I thought there was a robbery at the Shaw Howard University metro stop this weekend of a male being robbed of his North Face Jacket. But I can’t find a mention on the Post or Times websites. It is too early for it to be posted on the Crimereports websites. But I swear I saw it mentioned on the local news, but even on those sites, yesterday’s news is not worth keeping up. Maybe I just imagined seeing it.
Month: January 2005
Who is standing out in the cold
This morning it was 20F again and silly me was out on the bike doing some grocery shopping. With 3 scarfs, 3 layers of shirts and jackets and two pairs of gloves, it wasn’t half bad. I wasn’t the only one one. The Latino men waiting for construction work on the corner of 15th and P were out standing around. They must really want to work! Also out by the Giant were Jehovah’s Witnesses handing out literature or just standing there as they usually do. But no dealers spotted! Then again it might have been too early for crack.
Beggars and such
This is my logic.
Draw three circles one for the homeless, one for the working poor, one for beggars, and have them intersect (is that the word I want?) with the other circles with between 5% or 75% of one circle in the other circle. And this is my logic, not all homeless are unemployed, not all beggars are homeless, not all homeless are beggars.
Last year I went on a tangent about giving to street beggars and making the point, you’re not really helping the homeless when you plop a dollar or spare change in the cup.
First, not all homeless people, which includes homeless families, have been reduced to begging on the street. If you really want to help the homeless support the institutions that support the homeless such as health clinics, soup kitchens, shelters and other programs in the city such as Bread for the City, N Street Village, and S.O.M.E. Your handouts to beggars do nothing to coax people off the streets and into programs that with address their physical and emotional needs.
Second, not all homeless are unemployed. A minimum wage job in this city will have one spending more than half of one’s pre-tax income on rent. Throw in our friend gentrification and other DC housing woes and you have fewer units that low wage earners can afford.
Last, not all beggars are homeless. Some are con-artists, some are begging to support a habit, a habit that makes my part of Shaw unwelcoming by supporting the drug dealers, and the liquor stores on EVERY OTHER CORNER!
As I said, you want to help the homeless, I mean really, really help the homeless, make their lives better, live longer to see another day? Give to the Shaw charity of your choice:
Bread for the City
Helping Hands (508 P Street)
N Street Village
S.O.M.E
Covenant House (okay not in Shaw but across the street)
Catholic Charities
But don’t give money to beggars. The only thing you are doing is supporting a chemical habit and the drug economy in Shaw and encouraging begging in the area.
Run Fenty Run
Last night a neighbor came to me with a copy of an invitation she’d
received for an Fenty 2006 Exploratory Committee for Mayor fundraiser
hosted by Jim Graham and Phil & Jan Fenty for this weekend. Well I
don’t believe I will attend but I will cut a check because of the
Council people even thinking of running for mayor, I’d pick Fenty.
Why not my Ward 5 councilman Orange? First, I am not holding that the
NW side of Ward 5 was nearly ignored by Orange against him. But I
don’t know him well enough to want him for Mayor. Yes, I like the Home
Depot and the Giant across the street, very nice. I’m sure everyone in
the northern part of the city appreciates it, and would appreciate it
more if the Home Depot was decently stocked. Yet what about my Ward 5
needs? Has he addressed things that would make my day to day quality
of life? I’m not saying he is a bad councilman, no! He is a decent
councilman.
Fenty, however, has been known to focus on constituent services and
get out to hear the needs of the people living in his Ward. Face it
I’m still in love with the man for banning single sales of containers.
Don’t take much to make me happy. Look at the man’s website he is not the main focus, his ward is. The site (compared to
Orange’s)
seems more Ward 4 specific and designed to help those in Ward 4 and
geared to help his constituents find the information they need as
residents in the city who need services.
Well anyway if you want to attend the fundraiser for the Fenty 2006
exploratory committee it’s 1/30/2005 from 4-6pm in Adams Morgan, call
202 263 4386. Or you can just send $$$ payable to Fenty 2006
Exploratory Committee, PO Box 7700, Washington, DC 20044-7700
Standing out in the cold
Took this picture this weekend when the temperature was about 20F. Notice the figure in the bottom left corner.
I just saw this guy, just standing there on the street. It’s 20F f’ing degrees out. Who the heck just stands out in the cold like that?
There is the chance that he’s just a normal guy waiting for a ride. Possible. He could be a dealer waiting for a customer. Just as possible given the block. Since I was trying to hustle back to the house, I didn’t have time (or the will) to observe him for too long. I did think the scene was just not right so I snapped this picture over my shoulder.
Neighborhood Research: What I find plodding along
No. I have not found anyone famous. Of course, I am not looking for
anyone famous for that matter. What I am looking for are demographic
patterns of the NW Truxton Circle Neighborhood in 1880. The goal was
to do 1890-1930. Sadly, there is hardly any 1890 census as it was
burned, there is a 1880 census with addresses (the main thing that
allows me to focus street by street) and there are over a thousand
people to track each census year.
Anyway, just wanted to share one of my unexciting finds from the 1880
census. I keep finding Irish and German immigrants, or their crummy
children. I do find my clusters of African Americans but so far, and
I’ve only done a few blocks, we are a minority. Understand I had a
theory going in about the racial make up of Truxton, the data is
proving me wrong and I’m a bit miffed.
One of these immigrant or 2nd generation American families were the
Clarks of 406 Florida Avenue, NW. Headed by Cornelius Clark, clerk at
the S.G. (State Government?) Office, he lived with his wife Emily,
their 5 children, his 45 year old sister Margaret (dressmaker) and
their African American servant Henrietta Majors. The Clark parents
were born in New York but were children of immigrants as Cornelius’
and Margaret’s parents were born in Ireland and Emily’s father was
German and her mother Irish. Ms. Majors, their live-in
maid/housekeeper was of Virginia as were her parents. Given Majors age
at the time of the census (21) and her home state, I’ll go as far to
say she may have been born a slave.
So far, off the top of my head the Clarks are the 3rd family I have
found in Truxton to have a live in servant. Typically it was just one
servant. I haven’t found a home so grand in our area that there was a
need for multiple live in servants. The live-ins are recorded on the
census, those who went home after their shift were not recorded, so
there might be other households with servants but that information is
not recorded in the census.
Where U At?
Yesterday I tried to make a map from the DC Gov site to figure out where different neighborhoods are. The picture on the side is of the different real estate assessment neighborhoods (tags are mine). I broke Old City 2, up into it’s subneighborhoods because it is so big.
There is a funky way of adding neighborhoods but you can’t get an outline of where a neighborhood is. You’d have to go block by block. In Old City 2 A the blocks above S Street and south of Florida are in Cardozo/Shaw. South of S, west of New Jersey is Logan/Shaw. But suprising to me Truxton Circle is east of New Jersey, south of Florida, north of New York AND (the surprising bit) includes the area on the other side of North Capitol…. according to the DC Citizen Atlas map.
Off the top of my head and skimming the newspaper databases, Shaw, as it was defined was the Shaw Junior High Urban Renewal Area. According to 5 Housing Plans Win Approval; 1,589 Housing Units Cleared Here by RLA in the Washington Post May 16, 1974. p. C1 areas in the NW side of Truxton are in Shaw.
Well that’s enough for today, I’ll investigate neighborhood borderline some more later.