Commerce and Gentrification
Union Square's location at the juncture of working-class East Somerville and the city's tonier western sections have made it the focal point of changing demographics. While Union Square still offered ten dollar Brazilian haircuts as of 2005, more upscale cafes and restaurants have opened since the 1990s, bringing gentrification deeper into Somerville and nourishing pedestrian street life, though with a highbrow twist.
Union Square is a hub for bars, although this feature, too, is fast changing. Current and former establishments include Bull McCabe's (formerly Tir na nÓg), P.A.'s Lounge, The Independent, Precinct (formerly Toast), Radio (formerly Choices), Sally O'Briens and Cantina La Mexicana (formerly Irish Eyes, closed in May 2006). Local restaurants include Journeyman, India Palace, The Neighborhood Restaurant, Sweet Ginger, Taquería la Mexicana, Sherman Cafe, Bloc 11, Macchu Pichu, Jimbo's Famous Roast Beef, and Mama Gina's. The most recent addition, Journeyman, opened in September 2010.
Many markets in the area are run by and cater to the various ethnic groups that live in and around Union Square. International Market is a Salvadoran store, Solução and Pão de Açucar sell Brazilian foods, Little India and New Bombay Market are Indian grocery stores, Capone's is an Italian grocery, and Reliable Market features Asian ingredients, primarily Korean. In 2010, Sherman's opened a store featuring only locally produced foods.
Read more about this topic: Union Square (Somerville)
Famous quotes containing the words commerce and and/or commerce:
“Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, coöperate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root—
Let there be commerce between us.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)