Truxton Is In Shaw

Well it is funny when you think about it.
After work I dragged my garbage can back to the back yard chatted with a neighbor and locked up the gate, only after the realization that I didn’t have the key for the rear door. I also didn’t have the key for the gate lock that I just locked, so I was locked inside my yard.
The sun was shining and it was warm so I figured I’d sit out there and possibly wait for my neighbor B. to get home and eventually go out in the backyard to putter over his plants. That waiting lasted a good 5 minutes and then I was trying to figure out how to escape from my yard. I tried to see if I could climb over the fence. Nope, too tall and an empty trash can wasn’t going to hold my weight. Under it. Nope, torso too big. And besides, I was wearing drycleanable clothes.
And that’s when the band of boys, who I’d been complaining about before wandered into the alley. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. I called out the name of one kid, who lives around the block. He answered, and I explained my problem and gave him the key to my front door and the ball they had thrown into my yard the day before. After some trial and error, he and the other kids let me into my house. I paid him $4 for rescuing me. Kid labor, cheap.
Of course, by the time the kids let me in B. had come home.

Part 2 of the Living in Shaw with no car series. See Part 1, walking for the begining.
One step up from walking is biking. Still requires human power to get around, but a whole lot faster. With a bike, I can get to more places, and places further away that I wouldn’t go to if I had to walk.
I bike to Dupont, U Street, Chinatown and recently Foggy Bottom. This is all on the crappy 3 speed. I have a mountain bike but I want to trade it in for a decent hybrid or road bike for part of my commute this summer.
Most of the time I run errands on the bike. A trip to Giant here, pick up a weeks worth of groceries. A trip to Rice or other spots along 14th like the Garden District, pick up more stuff. Trip downtown for research. And unlike a car, I can find someplace to park it in neighborhoods like Dupont or Adams Morgan, where finding a parking spot is difficult.
Not that finding a bike parking spot is a breeze. I don’t lock the bike to sign posts as they are not always in the sidewalk properly. I lock the bike to parking meters and lately, more parking meters have been popping up in Shaw. I’ve noticed parking meters near the Shaw metro station, when a few years back there were very few. Places where there are no parking meters one has to think creatively as to what public structure can be used as bike parking.
There is one place that I think makes having a bike easier in Shaw and that is the non-profit Chain Reaction bike shop. I bought the ugly bike (it was not pretty when I bought it and I’ve just made it uglier) from them for less than $50. They have been there when I needed new tires, when some jerk bent my rear wheel, flats, new brakes, everything. Yes, it is not a big shop, and it is very cramped but it is close enough from the house that I can drag my busted bike to them and get it fixed so I’m back on the road again.
Other cool things I’ve noticed pop up in the greater Shaw region are bike lanes. There is a bike lane on R St starting at 7th going until 14th? I’d love to see some on Q Street, and 7th & 9th Sts. There is enough space between the parked cars and the car traffic to ride between the two on those streets, but I really like the clearly marked bike lanes.
Next time, Living in Shaw with no car:Metro
Links
Washington Area Bicyclists Association
Kryponite Locks– They are recalling some of their locks

This morning I want to tip my hat to the alert police officer who stopped a car. I was heading west on R Street crossing 6th when R Street had the light. A car from a 1/2 block up was barreling off of Rhode Island. I travel up and down R St. enough to know the traffic patterns and if the light is green on R, there is no left turn on Rhode Island. So I was afraid of getting hit as I was crossing 6th and this car is coming fast in my direction and I know it didn’t have the light. Well the police spotted the violation and stopped the guy. Yea!

This might be another great InShaw series, or not. But I should start somewhere.
I haven’t owned a car since 1993 when I sold my one and only car after graduating college. Since then I either had no money for a car (gas, insurance, maintenance, etc) or lived in areas where parking was a game of skill and cunning, and there was ample public transportation, I just never bothered to buy another car. So here I am, more than a decade later, and still no car. So I walk.
I chose the neighborhoods where I lived in the DC metro area based on the public transportation and what was in walking distance. When I first moved to Shaw, over in Logan Circle, I picked the place because #1 it was cheap, second because within walking distance was a Laundromat, the Giant, the metro station, and my hairdresser. Whole Foods hadn’t opened up until I was ready to move, it was 3 blocks away. When I bought the house and moved to the other end of Shaw, I could still walk to the Giant, I can walk to a Laundromat, the metro, and on a good day, when the sun is shining, my hairdresser.
Walking and having to walk is one of the good things about living in the city. Separates us from the far flung suburbanites. We got sidewalks, lots of ’em. Things are just close enough that you can walk to them, when there are things to walk to.
Almost everyday, I walk to the metro, to and from work. Depending on my needs and the season, I walk to the Giant or to the corner store for milk. I walk to the Dunkin Donuts, canceling out any health benefits walking may give. I walk over to friends’ homes. Sometimes I just walk to look around and see what is going on with the neighborhood.
Walking, good for you.

