Day: January 25, 2006

It’s great to be able to move from the peanut gallery of commenters to a “contributing” position with In Shaw. However, I still believe I’m the peanut gallery.

As a recent commenter on the “The State of the In Shaw blog” post has indicated, this blog and TruxtonCircle.org were also factors in my decision to move to the area. I felt that of all the areas of DC that were currently in transition, the community here was unique, was relatively well organized, had similar values and were committed to improving the area. That is not to say that other areas don’t share some of those qualities… I just felt that if I was putting roots down in a transitional part of the city, this is where I wanted to do it for a large number of reasons. This blog in particular also helped me understand some of the issues to the area before moving in and I realized that none were so great that a little time and community involvement couldn’t overcome them. Since being here I’ve really come to appreciate how the blog accurately reflects life in Eastern Shaw and that it accurately reflects the community building efforts of this part of DC.

It’s true that Eastern Shaw is full of quirks and, often, humorous situations. But there are also issues that are citywide problems that still need to be addressed. I’m convinced the blog helps the community come together around those problems by fostering discussions and promoting awareness. There will obviously be disagreements on many of the major issues and that’s just fine—let’s just have the conversations.

There are a lot of exciting things happening in Eastern Shaw, along North Capitol St., Bloomingdale, Eckington, and in other surrounding neighborhoods. I believe that the coming years will bring even more positive changes to the area and I look forward to (most of) the coming changes with great hopes.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to post in the future whenever I have something worth sharing. Last but not least, thanks for the microphone, Mari!

First one, please give a big welcome to a new contributor, once commenter ‘jg’, Truxtonian. I decided to loosen the reigns just a teeny tiny bit. He will post whenever. And yes, he. I’ll let him decide how he wants to introduce himself, when he feels like it.
Second there will be a change in email. I have moved over to Verizon and I need to get rid of my AT&T account. If you need to contact me directly please email mari at inshaw periodthingy com. Importantly please always have a subject line and a subject line that will help me tell the difference between spam and legit email.

Ok I didn’t want to be there. It didn’t seem like Toby wanted to be there. Karl is bearing a lot of the load as the spokesmodel and maybe he didn’t want to be there. Mondie probably didn’t want to be there and it doesn’t matter if Mondie’s lawyer wanted to be there because of all of us he was the only one getting paid. This lovely event? Yesterday’s Board of Zoning Adjustment hearings.
Before us was WASA getting some pumping station and there was an army of people. Despite being on track and looking good without opposition it took over an hour to get through it all. The Mondie portion started at about 11AM and we weren’t out of there till about nearly 2PM. There was a fair amount of back and forth on whether he could use the 410 exception, which was a change from what he was pursuing before which was going with section 401.3. Unfortunately there are some unclear portions of section 410 where R-4 zones such as Richardson is confused with R-5 zones. The board excused themselves to hash that out for “5 minutes”. It is amazing how 5 minutes is actually 35 minutes. We fear that Mondie might be able to build a defacto apartment building (when this area is not zoned for an apartment building), despite opposition from the residents, the ANC and Office of Planning on a technicality. Yeah, yeah, Mondie has repeated that they are not going to be apartment buildings. But within his plan, if he doesn’t complete some other steps, which may or may not happen (as we don’t know the future) they will be DEFACTO apartments regardless of what you call them. I have the deep desire to call my house a luxury townhome with quirky characteristics.
I think the board is scheduled to make a decision Feb 7th.