A damn fine evening out with Miss D (technically Mrs D, now, but that's really just too matronly-sounding for someone I've know as long and partied as hard with as she). We went to the jazz club just a few blocks up from me, which dates back to the late 1930s and looks more like a Hollywood set than any place you could actually walk into and order a beer: red metal exterior, octagonal floor tiles, and crazy zebra-patterned flocked wallpaper in the back room. I understand that the whole place wasrenovated and restored about five years ago, but it doesn't look like the usual shiny remodel job--it's a little dim and dingy around the edges, just the way you want it.

Weekends the lounge has in big acts and charges a hefty cover, but Wednesday nights feature a talented three-man combo and only a two-drink minimum--a fantastic deal, so sometimes the place is crowded with hipster kids from the local private university and Japanese and German tourists. Tonight, though, it was only 2/3 full, and almost entirely locals (some getting up there in years), drinking their scotches and martinis and yelling encouragement to the sad-faced guitar player in his Pittsburgh baseball cap.

So D and I sat there and grooved and had a few drinks, and I think as I think every time that I ought to drop in every week. I love this neighborhood, and it makes me sad that many of the folks in the bar probably see me as a gentrifier pushing them out. And in some sense that's true--the more people like me (young, white, female, and obviously professional though actually quite poor) move in, the safer people with money feel, and the more they're willing to pay. The other day I was walking home from my office job, and as I passed one middle-aged black man said jovially to his friend, "man, I'd sure like me a beautiful white girl with some money . . . and a building!"

And I thought to myself, you want money and a building, you talk to my aging black landlady.