Day: March 3, 2006

Vegetate has wine on the weekends (Fridays and Saturdays) for the month of March. Got the email from Vegetate that they have hired chefs from Viridian, also I think I’ve noticed something new on the menu. Minor thing, they open at 6pm. So anyone (Toby, Jimbo, Nora, anybody) want to join me for dinner tonight? Email me. Also don’t forget to mail Jack Evans about the liquor license.
Also on the topic of eateries, Taw’s Thai X-ing is in the March 2006 Washingtonian Magazine. “Lofty Curries From a Basement Kitchen” (find here) is the short piece. I have to say that the waits have gotten much better. Of course, I tend to order early, like when he first opens. So far my waits for the Panaag Tofu has been 15-20 minutes. I just order, go home, drop stuff off, and come back and pick up my tofu. So far so good.

Just a little reminder.
There is more to this city than NW. There are these other quadrants, NE, SE & SW. I’m not just talking Capitol Hill, I mean past Capitol Hill, past Brookland, past all those places that cater to the hipster transitional mover-shaker set. And believe it or not….. people live there. People live on the other side of the river. And not all parts of Anacostia, or Ward 8 are horrid. There might not be anything there that would attract a certain demographic, but from reports of some acquaintances, there are pockets where responsible adults live, set out for work, and come back to Wards 7 & 8 unscathed.
I’m writing this because, well I and others can get a little too NW-centric. As if the whole city revolves around what’s happening here. I tend to be NW-centric only because this is where I live, and sometimes work, and where I go shopping. Yet, I need to, as we all need to, acknowledge there is the rest of the city.
Some of it is affordable too. For the past couple of years I’d purposely not talk much about NE DC because I really wanted some of my friends to check it out as affordable places to buy. There is a part of NE I would go through often, biking from work in MD. I think it is called Avondale, and I would bike from Avondale, bits of Woodridge, through Brookland and right on into NW. Now I’m going to call affordable anything under $300K, and there are affordable 2-3 bedroom, detached, semi-detached bungalow-type houses with brown lawns and chain link fences. Below $200K there are some SFH and condos and a co-op, but not a lot of amenities, I’ve noticed.

OpinionJournal – Cross Country has an interesting piece on Minneapolis African American families voting with their feet. How does it relate to Shaw? The black middle class is no different than the white middle class when it comes to their kids’ education. Just not willing to sacrifice their/our children’s future for the sake of [black unity, supporting public education, giving the city a chance, pick one]. Some old timers may want the neighborhood to stay black, but I’ve noticed, for many of the old timers, their kids are grown and have already gone through DCPS. Seems that middle class African American parents, like the Minneapolis parents, may choose not to move in traditionally black neighborhoods, or just the city in general, because of the schools.