Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The Castro: Aesthetics

By Cinthia, Juven and Claudia

When we went to the Casto district, we were really surprised because there were a lot of different people that we weren't used to seeing in our neighborhood. There were mostly white people, but there were other ethnicities, too. People mostly looked like they had a lot of money to spend on their clothes, and wanted to look good. Also, the might be spending money on gym memberships, or maybe they just walk a lot. There were some people that were't fit, but, mostly, the people looked like the worked out a lot.

Around the streets, things seemed clean and decorated. They also had a lot of colorful rainbow flags, which we had never seen before. At least not that many. They were on every lamp post, and on the fronts of stores.

In the Castro, they have a lot of different stores and they sell different things that Oakland doesn't really have. The landscape was mostly flat with some hilly streets here and there, around San Francisco. There was some view of mountains nearby. The interviewees said that they would like more interesting buildings and architecture added to the Castro. Also, people who worry about the environment think that the landscape needs to be greener.

Outside of our topic, it was interesting that we interviewed six people very easily. Everyone we asked said yes. This was weird to us because they were all saying yes to us and nobody said no. That's never happened to us! Something else that was interesting was that the people we interviewed said that they came to live in the Castro because, there, nobody calls makes fun of them for being gay.

1 comment:

redfishbluefish said...

Hi Cinthia, Juven and Claudia

Great attention to detail! You may have hit on a real 'key' to what make s a 'community' when you found from your interviews that most people moved to The Castro because they were made fun of, or made uncomfortable, because they were gay.

If you think about it, probably everywhere you go, you look around for things and people that make you feel comfortable....and people that seem most like you always make you feel more comfortable, and 'at home'....and feeling 'at home' is what you want most to feel in your own community, huh?


Colleen from Australia