Recently in Quality of Life Category

The O Street Market promises a bigger and better Giant in twenty-some odd months. With it lots of sharing and caring. Ok, not so much caring, but car and bike sharing.

At Monday's BACA meeting I asked when will the park be open. What I meant was normal time, 7:30 or 8, or dawn. One answer was, it will be open some mild weather day on a weekday when Mayor Gray can come out, cut a ribbon and have his photo taken doing so. Also the Friends of the Florida Ave Park are looking to partner up with other organizations, parents, and whomever that will keep the park "nice" and a positive part of the community. In other words, not a bum hangout. Speaking of, apparently the liquor store across the street from the park is losing business because all the construction sent away the clientele. This is why the entrance is way on the other side of the park, and why the new play equipment is mostly not comfortable for sleeping off a stupor.

I and the Help went to celebrate two friends' anniversary and there we found out they are planning on pulling up stakes, and moving to Rural, USA. And not too long ago we found out some other neighbors are also planning to move out to the boonies. Two different sets of neighbors, two boonies, one in fly over country the other within the DC media market, both close to one partner's relatives. And not too long ago a couple who were quite invovled with neighborhood moved to a warm sunny area suitable for aging bones and semi-retirement.

Ah, tis friendship in a transitional neighborhood, in a transitional city. One of our oldest friends has been threatening to move back to Wisconsin for the past 10 years, with the excuse to be closer to his mom. Sadly his mother passed away, but there a other aging relatives he ponders and everyso often will play with the idea of selling the house and moving in with ornery independent elderly uncles.

One of the things I love about living in my neighborhood is running into the familiar friendly faces of my neighbors. There is a warm feeling in my heart when I see my neighbors on the bus, at the farmer's market (BFM ends in Nov), or just on the street. I love that I have friends whose houses I can drop by and visit for a spell. That is something I did not have living anywhere else in the DC metro area. I didn't have it in Hyattsville, nor College Park, nor Arlington.

But as one door closes, yadda, yadda, yadda. I've made new neighbor friends even after some other people moved away from Richardson Pl, New Jersey Av and my own street. But still, I'm sad.

Just saying.

Yes, not that bad considering it was 6AM and my alarm was going to go off anyways but once again the volume on your loud speakers was up high, again. And the caller was a little long. Just when I thought he was done, he threw on some more.

Will I bother contacting anyone about the 4th Street Mosque being loud? Nope. Just going to try to record when they are annoying loud in the morning.

I was in the Timor Bodega the other day and ran into a gal I had met at the Bloomingdale Wine Social. I had mentioned to her that I was going in search of almonds, which Timor did not have for some fish I was trying out. She had almonds and offered to give me some of hers at her house. So on our way there she mentioned that her business was planning on having Timor be their supplier for the food for their personal chef (that's not exactly it but close enough) biz. And as some of y'all know Timor is also running Field to City (as reported by PoP and the Bloomingdale Blog), in addition to Kim's dog sitting.

Bloomingdale seems to be so Brooklynish, with these small businesses popping up, which is exciting to here about. Unlike greater Shaw which tends to hing on large scale PUD projects involving a mix of government funding, tax breaks, lawyers, and development firms. In Bloomingdale I'm hearing about small green pet place and designs to try to open a wine a cheese spot. Small but with the possiblity of having a great impact. Timor Bodega is tiny, but look at the impact Kim and Face and the rest of the crew has had. Big Bear is just one coffee shop, but it is a great anchor for the Bloomingdale farmer's market (when is that coming back?) and other arts related events.

Not that I have anything against the gigantic development projects. I'm looking forward to O Street, as I noticed it creeping towards progress with one piece of heavy equipment parked on the grounds. And my neighbor IT's firm is involved with the development over the northern exit of the Shaw metro station. Nor am I ignoring the small businesses in eastern Shaw. Congrats to Beau Thai for being voted #3 by the City Paper. However the dynamics seem different in Bloomingdale. I'm so happy to be living so close to a neighborhood that is becoming so freakin cool. 

