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Elihu Hernandez is running for Board of Supervisors in District 6 and he is having his campaign kick
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Its funny that only college educated whities really give enough shit as to what it is called to put up stupid little stickers.
I'm a "NOPA" hater. It sounds like needless real estate talk meant to make housing fetch more money.
And the fact that NOPA restaurant's upcoming Mexican restaurant in the area is going to be called "Nopalito" makes me want to NEVER EAT THERE
Most of what people try to call NOPA isn't even correct. Only the few blocks directly north of the Panhandle can really be called that.
But I agree with mushmouth. Although, I might call them "college-educated hipsters" instead because it takes in more territory.
I don't even both with my neighborhood name; I just give cross streets.
it's like, you know, this electronic communications shorthand, thingy, to let, you know, let people know where to, you know, like, find you. And stuff.
porkbun,
You do realize "nopalitos" is a Mexican dish containing "small edible cacti" i.e. nopales, right?
"Nopalito" actually seems to be a pretty common restaurant name if you do a google.
I think it's well named, but I'll still probably go to the Little Chihuahua.
NOPA is part of the real estate jargon to call it anything but western addition. If you go to the real estate multiple listing website, they have divided what they call "District 6" into:
Anza Vista
Hayes Valley
Lower Pacific Heights
Western Addition
Alamo Square
North Panhandle
Using all of those other presumably more desireable place names mean that to a real estate agent, the "western addition" is now just the strip between Golden Gate, Geary, Divisadero and Gough - churches, projects and Redevelopment Agency junk and Safeway.
http://www.sfarmls.com/
oh please. total n00bs. all of ya.
those evil realtors are at it again!
I live at 20th and Judah, I think I'll start telling people I live in "Far Lower Pacific Heights"
I personally am a proud supporter of the term Nopa. As a resident of the Sopa, and with lots of friends in the Eapa and Wepa, I hope to make enough money to make the move to Nopa someday.
The Nopa restaurant is great too. Who wouldn't want to pay $12 for a mediocre cocktail?
Or I could go to the Little Chihuahua and get $2 pints of fat tire ANY TIME.
new nabe: FLPH. thanks, joel!
If craigslist identifies it as a neighborhood, it must be so.
We in Alamo Square look down upon you NOPA riffraff.
For a neighborhood as huge as the Western Addition, it's kinda nice to be able to describe which part one lives in. How long have Hayes Valley or the Lower Haight been separated from the Western Addition?
I agree that calling it Nopa is an attempt to further gentrify the neighborhood, but I don't really care. Each neighborhood should be defined by the people who live in it, the stores, and the restaurants. The stuff in Nopa is pretty different than the stuff in the Western Addition proper, as well as Anza Vista, Lower Haight, Japantown, whatever else.
People whine too much when gentrification happens. I think people are anti-gentrification in other places, but in the place you actually live, I think people want it.
Howabout "NODMOV", for North Of the Department of MOtor Vehicles? We locals already call the south side (Page from Divis to Central, approx.) of our little nabe "DMV Heights".
A-f**king-men. It's the Western Addition.
It's not anti-gentrification at all to be annoyed at dumb new names created by Realtors.
The Western Addition, really almost all of it, is getting pretty nice these days, and I think that's something to celebrate, not pretend that it's not the same neighborhood as the parts that still have trouble.
very good point, aj.
"Nopalito" had better serve cactus, given that its location is east of the Panhandle, not north.
um hello, it's Popeye's Gulch, thank you!
I don't mind NOPA -- when I say I live in "Western Addition" they don't correctly understand where I live. Of course, I'm a little too far north to be NOPA, a little too far west to be Western Addition, and about a block outside "Alamo Square Historic District." So I live in a no-man's land. Lower Divis?
The Western Addition used to be all lands west of Van Ness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Addition
If you live in Upper Pacific Heights, your property records very well might have "WESTERN ADDITION" written all over.
So it's not too crazy to break big neighborhoods down into smaller parts.
re: nopalito. Yeah, the other meaning makes it slightly more tolerable but still...it's a little too cutesy. It's like the Sarah Palin wink opened a restaurant.
