I didn’t run for supervisor in District 8 because in the end my heart just wasn’t in it. I’ve always been more of an outside agitator than an inside kind of guy. That should come as a surprise to no one.

Months of speculation about whether I would oppose Bevan Dufty ended with a whimper not a bang. I didn’t hold a press conference. Perhaps I should have. So it was curious to me when I read in Randy Shaw’s op ed in Beyondchron (“Reformers Happily Join the San Francisco Democratic Party Machine,” Sep. 05): “Some conjectured that Dufty had gotten something in return for endorsing (activist Robert) Haaland (for supe in D5 two years ago). There’s no way to verify this, but no prominent gay or lesbian candidate ever made a serious move to run against Dufty in District 8.”

I don’t know how to define a “serious move,” but I sure thought about it a lot. I consulted with a number of trusted allies: Matt Gonzalez, Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly and Greg Shaw, president of the Milk Club, all encouraged me to run. Many other people approached me, too. I admit I was flattered.

As for Shaw’s inference that there may be a connection between Dufty endorsing Haaland and no prominent gay or lesbian candidate opposing D8’s incumbent: I wasn’t talked out of the race by Robert Haaland. In fact, when I spoke to Robert about the possibility of running, he told me that he would support me no matter what I decided to do. Robert also tried to get AIDS Quilt founder Cleve Jones to jump into the lineup.

Shaw raises a point in his piece that many of us have been asking ourselves for a while now: Why isn’t a queer progressive opposing Dufty? It’s not for lack of trying on many people’s part. But the district is not what it used to be. Not only has gentrification taken a heavy toll, but the high cost of renting in the hood has robbed the queer movement of its greatest asset: the young blood that every few years would filter in and revitalize our activist community. That young blood is not living in the Castro because the dot-com boom made the neighborhood unaffordable to the young immigrants who always kept it hopping.

Gone are the days when those young queers could pile into flats in the Castro and make enough from working at neighborhood shops to pay their rent and still have time to organize. I knew lots of people who did that in the 90s. Back then, the corner of 18th and Castro would be filled with tables and banners every Saturday morning as activists peddled their causes. I was a fixture on that corner.

Since the dot-com boom, the heart and soul of the Castro has been ripped out by greedy landlords and real estate interests. It’s going to be tough to get it back, given that rents in San Francisco are still the second highest in the country, despite the dot-com bust.

If I believed that as a supervisor I could change all that, if I thought I could turn back the gentrification and bring down the rents I would’ve run in a heart beat. I feel a sense of hopelessness as I look at the Castro these days. I’m afraid queers will lose our neighborhood here just as we lost the West Village in New York. The economic forces are too great. And too many queers are profiting off of the gentrification and high rents.

I won’t be in City Hall come January, but that doesn’t mean I’m going away any time soon.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a longtime radical queer southern Italian working class performer, writer and activist.