Even in my brand new “Charlestown Townies” T-shirt, I couldn't help feeling like a poseur at last Sunday’s Bunker Hill Days parade. While the parade is officially intended to commemorate the revolutionary Battle of Bunker Hill, it is really a celebration of Charlestown’s working class Irish American heritage.

My neighbor Andre sipped Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and watched the parade from the steps of Saint Francis Catholic Church. We found ourselves more interested in watching the spectators than the parade itself. Despite threatening clouds, people were lined up along Bunker Hill Street: yuppies couples in jogging suits with Labrador retrievers on the leash, and the Townies, in extended family groups, assembled in lawn chairs along the curb, drinking beer and waving miniature American flags. Venders hawked T-shirts, caps and hoodies, stamped with shamrocks and the words “What happens in Charlestown, Stays in Charlestown.”

While I have my fair share of Irish blood (along with about half a dozen other western European strains) I know all two well which side of the cultural divide I belong. I moved here September, to a brownstone perched on the side of the hill for which the revolutionary battle was misnamed (it was actually fought on nearby Breed’s Hill). I’m self-conscious of being part of a new wave of immigrants to Charlestown, that of young upper middle class professionals who are turning the notorious hub of the Irish mob into a fashionable neighborhood. Charlestown’s reputation hasn’t kept up with the rapid demographic changes; I still get strange looks when I say I live here, and a cab driver once refused me a ride home, saying he didn’t want to get shot at.

If there was any doubt we didn’t belong, it was confirmed when Andre and I slipped into Spanish so that we could comment unbeknownst about the people around us - like the two old ladies in American flag sweaters seated on the curb in front of us. As each contingent of the parade passed - the bagpiper players, the high school marching bands, the revolutionary war re-enactors, The Friends of Charlestown Dog Parks – the ladies enthusiastically called to the participants by names. Some shouldered their muskets and came over to chat before continuing along the route. I wondered how many years the ladies had been coming to Bunker Hill Days.

I had some trepidation about moving to Boston from Mexico, scornful of the colorless conformity I associated with the US. Charlestown, with its mixture of historic and kitsch, came as a pleasant surprise. Our block on the northwest slope of Bunker Hill is a microcosm of Charlestown’s gentrification process. My roommates and I live in a three story brownstone owned by Patrick, who lives downstairs. Patrick, a true townie, born and raised in Charlestown keeps an Irish flag flying along with a Red Sox world championship banner. Next door, the colonial row houses have been yuppified, with French doors and brick patios, while a Virgin Mary lawn sculpture (which reminds me fondly of Mexico) stares dolefully from the other side of the street. Now that it’s warm enough to have the windows open, I hear the neighbors loudly joking or fighting in a Boston accent that’s more foreign to me than Spanish.

Property values soar as you walk south down my street, toward the grey spire of the Bunker Hill monument. Construction crews take up most of the on-street parking, the backs of their trucks filled with the debris from gutted townhouses. The finished renovations, the ones that adorn picture postcards of Charlestown, glow with good taste- the flowers in the window boxes compliment the colors of the trim. You forget that the public housing projects are just a few blocks away.

I was pleased to see, amid the shamrocks and pilgrim hats, some black faces in the parade, not only in the military contingents, but also in the high school marching bands and the revolutionary war re-enactors. Another shadow over Charlestown’s past is the race riots of 1775, in opposition to the busing of African American students to Charlestown from Dorchester. However, since then, Charlestown’s gentrification has coincided with a process of integration. The construction of public housing projects in the 70s attracted low income families at the same time young professionals, priced out of Boston, migrated across the Charles. In defiance of stereotypes, crime rates have declined in proportion to the increase in ethnic diversity. Still, as you walk down the west side of Bunker Hill, past the “Irish” Projects of Mishawum Park, you hardly see a dark face, while on the east side of Bunker Hill is predominately people of color and there are Dominican markets and Laundromats on every corner.

I don’t think I’ll be wearing my “Townies” T-shirt around Charlestown. I don’t want to be laughed out of town by “real” townies, like the old men who hang out by the mailboxes in front of Johnny’s Foodmaster. I’ll keep it in my drawer, with other kitschy souvenirs of places I’ve lived, like Virgin of Guadalupe T-shirt from Mexico City and the Che Guevara one from Cuba.