Month: August 2005

From “The First Day”:
“When in answer to her question, my mother tells her that we live at 1227 New Jersey Avenue, the woman first seems to be picturing in her head where we live.”

When author Edward P. Jones writes about the places in Lost in the City, a collection of short stories, one does try to picture in your head where the characters live.
In “The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” the main character Cassandra drives her friends all over the city and takes a trip out to Anacostia. Before crossing the river Cassandra and her crew do stop in Shaw.

“The birds in their trees continued to make a racket as they turned off 11th on to P Street. Just before 9th, they passes a group moving boxes and furniture into an apartment building across from Shiloh Baptist.
At the light at 9th, Gladys, looking back, asked if Cassandra could back up. “I think thas [sic] Joyce and Pearl,” she said.”

Joyce reappears in “His Mother’s House” which is somewhere near the intersection of 10th and O Streets.

“”Come back here!” The woman was nearing O Street. “Sweet Jesus,” Joyce said to herself. Had she not been in her bathrobe she would have run after the woman…”

There are stories like the “First Day” where exact addresses are given. In the title story “Lost in the City” there is an apartment at 457 Ridge Street. A husband kills his wife at 427 M Street in “The Sunday Following Mother’s Day.” Most other times intersections, “The Store” located at the corner of 5th and O. Finding a parking spot at 10th and S Street in “Gospel.” And there are landmarks, in “Lost In The City” the main character has the cab go up New Jersey Ave. then turns right on Rhode Island and notes passing by Frazier’s Funeral Home. In “Gospel” the singing group decides to stop over at the Florida Avenue Grill.
Jones, as you can tell makes great use of geography. Place matters.
From “The Store”:

“The next week I took the G2 bus all the way down P Street, crossing 16th Street into the land of white people…..Sometimes, blocks before my stop on my way home from Georgetown in the evening, I would get off the G2 at 5th Street. I would walk up to O and sit on the low stone wall of the apartment building across the street from what had been Al’s and Penny’s Groceries.”

I gotta clean out my favorites file of old gentrification links. I’m starting with this one.
Everyso often wandering around parts of Shaw I may see a faded or not so faded spray painted graffiti saying “Stop Gentrification.” Oh, yeah, I’m inspired to….. what? Leave? Heck no. I bought my house, fixed it, and redid the lawn, I ain’t leaving.
Simple message with no answer. I could spend a good 2 paragraphs belittling the type of person I think puts this sort of thing up, but I won’t.
As I wrote, simple message, no simple answer. In Gentrification and the Paradox of Affordable Housing by Andres Duany (unpublished as of 2000) you can read about the problem of the answer to stopping (or trying to) gentrification. For one, gentrification is not a controllable artificial thing of the city’s doing. The city might put something in that may spark gentrification, but that spark may not catch fire and if there is fire, it may not be up to the city how hot, how long, and how much it burns. Right now I’m thinking the proposed Nats stadium. It my be a catalyst but I don’t think it will produce the wild results the city and everyone else wants, bringing gentrification to that part of SE.
Second, affordable housing is hard to retain. Affordable housing is needed but its hard to maintain and protect a section of the city where the poor live. The “old neighborhood” of Chinatown or what have you (Duany uses NYC as an example) cannot be protected from gentrification. He says:

These inner city neighborhoods however, are not permanent as they were usually built originally for the middle-class and it is their quality that eventually attracts subsequent gentrification. They are, in fact, only recovering their intrinsic value; they are reverting to their origins, not just being “taken away” from the poor.

Another part of the affordable housing equation is free will. You can’t tell white people they can’t move into a black neighborhood. You can’t tell a lower middle class/ blue collar black family they can’t sell their house for top dollar. Duany nor I am talking about apartment buildings, we are talking individual houses and properties where it is wrong to impose restrictions on homeowners to keep affordable housing stock.
Duany’s answer to stopping gentrification is bad design. Bad design will keep the gentrifiers out. Well, from my own house and some of the open houses I’ve been to around Shaw, that won’t work either. Theoretically, Duany says that mediocre design will make the gentry seek other housing. In practice, crackhead design in Shaw has done little to hold back gentrification except keep an overpriced house on the market longer. Duany blames modernist designs. I don’t know about modernism, but I know crackhead when I see it.
Another suggestion Duany makes to stop gentrification is to allow the poor to build their own houses in “code free” zones. Yeah, it’s called building without a permit. You can do it in places where the neighbors won’t report you to the city.
No simple answer.

You can’t both run a liquor store and do band practice.
I know I said I wasn’t going to walk into the closest liquor store on 4th, but I was way too lazy to cross Florida Ave to get to Bloomingdale Liquors on 1st. I did struggle with getting on the bike and dragging my butt over to Bloomingdale or checking out Modern Liquors. All so I can try to make a mojito. ‘Cause I got all this dang mint growing in the yard and I’m getting sick of mint tea. I got mint, but no light rum. So that meant a trip to the liquor store.
All I needed was a little light rum. Any liquor store, no matter how ghetto or run down or shot up should have light rum. So I went to the store on 4th.
Before I railed against stores that are nothing but a foyer and bulletproof glass. I see I was right for another reason. I walk in and there is no one behind the glass.
Hello?
No one.
Then I hear the clicking of drum sticks and a drum. A rock/funk/? band starts playing somewhere in a back room. I decide it is not worth it and head back home. I’ll go out and get rum when I’m up to going over to 14th or 9th.
I guess if everything is behind glass, there is nothing to steal, so you can ignore the store. And if you can ignore the store then you can have band practice.