Last night in the house of the screaming woman, they had a little party. Well, “cookout” as they like to call it. Their cookouts are upsetting to me because it always rolls out into the alley and so does their garbage. Oh then there is the noise, but for now that’s not my pet peeve, I can call the cops about the noise. No my problem is the trash that they produce. B. told me they threw part of a hot dog in his yard. I walked out and noticed a plastic juice drink bottle in mine. I have seen guests at other such cookouts they’ve held throw trash into neighboring yards. Almost makes me angry enough to want to use the N word to describe them and their behavior. It’s one thing to trash your own yard, it is another thing to trash someone else’s.

After a day of dancing out at Dupont Circle this Sunday I rode back home with the intention of collasping on the bed and passing out. But I couldn’t because of the ruckus in the alley behind the house. Thinking I heard something in my yard, I looked out the window and about 5 boys around the age of 10 or 12 where bouncing a ball around between their tiny yard and the alley. I watched them because last year when they got a homemade basketball hoop up, rough play kept banging against my fence and my fence is not strong enough for that. For the longest while they were figuring out their play, bounce the ball, bang wood, run around or talk smack about girls. Another neighbor, attracted by the noise came out for a while and later yelled to someone inside the house to call the police when the boys started banging wood in a vacant yard.
Kids have no sense of private property.
Oh, they understand yours, mine, and theirs. But they don’t seem to give a second thought into wandering into someone’s yard, or even hitting balls on someone else’s wall or fence.
I caught Kwan with his new kitty in someone’s front yard standing on some stone edgers. I believe the cat was looking at the yard like a litter box and Kwan was focused on the cat, not on the fact he was stepping all over someone’s front yard. I told him he could fall standing on the edgers and got him out of that yard. It didn’t help that the yard did not have a fence.
Kids will also abuse fences. They will swing on the gate, sit on the fence, lean on the fence, and depending on the amount of give, bounce off the fence. Some of the fences on our block are not anchored well and bounce back when kids ram into them. Or just remain leaned back. When I do replace my fence, it will be kid proof.

My renting friends keep saying the market is going to bust. The housing market, because 5 years ago, they, with their single salaries could have bought in the city. Nothing big mind you, but a small bit of terra firma, or a very small studio condo. But they were too cool or what they could buy was not good enough, so they waited. And now we are here with vacant crack houses starting at 200K. So they (okay mainly just Bigg Al) keeps saying the market is going to bust, it is going to bust like the tech stocks. I say deflate. Also even if my house reverts back to the price I bought it at, I still got a house. Roof over my head. Bed to sleep in. Basement that floods. Mine, all mine. Unlike tech stocks I’m not left with just worthless numbers on a screen.
Keep saying the sky is falling, as long as terrorists don’t strike and the roof stays up, I’m good.

Back when Sala Thai opened I asked them if they delivered to my house, thinking I was well in their 2 mile delivery zone. Well no. So I come home today and in the mail is a menu for Sala Thai. “Bastards,” I think to myself. They taunt me with their menu when I can’t order delivery from them. Phooey, I spit on them. So I call them up, to demand why they tease me with descriptions of cilantro and lemon grass. Well, apparently, now they deliver to this neck of the hood. Go figure. So I order and in 45 minutes I’m eating Panang Gai on the floor in front of my TV.
Now I gotta see if Pizza Hut has changed its delivery policy.

Came across a useful UK based site for gardeners Thompson & Morgan. They have a seed germination guide, a vegetable growing guide, and a few other useful tips if you are wondering (as I am) when stuff goes into the ground.

I know it is warm so that is a perfectly good reason to open the windows. One of the neighbors on the other side of the alley has had her windows up for the past few days so when I sit out in the back I can hear them perfectly. All their family business. I don’t want to hear their family business, but it’s like being on the metro where the girl is talking to her friend on the phone real loud about something in the TMI range, you can’t help but to hear. Makes it kind of hard to enjoy the backyard, listening to a woman constantly screaming at her kids and whomever also happens to be in the house. I understand the occasional “pick up your X” or other command screams, but from past history, I know that it can go into a hour long tirade of throat drying yelling about anything under the sun.
Add on that recently they have lost or pulled up the binds so you can see into the house from the alley. So pictures with sound. This is a bit easier to ignore. I can always veer my eyes away but the screaming draws them back to the source.
I guess my biggest problem is with the yelling. The never ending screams.