Month: July 2005

Back from their vacation (or jail time) our friendly neighborhood drug dealers are back on the corner ready to serve the needs of crackheads and heroin addicts. Crap. Crap. Crap on a stick.
For a brief moment I thought they were gone. Really. For sure this time. Nope. I guess we will have to call the MPD Focus Mission @ 202-727-4501 and report it. Send them back on vacation (jail) ’cause Summer is not over yet and everyone deserves a vacation.

Worms like avocado. Found a mess of them under an avocado shell in the composter. I’ve got so many worms now I can open up a tiny little bait shop. They seem so happy in the new composter. I am very happy with the composter because it collects the “tea” the compost makes and I have been using it to fertilize the plants.
I’m getting cucumbers now. I have 2 plants in one pot and so far I’ve produced enough to give one away to my aunt, another to IT and eat two for myself in salad. I really didn’t do much except make sure they got enough water.
Things I didn’t make sure they got enough water were the tomatoes. Due to my bad watering habits, they are splitting. Tastes just as good, just not as pretty. I have several tomatoes that are turning red in the front and the back yards. I ate one last night, from one of the recycle bin plants. It was kind of small but it was quite good with a little bit of basil from the same pot, a little olive oil, basalmic vinegar, salt and pepper. Good stuff.
The squash plants seem to be taking a break from producing any great number of squash. And speaking of squash, I’ve got one growing in the ground that I don’t want. Anyone want a single squash plant? If so you’ll need to bring your own pot and dirt. I think after a certain size I may just rip it out, because cilantro would be a better bet for that space.
The blueberries are near to the end. Most of them have been picked and eaten. There are a few I’m waiting on to get the right color of blue. So far the birds have shown little interest in my blueberries, maybe because most of them are tart. It’s been a good crop, once I was able to collect a handful for my cereal.
It’s great to get so much out of such little space.

PUBLIC NOTICE
Monthly Meeting
Invited guests include the following:
Mr. Rick Rybeck
DC Department of Transportation
re. The New York Avenue Corridor Study

Mr. Joe Mama
re. The Development of the Vacant Lot on the Northwest Corner of Florida
Avenue and North Capitol Streets, NW

Jemal’s Nanny LLC and Cayre Jemal’s Peoples LLC
re. The Elimination of the Parking Covenant for the
Use of Occupants of 60 Florida Avenue, NE

Where: St. George’s Episcopal Church
2nd and U Streets, NW
When: Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Time: 7:00 P.M. until 9:00 P.M.

I got 20 tickets and I want to sell them to you.
5 dollahs.
We’ve got a date (August 13th), time (3-5pm) and I know I nominated my yard and B & IT’s backyard so we’ve got gardens for the garden tour.
This will be the 2nd Flower Power I have known. This year it will be a garden tour where you can see what we’ve done to some of the ghetto looking yards we got and turned them into pleasant backyard retreats or frontyard beauties. Also as many of us are doomed with tiny yards or almost no yard, and so we’ve been forced to be creative. Come, see us be creative! Face it you’re dying to see my container garden where I used old DC recycle bins as pots. Short of peeking over my fence the only way random strangers will see my garden is to get on the Flower Power tour.
At $5 you gotta admit it is cheaper than other neighborhood garden tours. Smaller gardens, smaller price. As it will be a walking tour, you’d also get a tour of the neighborhood, great for those of you who are curious about buying in the area.
Scott and Matt over at TruxtonCircle.Org are selling tickets as well. But I’ll take PayPal you can e-mail me at inshaw at att dot net and I can take your payment. If you live within the borders of the 1200 to 1700 blocks of New Jersey, Florida til it hits R Street, the 1600-1400 blocks of 3rd Street, everthing in between and the 400-700 blocks of S and R Sts, I can hand deliver your tickets.

Okay if you email me at inshaw at att net I can get you tickets for $5 and walk them over to you after work if you live in or very close to the northwestern part of Truxton Circle or on the 400-700 blocks of R or S streets. Otherwise you can use the button below and pay $.37 more to counter the charges Paypal put on. I think you can use a credit card using this option. Click and find out.

 

This is a later than usual post as I was at the first day of the District of Columbia’s Tax Sale, which attracts the financially and reality savvy and idiots. I missed the initial reading of the rules around 8:30AM as I arrived a little late because I wanted to add a little something to my initial deposit. No matter, the auctioneer wound up repeating several times the main rules.

Rule #1- Turn off your cell phone and pagers. You are not that important.
Rule #2- You must have 20% of your bid already deposited with the cashier’s office.
Rule #3- No children and don’t leave your children out in the hallway.

Yes, people did leave their children in the hallways. At least two kids. One kid was brought up where the auctioneer was and asked to find mommy or daddy.
Rule #2 was also constantly broken, and what would happen was the property tax lien would come back on the auction block. That’s what happened when I bid against the King of the Idiots. He got the bid about $1,000 more than what I was willing to go for and apparently he didn’t have the 20% of the $3,000 needed so the property went up again and I was outbid by $6,000.
As I said the savvy and idiots, lots of idiots.
Idiots come because they are betting on getting a property for cheap. Nope. There is a 5% chance that the property would go into foreclosure and that the pre-existing bank loan and other debts, that would need to be paid, are not burdensome.
The savvy are betting on the 95% who will pay off their taxes and the 18% interest property owners would have to pay on the back taxes. I sat near two folks who had their charts and research out. One guy had the figure of how much he could bid on top of taxes owed (which gains interest) and the surplus (the bid amount that does not gain interest) to get back at least 2% interest on the whole bid. Another person had property descriptions and I guess bid limits to get a decent return. It helps to do research on the property.
Most bids for tax liens on properties in the Truxton area were about $5,000 to $20,000 over the amount of back taxes owed. Very few were at the amount of the taxes owed with only one person bidding. Like 0521-0807 1533 4th St, which I think is part of the parking lot of the mosque.
Once all the Truxton properties were bid on I left as I learned from my last time at auction not to bid angry. So I choose not to bid. Well at least on properties I have not done a little research on.

