASU's presence is simply compounding the problems of class difference, the University is failing to create a vibrant and diverse culture.
So call on the University to do something to combat the homogeneity entering Tempe because gentrification might not bother you much when it means a few more bucks coming out of your pocket for rent, but when it affects your place of drink, something has got to give.
Fight the good fight, and don't rest until the freaks are back at Casey's.
Alex Ginsburg is a religious studies senior looking for a new place to spend his time. He is considering the Yucca Tap Room. You may reach him there or at: aginsbur@asu.edu.
