Truxton Is In Shaw

Well I have finished London Calling and I’ve come away from it wondering about something. Is the diversity that we laud when speaking about the positives of the neighborhood just background scenery? How often and how deeply to we engage in any sort of activity with those who are different than ourselves? Of course, the same could be said about living in a homogeneous neighborhood too, but that wasn’t examined in the book. Authors looked at where respondents in the gentrifying neighborhoods best friends came from (clumsy sentence, I know). Their best friends came from university or work followed by “other” which could be a club, church, political group or the like. Organizations that do not require participants to live in the same neighborhood. Yet that seemed like an unfair question to me. There is more of an opportunity to interact with the same people and engage in the small talk that leads to deeper revelations of who we all are at work and school than standing in one’s front yard. What did seem fair was to try to see how the generally Anglo middle class interacted with immigrant, non-white, council housing (public housing) or working class residents who add to the diversity theme.
Thinking of my own interactions with folks on my block we come together on whatever is our sameness. There is the impromptu ‘garden club’, ‘kennel club’ and other little on the sidewalk and over the fence discussion groups where the racial and age dynamics change depending on what calls one over or away. During these little neighborly get togethers I’m not thinking about our differences. That is unless the focus of the discussion is exclusionary as I, not owning a dog, cannot add to a doggy gossip session.

I recorded part of the ANC5C meeting. Unfortunately my Zire, which I recorded on only has so much memory. If you have no interest in the Mondie testimony don’t bother downloading this one, no music, no commentary, no frills.
Audio has been removed. Please request it directly from mari at inshaw period com.

Values are the things you keep when they are most inconvienent.

In using this definition, affordable housing apparently isn’t a value of mine. It should be as it should be for all of us but with a little soul searching, ah, nah. There have been proposals in this and nearby neighborhoods for some sort of building of affordable housing. Have I supported any of it? Um, no.
The inconvience of some affordable housing is the opportunity costs that we factor in our heads. Instead of some plot of land going to fulfill some societial need that we’d rather have tucked away in some other part of the city, we could get people like ourselves who could make the area more attractive to the businesses we like. Besides we already have one affordable housing complex in Truxton. Then there are the perceived (as this is predicting the future) and real costs of crime, trash, and noise that come with living with affordable housing, be it a group home, a string of section eight housing or an apartment building.
Don’t get me wrong I do appriectiate the income diversity in the neighborhood. However looking at my own actions my efforts to protect and defend affordable housing around here is pitiful. So who am I kidding?
I do admire, even if I don’t agree with, those who speak up for the working poor and the like in meetings and other venues where they face the wrath of their neighbors. It is one thing to rail against complete strangers regarding whatever unpopular (or popular) social program or project. It is a whole ‘nother thing when you fight or go against people you know and who you like on a day to day basis.

Riders have suggested extending the line to Greenbelt as a way to ease crowding and to bring trains more often to the growing areas of Petworth, Columbia Heights, U Street and Shaw.

What’s your opinion?

First Community Meeting
Monday, January 23, 7 p.m.
DC Housing Finance Agency, 815 Florida Avenue, NW – Auditorium
(U Street/Cardozo Metro)

Councilmember Jim Graham, WMATA Incoming CEO Dan Tangherlini, Board Member Gladys Mack, several ANC commissioners and the leaders of the Mid-City Business Association are scheduled to attend.

Extension of WMATA Yellow Line rail service? What are the Options? What are the Costs?

The WMATA Board of Directors held a town hall meeting at the Reeves Building in December where I brought up the idea of extending Yellow Line Service as a potential option for attracting, retaining, and expanding rider ship by providing more frequent service to stops along the Green Line. These stops such as Shaw, U Street, Columbia Heights, and Georgia Avenue are all being developed using Transit Oriented Development principles of high density residential and retail concentration centered on public transportation hubs. However, right now these transportation hubs are not being fully utilized primarily because of 20 year old decision that did not foresee the expansion and growth of the middle of Washington, DC.

Have you ever gotten on the Green Line late at night or on the weekend, right as the train is leaving, to then spend twenty minutes waiting on the platform for the next train? Infrequent trains during off peak hours is a result of a decision made in the 80¹s not to bring the Yellow Line service to near West Hyattsville and then build east towards Bowie as was called for in the original WMATA rail plans. Instead it was decided to build a turnaround at Mt. Vernon Square that would serve as the end of the line.
Since the Yellow and Green lines share the same tracks from L¹Enfant to Mt. Vernon Square, terminating the Yellow Line service at Mt. Vernon Square means that all the stops north of Mt. Vernon Square can only have half the possible rail service.

Since December WMATA has examined several enhanced service possibilities, the needs required to implement, and the overall costs involved for each of several options and will be providing this information at the public meeting on January 23, at the Housing Finance Agency Building. A very fitting location for this meeting given the 1000¹s of new housing units being built in the next three years within three blocks of the eastern entrance to the U Street Metro at the African American Civil War Memorial. This new urban density has spurred the necessity to reexamine the frequency of service at these stations.

My personal belief is that extending ³Yellow Line² service to Greenbelt during off­peak hours on evenings and weekends will be revealed as a cost effective solution that does not require costly new construction or the purchase of new rail cars and that will only require operations capital to implement now. The major expenses involved in the development of the Inner ³Green Line², land development, building tunnels, etc has been paid for already, yet we are not fully leveraging that investment by terminating Yellow Line Service at Mt. Vernon Square.

I want to personally thank Councilmember Graham for his leadership and follow through and WMATA for their quick action and comprehensive approach in exploring and providing an understanding for all the potential extension options. I believe this public meeting represents the recent commitment by WMATA to work to meet the needs of its riders while operating more efficiently and economically. I encourage everyone to attend this very important meeting in order to get a full understanding of all the options and to make sure that the Councilmember and WMATA get the necessary community feedback.

