I work near campus. My office is across the railroad tracks from the University. We're on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. The neighborhood that surrounds us is an impoverished one, filled with little shotgun houses.
Through the years that I have worked in the neighborhood I have made it a habit to walk through it on my lunch breaks, as well as "smoke breaks" (I don't smoke but I take the breaks anyway and walk). I have gotten to know several of my neighbors during this time.
The neighborhood is changing. If you look at it from an outside perspective it appears to be getting "better". The old, run down shotgun shacks are being knocked down and new student housing is being erected. The new houses are larger and nicer. The people who occupy them are younger, more attractive, and more affluent. The neighborhood is looking less blighted. This could be a success story.
But it isn't. Not to me. These shotgun houses are small and in poor repair, but they are cheap. They often rent for $300 or so a month. You can't find housing cheaper than that anywhere. The people who live in the neighborhood, my friends and neighbors, are being displaced. They often have nowhere else to go. One of my neighbors moved in with his sister. Another left town to go back to his family's farm. Many others I don't know where they've gone. Their lease runs up and you see all of their items on the front lawn the next day. Someone comes by and picks it all up and that's the last you ever see of them. Where do they go? Who knows.
The college students move in. They like the neighborhood. They like the blight around them. It's urban, edgy, and cool. They are not like their buddies in the dorms. They are "keeping it real". They are hipsters.
My wife works with a feeding ministry in the north end. The neighborhood she serves in is experiencing this same shift. It isn't college students in her case, mostly. It's just young, middle class hipsters who are drawn to these communities. They come from privilege but don't want to acknowledge it. They could live anywhere but they want to "keep it real" (yes, I hear that phrase a lot). So they move in and take homes and displace people who have lived in the community for generations. They have money and some stability. I can see why a landlord would want to rent to them. It looks like progress. It feels like progress. But it's just an invasion of middle class white people. It's just the hipster gentrification.
I got slapped in the face with this today and I almost lost my mind. I went off on hipsters. I went off on gentrification. I got to ranting something awful and it felt like, if given the opportunity, I could get violent about the subject. And then it hit me. I don't show the love of Jesus Christ to hipsters.
Hit with that conviction I decided to try to see Jesus in hipsters. As I was walking on my lunch I looked around at some hipsters and tried to see Jesus in them. And then I laughed at the idea that hit me. I was picturing a Hipster Jesus. So, as I am wont to do, I tweeted:
But when I searched the #hipsterjesus hashtag to see what others were saying I found one that I thought was a good one that expressed the best in Jesus and hipsters:
Someone beat me to the whole Hipster Jesus thing by a day. And she did it better. And she did it with a better heart.
Gentrification is still an issue. Fixies are still horrible bikes to ride in hilly communities like the one I live in. And I still don't understand why anyone would want to wear skinny jeans or drink PBR.
But Jesus loves hipsters. And I should too. Jesus, help me to love hipsters like you do.
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