As a Washington Post subscriber I don’t read the Express so I missed my Thursday 15 seconds of fame in the blog section of the tabloid. Thanks Libby and Jim for pointing it out.

From Jim
Neighbors,

Below please find a facsimile of the notice that is being circulated around
the community in connection with the upcoming meeting of the BACA. In addition, I am including in this transmission a copy of the agenda that I am proposing to the group on Monday night.

Please pass the contents of these data along to your friends and neighbors,
and also make your best effort to attend.

Hope to see you there!

Best,

Jim Berry
BACA
MONTHLY MEETING NOTICE

Guest Speakers Include:

Susan Cheng
Office of the Deputy Mayor For Planning and Economic Development re. Proposals to Develop the Old Fire House near North Capitol & R Streets,N.W. and Rick Rybeck DC Department of Transportation re. New York Avenue Corridor Study

Agenda Includes:

Public Safety Committee Report
Land Use, Planning, and Economic Development Committee Report
Environmental Services Committee Report
“Flower Power 2005” Program Report

Monday, July 11, 2005
Mount Sinai Baptist Church
3rd and Q Streets, N.W.
Rooms 1 and 2
7:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.

For more information regarding the meeting and/or the Association,
contact
Jim Berry at (202) 387-8520 or at jamojam@msn.com.

BATES AREA CIVIC ASSOCIATION, INC.
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20001

July 11, 2005

Monthly Meeting Agenda

1. Meeting Called to Order 7:00 p.m.

2. Opening Comments J. Berry

3. Public Safety Committee Report: Alice Harper, Chairperson

(a) Fifth District Police

(b) AUSA Rhonda Redwood
Community Prosecutor, Fifth District

4. Land Use, Planning, and Economic Art Slater,
Development Committee Report Chairperson

(a) Remarks: Susan Cheng, Office of Deputy Mayor
for Planning and Economic Development, re. Old
Firehouse near N. Capitol & R Streets, N.W.

(b) Remarks: Rick Rybeck, DC Department of
Transportation, re. New York Avenue Corridor Study

5. “Flower Power 2005” Mary Ann Wilmer, Chairperson

6. Environmental Services Scott Shappell,
Committee Report Chairperson

7. Office of C/M Orange Linda Perkins, Director Constituent Services

8. BACA Housekeeping J. Berry

9. Announcements:

(a) Next BACA Meeting – Monday, August 1, 2005

10. Adjournment 9:00 p.m.

JDB

Someone out there wants a house. They want a historic but very modern 3-4 bedroom house, inside the Beltway, very close to cool restaurants, with parking, in a safe neighborhood, with good schools, and maybe a big yard. AND they want it for less than $300K.
Yeah, I laugh too.
Well I try not to laugh directly in their faces.
Here’s another one. Young man with seed money from his parents wants to buy a fixer upper in the ‘up and coming’ neighborhoods of Pentworth or Columbia Heights or Shaw, anywhere in NW. And he has something in the $200K range.
Young man is one of my co-worker’s kid. My co-worker, Big Boss Man (for those of you who read the boring personal blog), is shocked, SHOCKED! I Say. About the prices for shells (what few are left) in neighborhoods where we still have crackhos and bums.
As people told me when I first moved in here, you should have bought 5 years ago. Yeah, not the most helpful advice. But basically, that moment when you could buy an el cheapo house and fix it up in Shaw for less than $200K. Gone. No more. Come back later when the economy has tanked and we’ve elected someone like a crack smoker for mayor.

Grass growing was the most exciting thing at the PG Plaza metro station.
I did see two verrrry relaxed police officers at Columbia Heights as I headed out of the station. They were chatting it up as one leaned against the newspaper recycle bin. When I came back from the store they were no where in sight.
At Shaw I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Okay a bunch of people trying to figure out the farecard machines was a tiny bit out of the ordinary, but not really. No metro police. No DC police. And the metro troll was safe in the booth. Nope nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet the local TV stations show a different picture. Cops with semi-automatic looking weapons! Metro employees passing out helpful information! German shepherds sniffing! Now I’m gonna have to do some damage control with the folks back in Florida, who are ignoring the coming hurricane. ‘Cause really, if I didn’t listen to the radio or watch the news, I wouldn’t have known different judging from my trip.
Yet I’m not belittling what happened this morning in London. I lived in London for one summer. When I can, I visit the city often. I still have a savings account there. Londoners, I will have you know are a tough bunch. Their elders survived the Blitz and the post war rationing. I know there is one chain smoking Pakistani Londoner who can kick all the terrorists’ butts and not mess up her hair. They are amazing from the East End to Earl’s Court. I’m brought to near tears thinking about the folks I’ve met in London. Types who would meet the end of the world with a cuppa or a pint and muddle on regardless.