Quote:
Originally Posted by McC
http://www.southcentralottawa.com/flash.php
Looks like Urban Capital and Tamarack will have more projects to come in the area after the 3 Phases of Central. Burning self-interested question: How much older than their target market am I if I think South Central would be THE LAST name that you'd want to try and foist on an up and coming area...? holy cow does a name that evokes Boyz in the Hood, Rodney King, Crips, Bloods and race riots not spell "hip real estate, buy now!" to me...
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They knew exactly what they were invoking with that name, but are counting on a kind of collective, selective amnesia or flat-out ignorance. "South Central" for a young, relatively middle-class, predominantly white Canadian demographic = hip, urban, 'edgy' even (but not too edgy) -- and is it just me or does Barrymore's not look oddly like the arch in Washington Square in that ad? Better throw in some trees and single-family housing and a poutine truck in the image to make all feel safer. All of this rather than a lightning rod (like L.A.'s South Central has been) for a variety of much less 'glamorous' issues: urban decay, poverty, crime, social injustice, etc. It's like celebrating a sanitized white-friendly Cotton-Club-esque version of the Harlem Renaissance with no references to institutionalized racism and mobilized activism. Just some swingin' hot jazz and cool Langston Hughes poems.