The creation of terms such as "NOPA" and "Lower Pacific Heights" is yet another example of the rental industry's craven and deceitful habit of using ignorance and circumstance to extract maximum value with minimum effort.
Hilarious.
Having been born and raised in the Western Addition I have always thought the whole NOPA thing ridiculous. I have, however, had a change of heart and have decided to create my own neighborhood acronym. Since I now work and live in the Market and Gough area I will now refer to it as Lower Gough or LOGO!
Mushmouth, et.al, you've obviously never seen those stickers on pickup trucks that are against the renaming of Army Street (to Cesar Chavez).
But don't let that get in the way of your broad generalizations.
Silly, but probably inevitable. I mean how else did the intersection of Carl and Cole become "Cole Valley" suddenly.
Although in NYC, don't the neighborhood names actually stay the same when they gentrify? Like the LES has always been the LES, right?
i live on the panhandle on oak. i'm going to start telling people i live in SOPA and open a restaurant called "Sopas" and you can not eat there on principle, without realizing that sopa--also a mexican dish.
It was originally Cole Gulch, circa the 1800's.
well played travin
I don't care about the classification of neighborhoods down to 2 square blocks so much. What annoys me about NOPA is that it is not, in fact, North of the Panhandle but rather NE. What do we call the area directly North? Just wondering.
Seriously? Who cares! It's a name. Albeit a stupid name, it doesn't really matter. And if you say it with a valley girl accent, it's actually somewhat enjoyable. "ohmigawd i live in NOPUHHHHH"
Coming from L.A. it's a shock that a 49 square mile city is divided into almost that many neighborhoods. New York is that way too. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me--an area twice as large as SF is divided into Santa Monica, Hollywood, and West L.A.
I mean don't you all put San Francisco on your envelopes?
Tonality, as someone who moved here from L.A. myself about a year ago, you had me at first, but then I started thinking about the neighborhood designations in L.A., and, well, you've forgotten dozens of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_districts_and_neighborhoods_of_Los_Angeles
That article starts with just a few at the top, but then starts the real breakdown.
Also, neighborhood designations in S.F. tend to mean a lot more than they do in L.A., for example: the weather and mass transit considerations (packed, etc.). A lot more granularity here.
i live in SOPA for reals (repreSENT, yo), but when i say that to people they say you live in WTF? then i cry, because i DON'T live the haight! i DON'T!
Western Addition was Justin Herman's jargon for we're in the process of moving all the African-Americans out of the Fillmore. That piece between Golden Gate, Gough, Geary and Divisadero that redseca2 pointed out mirrors Phase 1 of the original redevelopment (urban renewal) act that obliterated the vibrant Black and Japanese communities that called Fillmore home in the 40s and 50s.
Japanese Internment actually obliterated the Japanese community -- another dumb US policy.
Mmmmmm, yes. I'm pretty sure that back in the 1800's when the end of town was Polk Street, whitey was already planning an internment camp for the africans, and decided on calling it the Western Addition in order to move them out of this mythical place called the Fillmore because this guy named Bill wanted to build a concert hall and have cabaret shows with musicians and give away apples.
Screw 1984. The screen writers for Idiocracy nailed it.
i don't like it either, but it's less annoying than that whole SoMissPo crap they were trying to shovel a few months ago.
tonality, do you mean that you are surprised that New York is divided into so many neighborhoods, or that you're not? Just curious...
(#26)"Silly, but probably inevitable. I mean how else did the intersection of Carl and Cole become "Cole Valley" suddenly."
I don't know about "suddenly" ... I lived at Carl Street in 1978 and it was Cole Valley then too.
katy, i've never actually been but a friend who went to school there had the same impression. everything in l.a. is so much more spread out. even the list of l.a. neighborhoods posted includes some that are their own cities, and even the number of well-known neighborhoods is the same among s.f. and a 3-4 times larger area in l.a.
i don't know if it makes any difference in ease of navigation, it seems like cross streets are used more often in l.a. and neighborhoods are used here.