Month: November 2004

“Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day. It’s cursing and calling each other ‘n*gger’ as they’re walking up and down the street. They think they hip — can’t read, can’t write — 50 percent of them,” — Bill Cosby

“Dirty laundry” is the code word between my neighbor and I when we encounter the idiotic kids between work and home on the green line and on the street. The dirty laundry seems to get out around 3 ’cause that’s when we see them.

They are loud and obnoxious. They hit each other. They curse at each other. On the train we encountered a loud burp/hit couple, made the trip unbearable. The problem is you can’t ignore them.

Around 3-4pm weekdays the streets are filled with kids. Some of them seem to get from point A to point B without talking, offending, hitting, jaywalking, or loitering. There are others, girls and boys, who will hang out on the corner being as loud and obnoxious as ever.

The worse part is not so much the volume, thought that is bad, but what is coming out of their mouths, and I’m not just talking about the cursing or the burping. They can’t speak English. My drama teacher used to call it lazy tongue, when apparently it too much energy to enunciate. These kids sound just so ignorant, and they are loud and ignorant. They advertise their ignorance. Maybe this is a call for better schools? I don’t know.

Sitting in the car trying to turn on NY Ave from NJ Ave I saw two fellows selling squint is that… yes… that looks like a DVD for National Treasure, which is still in theaters, and I got an idea….. the ghetto gift basket(ggb). The GGB would include 1)bootleg DVD or CD 2)the most popular scent sold by those guys in the Metro with the little bottles (I think they sell “booty call”) 3)a bag of chips sold in bodegas with the picture of the brown woman against the brick wall, I forget what they are called but I see the bags littering the street all the time and 4) a do rag. You can present this in a lovely black plastic bag or a plastic milk crate filled with crumpled pages of the Washington Post, the City Paper, or what ever.

Yes, I vote this as my most offensive post ever.

Quick note: The Garden District over on 14th Street & S has a boat load of Christmas trees in. If a Christmas tree, well a live one, is too much for you they also have green garlands, mantel pieces and wreaths. Also herbs are 50% off. There aren’t too many herbs left, lot of sage, 1 laurel bay, some yellowy thyme, and cilantro.

A used … pink bathrobe

A rare … mint snowglobe

A Smurf … TV tray

I bought on eBay

My house … is filled with this crap

Shows up in bubble wrap

Most every day

What I bought on eBay

–weird Al “Ebay”

The Post featured an article “Building with EBay” today in the Real Estate section. I am trying to think have I incorporated any ebay purchases into the house. I buy a lot off EBay. Ebay is my shoestore. I have bought plants off eBay (ps Jimbo the agave is dying so don’t worry about pick up), clothes, computer equipment, several palms, books, CDs, worms, and everything else, but no building materials. I have looked at building materials on eBay. Shipping and storage are the big hindrances.

Once I saw this really cool door up for bid. It was a solid wood door with a porthole window, like you’d find on a ship or boat. Pretty. I bid once on some stained glass windows, got out bid. I have bought oriental rugs. I wasn’t looking for high quality, just pretty wool for my feet. Some of the flooring looks good but the problem is point A to point B. Sometime the shipping looks like it is worth it, like the tiled mosaics.

Right now I deciding if I want to buy a heavy Celtic iron cross for the backyard. Shipping is about $11. Yet I really need to curb my eBay purchases. So far I have bought too much in one week.

Well I wanted to put up a great gardening page for the main In Shaw site but left it on a remote computer, so I won’t have it till tomorrow. The gardening page was for urban gardeners and I found some really cool sites relating to small gardens, container gardens and urban issues. One site in particular I want to share is Path Project’s Urban Homestead Diary. Path Project is run by the Dervaes family who live in Southern California and try to feed a family of five on the food grown on their city plot. The site is a record of their attempt to become self-sufficient in an urban environment.

Took a look over at Ziprealty and the cheapest thing in Shaw (20001 zip code) is $299,950 1419 New Jersey Avenue a 2 bedroom 1 bath house. I guess we have now run out of crack houses to buy. Normally I would scream that the realtors are on crack. I have now accepted the realities of market forces.

There is no obvious bike parking around the New York Ave metro station. But I found something to attach the bike to. I have seen a bike attached to the station rails right near the token gates, but I figure the troll in the booth would yell at me for that. There is still construction and many, many yards of tall chain link fence around yet to be built offices. I attached my bike to the fence. Now keep in mind the bike in question is the crap bike, a rusty 3 speed thing with 1 working brake. I’m not too worried about it. Besides I have 3 locks for it. A cable, a U-lock with a round key and a U-lock with a key-key. You gotta really want my bike to steal it. Well after 3 hours of leaving it alone, it was still there. Of course the station is still new, bike thieves may not have discovered it yet.

