Month: January 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.

|—————————————-|
| Blagden Alley Association |
| Monthly Meeting |
| THURSDAY, January 26, 2006 |
| 7:30-9:00 pm |
| Marthlu and Hal’s |
|—————————————-|
| Celebrate |
| No “Street Cleaning” |
| Tickets till St. Paddy’s Day |
|—————————————-|
|—————————————-|
| Stoney’s Is GONE |
|—————————————-|

The newsletter is at

http://www.pro-messenger.com/Blagden/Monthly%20Pages/2006%20Monthly%20Pages/BAN_
2006_01_P1X1.html

Major topic of the meeting:
The redevelopment of another major piece of the 1200 block of Ninth Street.
(West Side)

Also, see the new web page at http://blagdenalley.com or http://naylorcourt.com,
(depending on your persuasion).

Do hope to see you there.

Well I have finished London Calling and I’ve come away from it wondering about something. Is the diversity that we laud when speaking about the positives of the neighborhood just background scenery? How often and how deeply to we engage in any sort of activity with those who are different than ourselves? Of course, the same could be said about living in a homogeneous neighborhood too, but that wasn’t examined in the book. Authors looked at where respondents in the gentrifying neighborhoods best friends came from (clumsy sentence, I know). Their best friends came from university or work followed by “other” which could be a club, church, political group or the like. Organizations that do not require participants to live in the same neighborhood. Yet that seemed like an unfair question to me. There is more of an opportunity to interact with the same people and engage in the small talk that leads to deeper revelations of who we all are at work and school than standing in one’s front yard. What did seem fair was to try to see how the generally Anglo middle class interacted with immigrant, non-white, council housing (public housing) or working class residents who add to the diversity theme.
Thinking of my own interactions with folks on my block we come together on whatever is our sameness. There is the impromptu ‘garden club’, ‘kennel club’ and other little on the sidewalk and over the fence discussion groups where the racial and age dynamics change depending on what calls one over or away. During these little neighborly get togethers I’m not thinking about our differences. That is unless the focus of the discussion is exclusionary as I, not owning a dog, cannot add to a doggy gossip session.

I recorded part of the ANC5C meeting. Unfortunately my Zire, which I recorded on only has so much memory. If you have no interest in the Mondie testimony don’t bother downloading this one, no music, no commentary, no frills.
Audio has been removed. Please request it directly from mari at inshaw period com.

Values are the things you keep when they are most inconvienent.

In using this definition, affordable housing apparently isn’t a value of mine. It should be as it should be for all of us but with a little soul searching, ah, nah. There have been proposals in this and nearby neighborhoods for some sort of building of affordable housing. Have I supported any of it? Um, no.
The inconvience of some affordable housing is the opportunity costs that we factor in our heads. Instead of some plot of land going to fulfill some societial need that we’d rather have tucked away in some other part of the city, we could get people like ourselves who could make the area more attractive to the businesses we like. Besides we already have one affordable housing complex in Truxton. Then there are the perceived (as this is predicting the future) and real costs of crime, trash, and noise that come with living with affordable housing, be it a group home, a string of section eight housing or an apartment building.
Don’t get me wrong I do appriectiate the income diversity in the neighborhood. However looking at my own actions my efforts to protect and defend affordable housing around here is pitiful. So who am I kidding?
I do admire, even if I don’t agree with, those who speak up for the working poor and the like in meetings and other venues where they face the wrath of their neighbors. It is one thing to rail against complete strangers regarding whatever unpopular (or popular) social program or project. It is a whole ‘nother thing when you fight or go against people you know and who you like on a day to day basis.

Riders have suggested extending the line to Greenbelt as a way to ease crowding and to bring trains more often to the growing areas of Petworth, Columbia Heights, U Street and Shaw.

What’s your opinion?

First Community Meeting
Monday, January 23, 7 p.m.
DC Housing Finance Agency, 815 Florida Avenue, NW – Auditorium
(U Street/Cardozo Metro)

Councilmember Jim Graham, WMATA Incoming CEO Dan Tangherlini, Board Member Gladys Mack, several ANC commissioners and the leaders of the Mid-City Business Association are scheduled to attend.

Extension of WMATA Yellow Line rail service? What are the Options? What are the Costs?

The WMATA Board of Directors held a town hall meeting at the Reeves Building in December where I brought up the idea of extending Yellow Line Service as a potential option for attracting, retaining, and expanding rider ship by providing more frequent service to stops along the Green Line. These stops such as Shaw, U Street, Columbia Heights, and Georgia Avenue are all being developed using Transit Oriented Development principles of high density residential and retail concentration centered on public transportation hubs. However, right now these transportation hubs are not being fully utilized primarily because of 20 year old decision that did not foresee the expansion and growth of the middle of Washington, DC.

Have you ever gotten on the Green Line late at night or on the weekend, right as the train is leaving, to then spend twenty minutes waiting on the platform for the next train? Infrequent trains during off peak hours is a result of a decision made in the 80¹s not to bring the Yellow Line service to near West Hyattsville and then build east towards Bowie as was called for in the original WMATA rail plans. Instead it was decided to build a turnaround at Mt. Vernon Square that would serve as the end of the line.
Since the Yellow and Green lines share the same tracks from L¹Enfant to Mt. Vernon Square, terminating the Yellow Line service at Mt. Vernon Square means that all the stops north of Mt. Vernon Square can only have half the possible rail service.

Since December WMATA has examined several enhanced service possibilities, the needs required to implement, and the overall costs involved for each of several options and will be providing this information at the public meeting on January 23, at the Housing Finance Agency Building. A very fitting location for this meeting given the 1000¹s of new housing units being built in the next three years within three blocks of the eastern entrance to the U Street Metro at the African American Civil War Memorial. This new urban density has spurred the necessity to reexamine the frequency of service at these stations.

My personal belief is that extending ³Yellow Line² service to Greenbelt during off­peak hours on evenings and weekends will be revealed as a cost effective solution that does not require costly new construction or the purchase of new rail cars and that will only require operations capital to implement now. The major expenses involved in the development of the Inner ³Green Line², land development, building tunnels, etc has been paid for already, yet we are not fully leveraging that investment by terminating Yellow Line Service at Mt. Vernon Square.

I want to personally thank Councilmember Graham for his leadership and follow through and WMATA for their quick action and comprehensive approach in exploring and providing an understanding for all the potential extension options. I believe this public meeting represents the recent commitment by WMATA to work to meet the needs of its riders while operating more efficiently and economically. I encourage everyone to attend this very important meeting in order to get a full understanding of all the options and to make sure that the Councilmember and WMATA get the necessary community feedback.

I look forward to seeing you all on Monday night,

Scott Pomeroy
Development Officer
MidCity Business Association
202.577.6786

The MidCity Business Association is pleased to co-host this meeting and
encourage you to forward this invite to all potentially affected
residents
or businesses at any of these Green Line stations.

I’m at my computer waiting for the pain meds to kick in (arm hurts) and checking my email I have been alerted by the City Paper (ah, someone at the City Paper likes me) that the Days Inn on NY Ave NE (is that anywhere near the hooker hotel?) will be hosting Chinese workers to work on the Chinese Embassy on Van Ness for possibly the next two years. So expect a small spike in Chinese speaking folk who may or may not come through Chinatown (man they are going to be disappointed) and Shaw and all points in between.
Because the arm is hurting I left the DCist happy hour. I was glad to see John who I knew from my swing dancing days, he’s now a photoblogger. John you are an excellent dancer, email me when you decide to venture out to a dance. Also I’m getting old, loud music (unless I’m playing it) doesn’t do it for me.