Josiah Luis Alderete, a co-owner of Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery, discusses his background, poetry, and the changes in the Mission District. He also shares his experiences of being a Chicano poet and the impact of the dot-com boom on his life.
Josiah Luis Alderete is the co-owner of Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery. He's also a Mission District native and a proud Chicano poet. He incorporates Spanglish – a mix of English and Spanish – in his writings, which pay homage to the Mission District and his identity as a Chicano poet.
He's written four books, and been invited to perform in Argentina and Mexico. Alderete said he was pushed out after the dot-com boom of the late 90s/early 2000s more than doubled his rent. But the neighborhood hasn't left him. As Alderete put it: ‘There’s Mission folks now in Oakland, Vallejo, Berkeley and Marin.
We’re like a diaspora of Mission. Many people don’t know that there used to be a Mexican barrio in North Beach, a little Mexico. That neighborhood back then had a bunch of Latin jazz and flamenco clubs. It was a whole vibe there.
My mom and dad met working at a club called We lived in the Mission, but it was never in one place for very long. Eventually, my mom got sick of the relationship and moved us out to Marin. So, that freaked me out because I was young (10 years old) and I got moved to one of the whitest parts of the Bay area.
I toughed it out there until I was 18 or 19 and I ran back to San Pancho. People laugh when I tell them Valencia Street being a long stretch of appliance stores. There was this place called, an OG Mexican diner at the corner of 20th and Mission. They basically had Christmas decorations up 365 days a year.
You go in there and mariachis would be playing. Oh Yeah! It’s never going to go away, no matter how many wine bars, plant stores they put on Valencia Street. Remembering these places that made this neighborhood what it is now isn’t nostalgia at all.
It’s history. Mission Local is free for every San Franciscan. He hadn’t been out here in years and we invited him for probably four, five days. I’d see him on the block, walking around and dancing with people.
We gave him the award that night and afterward came up to me, Ricardo and everybody else and he said ‘Thank you. The Mission is exactly the way I remember it.
Mission District Chicano Poet Spanglish Poetry Latin Jazz And Flamenco Clubs Mexican Barrio In North Beach Mission Folks In Oakland Vallejo Berkeley And Marin Literary Legacy Of The Neighborhood Reading Series At The Bookstore
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