As part of their grounds for your gardens program, you can get free used coffee grounds from any Starbucks. Well testing out this theory I found it helps to point out to employees after they look at me as if I’ve grown a 2nd head, a)where their “used” grounds are b) I use them for fertilizer (compost is too hard to think about) and c) I have a bag you can put them in. Note with plastic store bags, it helps to double them and have an absorbent newspaper under them cause they will leak.

This week I decided I wanted to hit the 4 Starbuck between the Archives Navy Memorial metro station and the Gallery Place Chinatown station. There’s 1 Starbucks every 2 blocks in this small space, silly I say. Anyway here are the results:

325 7th Street Always crowded. I can never seem to find a good time to go in and ask for grounds. So I moved on.

7th and E Across the street from Jaleo. I got espresso grounds (personal fav) and filtered coffee from the big coffee machines. Staff was confused by my request for about a minute when an older woman figured it out and fulfilled my request. She put my single plastic bag in a paper Starbuck bag. Good service.

9th and G Over by the MLK library. Young staff was totally confused by my request. Apparently there was no manager on site or anyone older than 21 working in the store. That and unlike some of the other Starbucks I have visited, they don’t dump their espresso in a drawer but directly into the garbage. So the only thing I got from them was the huge filtered coffee grounds. Not really worth the trip to me.

7th and H Streets As I headed towards the 4th Starbucks I was overcome by a superstrong smell of coffee. I could not bear the smell of it, and like the 1st Starbucks, this was also quite busy.

Another mention:

13th & U Right at the U Street metro station is the best Starbucks for coffee grounds. They used to actually have bags of grounds available but I guess not enough people picked them up. Yet with the exception of new people, I don’t get the odd look. The manager, upon request will get a nice pile of grounds without me having to explain anything.

I was lazy today.

I accomplished very little.

What I did accomplish was timing myself walking and biking between the house and the new station (NYAFAGU). 7 minutes by bike. P Street is crap too. It was okay today but there was no buffer space, this may not work during rush hour. 17-20 minutes by foot. At that point gotta wonder is it easier to walk to Gallery Place Chinatown (oh I’ve done it)? In theory, it is closer than Dupont and Gallery Place. In theory.

There’s another concern. People get ugly as I go east. There is that mass of desperate people congregating at Florida and North Cap. They is ug-ly. Almost fugly. Then along North Cap from Florida down to Hanover you got some more butt ugly people hanging out, kicking back. From North Cap to the 2-3 blocks to the station it is then empty, except for the cars going by. Scary empty to me. I don’t like large dark parking lots, or empty stretches of space where there is nothing.

Dupont Circle – pro= beautiful people, cool stuff lots of street traffic. Cons= lots of street traffic, too far to walk, only 1 bus to get home.

Gallery Place Chinatown– Pro= 70 and 71 bus run frequently, lots of street traffic, walkable in the day. Cons= Looooong walk. 70 & 71 bus not close to house.

NYAFAGU- Pro= New, 3/4 of a mile away, 90, 91 & X? bus service it. Con=possible scary walk @ night, ugly people, unit blocks with problems, annoying office buildings in the way, & crappy roads.

The Nahyafahgu or New York Avenue Station opened up today and has that lovely new metro smell. Unlike as Nathan put it, that old metro smell of urine.

It was funny pulling in as the train operator stumbled around for what to call the station. She said three different versions NYAFA-GU, New York Avenue and New York Avenue Gaulludet University. I think it will just be New York Avenue.

There are two exits, Florida Avenue and M Street. The Florida Avenue side has a nice new sidewalk up to the bus stop. After that the sidewalk is small and cruddy. Florida Avenue for the most part is cruddy. The M street side looks like one of those industrial backroads you may find yourself on when you’ve made a wrong turn and can’t seem to find your way back to the main road.

I tried to figure out how I can possibly go between my house and NY Ave station w/o getting killed by a car. So far, it seems I will have to take P Street NW east, take a bit of FL Ave NE, but as FL Ave sucks, turn on to 1st Ave NE, cross the NY Ave road of death, then turn on M Street NE. P Street isn’t the greatest for a bike because of the lack of enough buffer space, but the road is 10x better than FL which is torn up and crappy, AND doesn’t have enough buffer space between me and the speeding cars.

I thought I would have some pretty pictures of the station for you but, no. My digital camera wanted to go on strike. So you will not get the lovely picture of the gold toned Metro pillar, the example of lack of bike parking, and the big funky silver leaf public art thing. Oh, on bike parking there is nothing, NOTHING to secure a bike to, no parking meters, no decent street signs, nada. Nothing unless the links in a chain link fence do it for you.

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I still have the Peter Seller pass, anybody, Bueller?

I believe Jimbo was the first to semi-claim the plant.

Oh, and theoretically Sala Thai delivers, a 2 mile radius they say. Let’s see if that radius includes my house.

Thanks to all who read my blog, thank you.