I look forward to seeing you all on Monday night,

Scott Pomeroy
Development Officer
MidCity Business Association
202.577.6786

The MidCity Business Association is pleased to co-host this meeting and
encourage you to forward this invite to all potentially affected
residents
or businesses at any of these Green Line stations.

I’m at my computer waiting for the pain meds to kick in (arm hurts) and checking my email I have been alerted by the City Paper (ah, someone at the City Paper likes me) that the Days Inn on NY Ave NE (is that anywhere near the hooker hotel?) will be hosting Chinese workers to work on the Chinese Embassy on Van Ness for possibly the next two years. So expect a small spike in Chinese speaking folk who may or may not come through Chinatown (man they are going to be disappointed) and Shaw and all points in between.
Because the arm is hurting I left the DCist happy hour. I was glad to see John who I knew from my swing dancing days, he’s now a photoblogger. John you are an excellent dancer, email me when you decide to venture out to a dance. Also I’m getting old, loud music (unless I’m playing it) doesn’t do it for me.

Saw a pix of Brian Brown and his wife Louise in today’s Washington Post Home Section. Now I have heard of Mr. Brown on the Eckington listserv, and right now my memory is telling me some postings have been critical (deserving? maybe not) of Mr. Brown. Something about a dumpster that might not have been his…
Anywho, I looked at the picture and thought, oh my, I think I’ve met them before. It was 2000 and I was looking for a place in DC and answered an ad for a room in Mt. Vernon Sq. I and another gal showed up for the viewing. The owner, who I think was Mrs. Brown, owned at least two houses over on Morgan or Kirby (I don’t remember the street) and the Mrs. showed us the room soon to be available (the guy was moving out) and a neighboring house they were restoring. She went on about the history and the details. I remember the available room was tiny and I wasn’t interested in it for the price it was going for. Also I had a saying, and still have it, “I work in a museum, I don’t want to live in one.”
There are some who doubt the Browns dedication to history and restoration. If they are the same folks I met that day when looking for a room to rent, the Browns are dedicated to it in their living space. They will do right by Le Droit.

At a coffee hour I was chatting with a retired librarian who had worked at MLK and she mentioned how she didn’t like the building. In her opinion it was a bad, bad, bad building for a library. It might have been a perfectly good building for an office but not so for a library. Sorry but you can’t just stuff a bunch a books in any old building (even if it is a van der Rohe) and call it a perfectly functioning library. I think ALA, the American Library Association, has a subcommittee on library buildings that actually address the needs of libraries. I was happy to read in the Post that Susan Fifer Canby, UMD College of (Library and )Information Studies grad and 2004 Alumna of the Year is on the mayor’s library panel (I’m a ClIS grad too). I may saunter into one of the many series of public meetings to hear what the members of the panel have to say.
The Waltha Daniel’s library in Shaw. That is an ugly building with maintenance issues.

A couple of things again from London Calling (that book on the middle class in gentrifying neighborhoods) struck me. One was the authors wrote repeatingly that the middle class, in the gentrifying neighborhoods, were a numerical minority and the other thing, probably mentioned once was that of overall middle class behavior gentrification was a small tiny itty bitty expression. Think of it. Of all the people I would squarely put in the middle class column at work, most live in the burbs and are very happy to live far away (except for the commute).
Yet when you are in the gentrifying neighborhood I gather it looks more like a middle class invasion. No. We’re just the odd balls. Everybody else is taking over farmland so they can have a yard and a driveway.
If moving into gentrifying hoods is a minor action expression of middle class behavior then that explains why aren’t there more middle class blacks moving into Shaw. Looking at my own middle class family (oh and for my new readers I’m black) only two of us live in the city. One aunt lives on the other side of the river in SE but she and my late uncle moved there after WWII way before the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Everybody else came to DC in the late 60s and 70s and moved to the burbs. When I came in the 90s I first lived in the suburbs and got flak from my family for choosing the District. I’m quite sure they are wondering when I’m going to snap out of this phase, sell the house move to PG or NoVa and live like normal (new construction house with a car in the driveway).
The whole of American middle classdom, regardless of race, seem to have little interest in moving to the ‘hood. Because really, the occasional gunshots at night, the friendly neighborhood drug dealers, the adventures of C the crackho, the trash, the headaches with the city, not for everyone.

I intended to be in bed in the next 3 minutes so let me quickly recap tonight’s meeting, which I’ll go into greater detail later.
* There were ANC 5C board elections. Jim is no longer the Chairman.
* Mondie made his proposal to the board. His project was not approved by the board. Boardmember Brother Phillips took him to task.
* Recorded some of the proposal and the back and forth regarding the Mondie item. But fooling around with the sound is going to take a week.

On the meeting agenda, but not tackled by the time Toby, John, Karl and I left the meeting, was BZA Application No. 17437 Amsale Teku would like a variance to put a “Beauty Salon” at 1543 New Jersey Ave NW.

Me go sleepy now.

I should have posted this around Thanksgiving or Christmas but better late than never. People when you leave for a weekend or vacation turn off your mail and newspaper delivery. You can go on line to USPS.GOV and have them hold your mail for three days. I go on-line to get the Post to stop delivery, which can be hit or miss. Why? Because nothing says I’m not home like three wet newspapers piled in your yard.
Also have a neighbor, someone, kinda keep a eye out for UPS or FedEx packages that have a way of showing up unexpectedly. Or at least those little notices.
I know some of you have exciting jobs that wisk you away at the last minute. I’m sure even super secret agents go on line while waiting from the airport to tell the post office to hold their mail and send their neighbor a quick e-mail saying to place unexpected packages under the porch or behind a plant.