Regarding that whole "community meeting" thing singling out Big Bear, when you think about it businesses and even churches aren't the biggest problem, it's our neighbors, it's now me. We know that on Saturday (7th Day Adventists) near noon and Sunday between 9AM and 1PM, if the car is moved we shouldn't bother coming back until after 1, because parking is at a premium. We also know that people who visit the neighborhood, in this case for worship, eventually leave the neighborhood, freeing up parking. Our neighbors, stay and compete with us for spots. Their cars sometimes don't move from spots we've been eying for days. And everyone's preferred spot is the one right in front of their house.

The Help, who initally owned the car, noticed that on our street there are fewer parking spaces available. I suppose because the people on the other side of the street can park their cars in their backyards if they so chose. Could we park the car in our back yard? Yes, but then we couldn't have anything else back there. No patio furniture. No container gardening. No composter. Nothin' but car. I like my backyard as it is now and so we'd rather hunt for parking on the street or park when the spaces are plentiful.

Also there are more people with cars now. One household can have 3 cars. Mom's car, dad's car, and the teenagers'/adult children's living in the basement car. Then there is roommate #1's car, roommate #2's car and roommate #2's boyfriend's car. Yet it seems most households do take advantage of the walkabilty of the area and their situation and have just 1 car or no cars. But that's just my observation for my small area.

Getting back to the Big Bear and the Bloomingdale Farmer's Market, a topic not too far behind when Big Bear is paired with parking, as I remember there was a survey finding that most people walked or biked to the market. I suspect there are a bunch of people who live in the Bloomingdale/ Shaw area who walk or bike to the Big Bear, same with Rustik, I gather. These businesses make the neighborhood more attractive, which attracts people with cars to live here.

Saw this on the Bloomingdale Blog:

Some unknown person -- MTN1414 at hotmail.com -- who might live in the neighborhood asked to have this message posted:

I went to the Capitol Food Mart at 1634 North Capitol NW this weekend and saw that they have applied for a license to sell alcohol. It seems like there is little upside to another establishment selling alcohol within a block or two of the Florida Avenue intersection. Plus, unlike the liquor stores, the food mart would be able to sell alcohol on Sundays - likely bringing the people who loiter at the Florida Avenue intersection north. Given the recent shootings in the area, I can think of better ways to expand business in the neighborhood. Just wanted to give a heads up and see if others have concerns - I know there are ways to protest the license application. I believe there is a hearing on March 24.

 

Yeah, the previous store that was there, if memory serves me, had about 7 different flavors of MD 20/20. It may be the crowd is going in looking for their favorite get drunk quick drinks... unless there is something about the store that hints at something different.

 

So during the snowstorm, we shovelled. It is better that way because that was wet heavy stuff that only got harder and icier the longer it was on the ground. So Wednesday night we shoveled our sidewalk, and made paths to the ends of the block. Then Thursday morning, we decided to make a path between the house and the bus stop. 

Two things made our job of clearing paths and sidewalks easier were:

1. Brian's ice chopper

2. Lem's Bobcat

Lem is the neighborhood handiman who has a lot of vehicles, one being a Bobcat, and it cleared off a lot of sidewalk, provided the sidewalk was wide enough to accomodate the mini-tractor.

Brian lent us his ice chopper/ 4 inch forged scraper and that thing is AWESOME on brick. Now as some of you know I totally acknowledge the pain in the buttness of shoveling brick. With the chopper/scraper, I could just easily tear a path in the sidewalk or chop up ice and have The Help (Mr. InShaw)follow with the plastic snow shovel. Not only did we shovel a path (linking parts that were already shovelled by responsible people, thank you) to the bus stop, but we shoveled other paths and someone else's sidewalk.

 Also I should really thank those people who did shovel their sidewalks. You're good people, because you did good. Walking towards the house I noticed a guy with a cane walking on our block's cleared sidewalk and said to The Help that we made that possible, we made the cane guy's walk easier. So thank you to the responsible people.

