So I've talked about living in a "changing" neighborhood before. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here's this handy scorecard:

The neighborhood	Pre "change"	Post "change"
Dogs	Rottweilers, Doberman Pinchers, German Shepherds -- "Fuck off" dogs	Golden Retrievers, Chocolate Labs, Weimeraners -- "Rub my belly" dogs
Drinking detrius	King Cobra 40s, broken	Starbucks hand protectors and swizzle sticks
Abandonned or run-down houses	Drug bait -- here comes the crackhouse!	Developer bait -- here come the condos!
Corner stores	Liquor and food stores -- emphasis on the liquor	Trendy boutiques -- emphasis on trendy
Street parking	Available, but not necessarily advisable	Desirable, but not usually available
Really nice cars	Probably a visiting drug lord	Probably a resident yuppiescum consultant
"Ethnic" restaurants	Basic cheap food from the home country/region of the neighborhood	Expensive cuisine in a hip atmosphere from the hot region of the moment
Neighborhood hangouts	Inexpensive home-style (or home-country) restaurants, heavy on the full-fat food. Bars and nightclubs with an emphasis on drinking	Inexpensive(ish) funky cafe-type places, heavy (as it were) on veggie or vegan food. Bars and nighclubs with an emphasis on decor and atmosphere. Oh, yeah, and drinking.
Scruffily dressed denizens with questionable hygiene	Homeless, junkie or drunk	Artist, musician or student

By this scale, we're closer to the "Pre-change" part of the continuum. But even in the time we've lived here, we can see movement. We've got crackhouses and condos; old-country cooking-with-lard, menu-in-Spanish places and a little hipster place with funky decor and vegan options right around the corner; even the occasional Starbucks cup in the gutter (I have no idea where that came from -- the nearest Starbuck is several blocks away.) The trick is to see if the neighborhood can keep its character -- the restaurants, the corner grocericias, the music from the shops -- and lose the drugs and gangs.

So I have to admit I have mixed feelings when we pass the condo building that's gone up nearby. On the one hand, huzzah, our property values are going to rise! On the other hand, boo, developers are making characterless, cookie-cutter buildings that lead to characterless, cookie-cutter neighborhoods with no soul. I don't want to be a part of the thing that sucks the soul out of this neighborhood. But I don't want to live with drug deals going down and multiple property crimes. I don't think it's a zero-sum game -- I think you can make a neighborhood safe while keeping the culture and character of the place alive. I think you can have both the groceracias and the boutiques, the Hispanic lunch counters and the vegan cafes. I'm just not sure how it's done.

When we were robbed, I suspect two things happened:
(1) The thieves picked us, and kept coming back, because we're basically white yuppiescum interlopers and we probably had decent stuff.
(2) The police paid attention to our complaints because we're basically white yuppiescum interlopers and we probably had decent stuff.

So if our presense, and our making pains out of ourselves with the police, helps the neighborhood be safer for everyone involved, fantastic. I feel like I've contributed (although how fucking sad and infuriating is it that the police will still pay more attention to a white person's complaint than a Hispanic person's complaint.) I just don't want us to be the harbingers of gentrification doom. I'm living here because I like so much about the neighborhood (and because we could afford to buy here), not because I expect the neighborhood to be made over in Lakeview's image. (I shudder to think...) I think the folks I know in the neighborhood know that; I just don't know.

Ah, the horrors of white liberal guilt. Poor wee me, I have it so hard. *sniff*.