On Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 5:27:59 PM UTC-4, Madra Dubh wrote:   
   > "Otto"  wrote in message    
   > news:11...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...   
   > >   
   > > Madra Dubh wrote:   
   > >   
   > >> I had heard about the enclave in Charlestown but didn't make it up there.   
   > >> I did visit the Irish Riviera, built as it is just to the south of the   
   > >> Brahmin beach areas.   
   > >> Several of the homes there had big signs, painted green, and adorned with   
   > >> Shamrocks, proclaiming the names of the Irish owners.   
   > >> Ay God, you've got to admire the humor of it.   
   > >   
   > >  I've seen one or two ridiculous signs like that in the US. The people   
   > > who put them up must be really taken with themselves. What is to be so   
   > > proud of that you've been born a particular nationality? It's just a   
   > > random outcome of fate. It's just really stupid.    Otto   
   >    
   > No Otto, you don't understand.   
   > It's the Boston Irish giving the finger to the Brahmins who once gave the    
   > shaft to the Boston Irish.   
   > (Are you not proud to be a part of the family you were born into?)   
      
   I'm a day late an a dollar short (to say the *very* least here) but, Madra, I   
   couldn't have said it any better myself. I was born and raised in South Boston   
   and I'm a proud 5th generation Irish South Bostonian.    
      
   One thing a lot of people don't understand and are quick to call ridicule   
   towards is the collective South Bostonian pride in our heritage. Starting in   
   the early/mid 1800s, South Boston had been a heavily populated Irish enclave.   
   It was a time when the    
   Irish were heavily discriminated against. Arguably, this discrimination   
   carried though to the early  1900s in overt signs and ads that stated "Irish   
   Need Not Apply." This claim has carried down even in my own family lore.    
      
   So, in short, we have two factors going on: a population of people looking for   
   a better life, all the while living during a time where they were viewed as   
   "less than."   
      
    It's almost like reverse red-lining; the Irish lived in South Boston for   
   decades upon decades and people avoided the neighborhood like the plague all   
   because the neighborhood was viewed as dangerous, dirty, and utterly   
   undesirable. Yet once property    
   values began to rise in the late 1990s, residents cashed out and investors   
   cashed in. The end result was a rich cultural heritage turned inside-out and   
   made into a hollow mask of its former self. Now? It's like seeing a ghost.   
      
    In the span of as little as three decades, I've seen Southie go from a   
   tight-knit community with generations of families living together affordably   
   to a gentrified boutique filled with trust-fund babies who simultaneously brag   
   about living in Southie    
   while relentlessly ridiculing Southie as trash and scum. It's impressive,   
   really -- you've got to admire the mental gymnastics.   
      
   Change is inevitable; but that doesn't mean it isn't nauseating.   
      
   My grammar school? Closed 6 years ago and will likely be turned into condos.   
      
   The CYO where I had gym class and played basketball? Condos.    
      
   The church my grandparents got married? Condos.    
      
   My grandmother's high school? Bulldozed and turned into condos.    
      
   My grandfather's house? Now selling for $1.5 million.    
      
   The function hall where we held my grandfather's 75th birthday party?  Now a   
   multi-story, multi-million dollar condo complex.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)