After gettin’ my hair did ’round U Street I ventured up by bike looking for the new Harris Teeter near 17th Street. I took the long, I’m lost, roundabout route veering over to 19th Street, and then asking for directions. After getting a few things I headed back home heading to 16th St, I saw the Meridian Park and remembered back to 2001.
It has been 7 years since I’ve been at that exact corner on a bike. Hit with this sudden flashback, I turned my head looking back at the street I just biked up and said, wasn’t there an open drug market there? In 2001, Jose, a guy from a dance class I was taking was having a house warming party somewhere in Adams Morgan/Columbia Heights. I was living at 12th & Rhode Island, so I figured I just bike up to the party. When I turned off from 16th St NW, heading west on either Crescent or Belmont (can’t exactly remember) I biked straight into the biggest open air drug market I had ever seen. Many people were milling about, and some were sort of looking at me like I might be selling.
Until I got groceries at Harris Teeter, that memory was part of my mental map of that part of town. It’s sort of like outdated satellite imagery, you know it’s out of date, but it’s all you got.
There are so many other parts of the city where it has been a good forever and a half since I’ve been there, like the DC part of Takoma Park and Deanwood. Then again there are parts of the city where I haven’t to at all.
Day: June 30, 2008
Fireworks have now started
They may have started before this weekend but it was this weekend when I started to hear them go off. With a lack of firework stands so far (have you seen any?) and other factors I gather this year won’t be as noisy as the previous ones. The proof will be in the 4th of July pudding. The best way to describe 4th of July night ’round here is ‘crazy’. Smoke and noise and debris everywhere almost on every corner, kind of crazy.
Will there be on the off chance a quieter 4th? I’m not ready to bet on it, but if it is a bit more sedate with fewer neighborhood D.I.Y. shows competing with the big show on the Mall, I wouldn’t be surprised.