Day: February 14, 2005

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I like Shaw
How ’bout you?

I can’t come to say I love Shaw. Still so not happy about having crackheads on the block who leave their buddies out on the sidewalk with big bloody gashes in their heads.
And it is not as if I actually live in the chichi part of Shaw where I could casually wander over to the Starbucks or Caribou coffee or Sparky’s for hot water and a tea bag (I don’t drink coffee) to people watch on a Sunday morning before or after services. No I live in Truxton Circle and it comes with big pluses and minuses that take away from any love I have for the area, so that all I have is intense and meaningful ‘like’.
Off and on I love my block. I love the fact we have a handyman on the block and he is affordable. Not so happy that my jobs are an afterthought to his higher paying ones, but hey. Love that I have great neighbors. Not so happy with the other ones who decide to be the most ghetto a$$ negroes they can be. Sorta not so happy with Anglo neighbors who fortress themselves behind their doors and hardly wave hello, but I hardly see them so they are almost nonexistent…. Yes you Mr.SUV-don’t- speak to -no-one. Gad, would it kill you to wave hello back?
Location wise I really like my part of Shaw. It is on the green line so I can get to work. I can walk to the grocery store, unlike some people in Capitol Hill, poor babies. It is right on Route 1 and Rt 50 so I can get back and forth from the College Park, MD area and its surrounds real easy to see or be seen by friends and relatives. During certain parts of the day there is plenty of parking for those friends to leave their cars near my house. I have walked from Gallery Place/fake Chinatown and it’s many diversions on a bright sunny day. I have biked from my hood to Dupont and other parts of Downtown DC in 15 minutes or so. It is a good central location.
There have been brief flashes of love for my hood. Mainly when I lose things. Like my wallet and my Palm. They were returned to me by good people who found them on the street. But later something happens and I fall out of love with the area and settle into like.
It doesn’t help that I have flashes of jealousy concerning friends’ neighborhoods in other parts of town. I like some parts of College Park, MD. I also like parts of Alexandria and I miss North Arlington. Silver Spring has taken off lately and seems like a great neighborhood with a few decent grocery stores, bike paths, great public transit, and the AFI theater.
However, Shaw is my best bet. I need a central location. I need to be able to walk to things. I need to have a commute that isn’t bogged down by the red line always breaking down. I like Shaw. It’s good for me.

Price: $675,000
Bedrooms: 3
Bathroom: 2.5
Fireplaces: 4!
Basement: Yes, legal unit

Sorry no pics as the camera feature in the Palm decided that it didn’t want to work.
Well in the group of $600K houses this is the better one, even though it doesn’t have a backyard. I didn’t see any mold in the basement and there were some very neat features with intercoms and such. The thing that I really liked was the kitchen. There were cherry like (could have been real cherry whaddaikno) cabinets, granite countertops and a gas range. It was a thin kitchen but the lights looked really nice. Better yet, similar set up downstairs in the rental unit.
In the past the 1st floor front room might have been two rooms, because the current living space has 2 fireplaces. Corresponding upstairs there are two bedrooms with fireplaces as well. Fireplaces for everybody! Ok, well not the person who gets the back bedroom.
It was the back bedroom that really sucked. I went down this thin hallway the bedroom has expecting it to open out into this large master bedroom. Nope. It was a small bedroom with an ity bitty window. It left me asking, how the heck you get furniture back here? Does anyone ever ask that question when they remodel? Modern furniture big, no likey likey teeny tiny hallways. The same thing for the rental unit, with the sucky tiny 2.5 foot wide hallway leading back to the bedroom. A fair number of tight corners, but it’s a 19th century house and those the breaks.
The workmanship was fair. It wasn’t as bad as somethings I’ve seen but there were some minor faults. Some rested with what original things were kept with the house, and others were simply forgivable and fixable. There looked like an honest effort to make the house aesthetically pleasing, even if the goal wasn’t met.