Today’s optional posting
Instead of going to the BACA meeting I went to dinner. But I did ask what did I miss and the following is a extremely brief description of the meeting:
The daytime shootings were addressed and it apparently was an emotional exchange. A good portion of the meeting was on public safety issues. There will be a separate meeting, with no date as of yet to deal with public safety in the area.
Art Slater talked about developments planned to go up in the area. One of interest is the old Exxon gas station which is a plot of land at the corner of Florida and North Capitol. He also talked about the proposed car wash that is headed for the corner of New Jersey and Islamic Way (1500 block of New Jersey). If you didn’t get the flyer, several neighbors are up in arms about it and don’t want it. Jim Berry (our ANC) is looking into what can be done. And Art talked about the billboards at P and 4th. There will be a meeting next week, I don’t know the time, to address the development in the area.
Mary Ann Wilmer talked up the Flower Power Garden Tour. THERE WILL BE A POLICE PRESENCE FOR THE TOUR! We all still have tickets. I still have tickets.
That was it.

Last year I began posting about 5 days a week and kept up the posting pace for a year. Now, I’m finding it a tad bit harder to come up with things to write on a near daily basis and there are some other projects I would like to devote my time to. So I’m going to reduce my postings to 3 times a week, particularly Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I might post Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I’m going to treat them like my Saturdays and Sundays, where I post when I really, really, have something to say.
Last year in August I had an average of 42 visits a day using up 31MG a month, this July it was an average of 450 daily visits using 701MG. At 1 gig my server starts charging me $5 more. I like you guys but I don’t make any money from this and as I’ve said many times, I’m cheap. So posting 3x a week is also a internet traffic calming/reducing strategy.
Fear not, I’m not going anywhere. Neither are the crackheads, the dealers, the bad section 8’ers, and horrid suburbanites who come in to trash the hood. As long as there are those folks, as well as the slow changes of a gentrifying neighborhood, I’ll write about them.

Thanks & Pax,
Mari/e
Webmistress

So Nora Bombay and I were out shopping, or more accurately, looking at stuff that we could or could not afford. Roaming around Expo, Home Depot’s fancier store, Nora pointed out a big dresser, only $1,200. I balked. Not only was it more than I really wanted spend on furniture, I could never get it into my house.
When I got my fridge the delivery guys had to take the front door off the hinges just to get the darned thing in. I had to destroy part of the stair railing to get it into the dining room. What was worse was this was not a huge fridge and it took a lot of effort to get it in. Lesson learned, I need to ask if I can get it through the front door before I buy.
This is one of the reasons why I like IKEA. Almost everything fits through the front door. I know some have forsaken IKEA, but most of it fits through the door that doesn’t open all the way and can get through the narrow hallway. Just because of my front door alone, I’ve had to keep my furnishings small.
This Sunday I was walking around Georgetown admiring the houses. Not because of wealth or grandeur. Nope. I was looking at space saving solutions. Forget the big, mini-mansions and huge homes best suited for entertaining the King of Prussia. There are a number of dinky sized townhomes in Georgetown too. I was looking at rear balconies, alley side decks and patios, and if they left their windows wide open, interiors. Please note this is all from the sidewalk.
Inside some homes I saw what I’m going to call size appropriate furnishings. What was in the living rooms were moderate sized couches. None of these huge mammoth couches I’ve see in my suburban relatives’ homes. Maybe the people of Georgetown have annoying front door problems too?
Back here in Truxton, IT (and B) has done a good job getting the most out of his small space home. There is no wall to create a living room or a dining room but they have done it with a couch and some other furnishing that I can’t remember the name of…. Basically furniture creates space and it doesn’t feel tiny. You know you are in a small space but you don’t feel cramped.
Now if anyone wants to see how they (IT & B) pulled off the design then, you’ll have to wait for the new Discovery Channel show, which I also can’t remember the name of but it debuts in August (I think) and it is about decorating and designing with less than 1,000 sq. ft. of house. With any luck you’ll see about 5 minutes of their house. ‘Cause really it is so small, it takes just 5 minutes. But it will be the 5 minutes of your life.

There will be a meeting tonight, below is the agenda

August 1, 2005

Monthly Meeting Agenda
Meeting Called to Order 7:00 p.m.
Opening Comments J. Berry
Public Safety Committee Report: Alice Harper, Chairperson
(a) Fifth District Police

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

Committee Report

(a) Remarks: Alex Nyham, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, “A Briefing on the Redevelopment of Sursum Corda, Sibley Plaza, Tyler House, and Temple Courts”

“Flower Power 2005” Mary Ann Wilmer, Chairperson Membership Committee

Environmental Services Committee Report Scott Shappell, Chairperson
BACA Housekeeping J. Berry
Announcements:
(a) Next BACA Meeting – Monday, September 12, 2005

9. Adjournment 9:00 p.m.

JDB

Well close to the end of the week, heading into the weekend, the news in Truxton was, well, bad. There had been some daytime shootings over near 3rd and P and around First Street. What the hey is going on? I have no idea. A fair number of theories, but no answers.
During this lovely weekend, I did see a very active police car making the rounds around Bates and 1st. First I saw the car, with two cops, break up a street game of catch. About 5 minutes later, after the car left, the kids/ young adults were back at it. Then I saw the same car cruising up and down 1st. I last saw it in the park at 1st and Florida where the bums hang out. When I passed by the area later the hanger outs were back to business as usual, hanging out, with a little hand dancing going on as well.
Is it increased police presence because of what happened? I don’t know. But it is always good to see the police making the rounds. It is even better to see them get out of the squad car.