![Trucker and triplex owner Moises Romo got some help from the children of his Kenyan tenants while doing yard work. He reward them with some frozen treats from ice cream vendor Dan Assar.]Frogtown, one of St. Paul's traditional entryway neighborhoods to generations of immigrants and blue collar families, is gentrifying, according to an upcoming report by the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs.ichard Tsong-Taatariiïrtsong-taatarii@startribune.com](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/UO7Y6UTN5RATO5JTI623MHPE5Y.jpg?&w=1080)
Oh, for the old days in Frogtown, when the forces allied against gentrification labored so mightily!
When my wife and I bought our first home here in 1980, the corner of Dale and University was famous for its repellent nature. On one corner was the notorious Faust theater, an old-school porn house. On another stood the Belmont Club, a strip joint. On the third corner, the Flick, a porn mag/peep show operation.
Our house was a duplex. We lived on the top, rented the bottom. Among the tenant interviews I conducted was with a woman who listed her occupation as Manager, Belmont Club. "Do you have a problem with that?" she wondered. Before I could answer, she added, "I don't really have much furniture. Just a mattress …" I said I'd get back to her.
About the same time, the wave of crack cocaine crashed on Frogtown's shore. Talk about keeping housing prices reasonable! Tombstone-eyed guys would knock on our door at 10 or 11 at night to inform us they needed money "for the bus." Young pharmaceutical workers staked out the corners day and night, at times telling other residents that they had to pay a toll to use the sidewalks. It was possible back then to pull up to a University Avenue intersection and have multiple prostitutes converge on your car.
If you were searching for cheap rent or a bargain on a house, this was your moment. That duplex we bought for $58,000? Eighteen years later we sold it for $56,000. Of course we did the only thing sensible people would do. We bought another Frogtown home.
OK, we're nuts. Or weirdly motivated. We got to know a lot of neighbors who were willing to put up a fight to stay in the neighborhood. I guess we enjoyed the tussle. And also, we would have been embarrassed to jump ship.
So we're still here. The concern these days, as pointed out in your recent piece, "In Frogtown, fears of being squeezed out" (July 3), is that Frogtown isn't the place it used to be — a place where no reasonably intelligent person would invest a dime and expect a return, except, perhaps, for a slumlord. Of which, back in the day, there were plenty, and of which there remain more than a few.
On my Frogtown street, there are still those waging their personal war against gentrification. For example, the young marksman who unloaded a clip of 9mm rounds on a Sunday afternoon, managing not to harm his hated enemies, but nonetheless putting two bullet holes in my truck and taking out a bunch of neighbors' auto glass. Last week, before I managed to put down a morning cup of coffee, a young woman, fidgeting like spiders had gotten under her skin, stood screaming at my gate that her boyfriend, whose name she couldn't recall, was trying to kill her.
