The Castro: Economics

By Delilah, Alejandro, Lesley and Vanessa R.

The Castro District of San Francisco is a very good-looking place. It is very clean and colorful, with lots of rainbow flags everywhere and bright colors on the shop fronts. There are also a lot of houses that look like they have been renovated, and money spent on them.

Some of the people we interviewed said that a lot of money has been spent in that part of San Francisco. People invest a lot of money there because they want to keep the neighborhood clean and safe. Most people said that there was mostly middle and upper class people there (people earning a higher income, and often earning two incomes per household). They also said, and we agree, that the stores are kind of expensive there.

The people we spoke to in the Castro District were really nice and were very quick to say yes to an interview. We really liked how the people were not negative towards our group. Some of them really expressed interest in our project and wanted to make sure we had all our questions answered. They were friendly to us, and didn't seem to be afraid of us, or think anything of us coming from Oakland.

There were a lot of different stores in the Castro. Most of them were way out of our price range. One store, where we were interviewing the clerk, had this really pretty jacket, but the store clerk said "your not gonna want it when you see what the price is!" We didn't check the price. He laughed and said that the Castro is an expensive place, maybe because people there are more willing to spend money to look the way they want, and have more money to spend on the things they want. One thing we couldn't help notice was that there were many adult stores there that sell ...adult things. There were also a lot of home stores, flower stores and cafes. We have flowers in Oakland, too, but not as expensive.