Day: April 10, 2008

Dump Truck Protest

I work in lower Penn Quarter and right now I’m being serenaded by dump truck horns. If I stick my head around a colleague’s cubical I can sort of see a huge convoy of building construction dump trucks. Some of them have signs. Unfortunately the only one I could read said “Fuel Costs”. There was another that might have said something about occupational safety or another about insurance. A periodic complaint we have on our floor is it is nearly impossible to read protester’s signs, so we spend most of our time trying to figure out what the heck is the message.
The on going, cacophony of truck horns sounds like the brass section tuning up.

Update= I went down to the street level to take a look, one sign said “Fair Compensation”, which looks like “New Construction” from the office window. Also from the street, those horns are loud.

Snippet in Bladgen Alley History

It’s in the past, so it counts as history. 1994. Bladgen Alley. Zoning Case ZC 94-14. The idea was to change the zoning for the alley facing buildings from R-4 to C-1 or C-2-A. A look at the current zoning map and the proposed zoning for back then, it appears the effort failed. But what is interesting, and something a researcher (not me, somebody else) may want to explore are the signed petitions, the form and original letters from residents, businesses and workers in and around Bladgen Alley about the conditions of the alley. One interesting piece submitted was a statement, I gather to be read at a Zoning meeting, describing the conditions of the alley as a place of illegal dumping and tranny tricking. There are other zoning cases, in other neighborhoods where testimony is given describing neighborhoods that’s just interesting.
I’m sure a more complete story of ZC 94-14 can be found at the DC Archives. The part I encountered is from the National Archives, RG 328 Entry A1-27, boxes 89 & 90, as an FYI to the National Capital Planning Commission.