My husband, the Help is adjusting to city life and I'm trying to get him to be a bit more safety conscious. He's been living in the boonies of Beltsville, after a slow progression out of Dupont Circle in the early 90s, then to Silver Spring and then various parts of PG Co. So it has been a while since he's spent any length of time in the city and even when he did live in Dupont, I doubt he ever went east of 16th St. on foot.
So one night we were walking back home in central Shaw and I began mentioning in a low voice that no one was in front of us, no one on the side and no one on the opposite side of the street. When we turned down Q I pointed out the hooded figure just standing in front of the house where guys hang out and said that we'll be walking on the opposite side of the street. When we got nearer to home, the Help mentioned something about paranoia.
Tom-ay-toe- tom- ah-toe
I normally don't tally a list of who is on the street. Like when you're trying to teach someone something you start out with exaggerated movements (in dance) or pronunciations (language), and this was an exaggerated observation of something I do when walking alone at night when the streets are lonely. I worry about him and I don't want him to increase his odds of being a victim of crime because of his suburban sense of safety.

Big shout out to Brian who was the last person we heard shoveling our side of the street last night. I shoveled (while the Help chatted) half of the block making a path. Then later I heard our neighbor B out with a metal snow shovel, that I think I gave to them a few years ago. And then as we were going to bed, I heard Brian shovelling away.

This morning the path to the corner was clear and salted. It was a completely different story when I turned and was faced with the decision of which snowy patch of sidewalk I wanted to travel down. The only sidewalks shovelled on R St are in front of the Monique and AfriCare. Yes, I know brick is a bitch to shovel. Despite it being all pretty and "historic" looking I hate bricks. Mainly because when it rains loose bricks shoot muddy water on to my legs, in winter it holds the ice so it is slippery, when it snows residents don't even bother shoveling it or salting it because it is so uneven, and all other times individual bricks pop out to trip me.

So I will hold looking down my nose at the brick people and raise a judgemental eyebrow at the unshovelled sidewalks of the concrete people. It is resident's job to clear sidewalks, not the city's. However the city would probably get compliance if they actually bothered issuing fines. If it is not a street that gets mid-day sun I wouldn't bet on it melting away.

Now if you have a shovel 2 inches really isn't hard to remove. While Chatty Patty was going on with a neighbor while clearing off his car, I was doing my impression of a snow plow. Push shovel until the snow is spilling over, then kick the snowy shovel into a treebox or onto a car. Took me no more than 10 minutes to clear a path for 1/2 a block. It takes longer if you're clearing off the whole sidewalk.

Our block has an awesome culture of snow removal. Last year when we had that big snow storm, and I was away from home, I was told that a bunch of guys, including my roommate at the time, cleared off the sidewalk. I failed to indoctrinate my husband yesterday by not telling him to shut up, grab the extra shovel and get to work. I will do better next time, so he can help keep the block awesome.

UPDATE- DDOT has some sort of public awareness about shoveling sidewalks (pdf). But you know what would really help DDOT, is a page, a jpeg, something on your snow management page, a little bit more.

 

'NOTHER UPDATE: DCist checked and discovered that the law regarding snow removal is old and unenforced.

Miscellaneous note: The O Street Market has a blog.

I think the people at the Post might have sent me a link (which I ingored) but it apparently hit something on the Mt Vernon Sq and Shaw Neighborhood listservs.

A mini-Wal-Mart is to come to 801 New Jersey Avenue NW. Right now it is a surface parking lot. See for yourself a Google maps and streetview. Some folks gut reaction is to fight it, but I like Si's wait and see and neogiate.

It could provide some low skilled low wage jobs. As someone pointed out if you want to provide good low skill jobs, stop buying and throw out your stuff from China and other cheap production nations. But my beloved iPhone assembled in China isn't going anywhere and my jeans sewn up in Mexico are going to stay on my person until I switch them out for some PJs made on some island somewhere.

So back to DC. Since I'm unfamilar with what a strunken Wal-Mart looks like, it will be interesting to see the plans for such a thing. Will it be multi-story like the Columbia Heights Target? If anything it has to have underground parking, even though it isn't that far from Union Station (not that close either, but you can walk it) and the 96 west/north bus stops right there. Another question will be deliveries, how and where will the big Wal-Mart semis drop off. Then there is increased traffic and what to do when the federal government decides it needs to shut down parts of the center city (inaugurations, summits, etc) as it is fairly close to the Capitol.

801 NJ Ave NW isn't the only planned location. So is the intersection of New York Ave NE and Blendensburg Road. That area already has crazy traffic and is a road of death. A Wal-Mart will attract pedestrians playing Frogger. I guess that part of New York Avenue demands more human sacrifices.