Author: Mari

Eating in Eastern Shaw: Ella’s

Ella’s.
I finally gave them money in exchange for food and drink. And it was good.
I didn’t go for brunch as I had already done brunch in Georgetown and really wasn’t up to plopping down $12 bucks. I just wanted something light. I had tea and a waffle. Yes, I know, throwing my low carb, let’s now call it mid-carb diet out the window.
I had my meal out on the patio so I could observe the street traffic and ponder the New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gaulludet University-Your Name Here Metro station. There were some potential dangers of sitting outside. The first that went though my mind was harassment by beggars. That was not the case as this is not one of those neighborhoods. There are homeless but I think it is a given that begging may just be a fruitless business in this area. Second, getting ignored by staff. It times I wondered, “hey where’s my bill?” Maybe people don’t sit out there often. Out of sight…. Last, bugs. For the past few weekends, my outdoor meals have been hampered by aggressive wasps. It is very hard to eat all you can eat when there is a frickin wasp between you and your food. Luckily, no bugs.
While pondering the yet to be open but already has a horrible long name metro station, I people watched. I watched an Anglo family of three try to hail a cab. After a while they gave up and hopped the 80 Kennedy Center bus. Traffic violations, that’s another thing to spot. If anyone has forgotten… it is illegal to have your cell phone to your ear and drive in DC.
I guess I should talk about the food. Waffle good. Waffle $3. It had cinnamon and sugar on top and I had syrup on the side. I also had tea. Tea is tea. They had English Breakfast, that’s all I care about as I don’t want some stinkin’ herbal and I don’t care for Earl Grey.
Oh, another good point. Ella’s takes credit cards. I like a place that takes cards, as I typically avoid carrying cash.

True Crime

Okay I had no intention of posting today. None.
But I witnessed an assault. And I took pictures.
Well I was taking pictures of houses in the Mt. Vernon part of Shaw and was heading over back to my section. I pass this house on New Jersey and N, and I hear this wailing and banging. This guy, was just screaming. I can’t remember if it was “I’ll kill you” or “Die bitch.” But he was screaming and hitting something and I could hear it from the street.. with headphones on. There were other people along NJ who heard this mayhem too and were looking at the house. When I looked back, he was outside the steel door kicking it and demanding to be let back in. He kept saying he was going to call the police and so he went walking with this huge 1×4 over to the firestation on the corner of N & NJ.
A few moments later 3 guys walk out. One with one of those yellow wet floor signs, and another with a 5 ft wooden step ladder. They walk up New Jersey. Screaming guy sees them and starts wailing on them with the 1×4 in the yard of the firestation.
This is when I call 9-1-1.
I give a lovely play by play to the dispatcher. As I’m doing so a blue police van drives up and breaks up the fight. I mention this to the dispatcher and he tells that according to the colors it’s DC Housing Authority Police. Ok. Whatever. Then 1 minute later a police car from the 1st District shows up. Then followed by another 1D car.
At the end of all this, there were 5 police vehiles in the driveway of the firehouse. Two from 1D one from 3D, and I can’t remember if the other was 5D and the DCHA Police van. All to handle a guy with a big stick. In the end no one, as far as I could tell, was arrested. Stick man told the police he was heading back to wherever and a police woman said she thought that would be a good idea. I lost track of ladder guy. I stuck around because I did get a call back from the police but the police wound up interviewing a woman on the other side of N St. I was not going to jump up and down to get their attention. I left when it all broke up.

Then I went for brunch at Ella’s.

Garden Report

The joys of urban gardening. This summer has been very, very good to me with the rains and the not too hot heat. I’ve had a so-so yield of blueberries, decent output of tomatoes and the herbs I never eat are flourishing.
The problem with urban gardening, well gardening for me, is that I have a typical postage stamp yard. It could be worse, it could be smaller. I could have bought a bigger house, but it didn’t have a yard. Not only is the yard small, it doesn’t get a lot of “full sun”. When I had the DC Agricultural Extention person out, yes, they’ll come out, she wasn’t hopeful about my gardening prospects. So I’ve been picky about what grows in the few areas of the tiny yard that gets the good dirt and the full sun.
When I first started digging for the garden you wouldn’t believe the crap I found in the dirt. Besides the ten zillion bits of broken glass, reminants of an ugly red carpet, I have found money. Not silver dollars, (I wish) but dimes, nickels, good stuff.
After all that work, I wanted the plants to give back. No ornamentals for me. No. I want food producing plants. Also it is a cool thing to be cooking and walk outside and grab one of the ingredients. Neat.

ADMIN
I’m going to take a short break so I’ll have no posts over the weekend.

House O the Fortnight

I think I forgot last week. Anywho. I pick 1603 New Jersey Avenue as the house of the week. Well the reasons why this house deserves a look, especially from you all who live in Eastern Shaw/ Truxton Circle and can walk by, is the top of the house. That little upstairs porch (or whatever you call it) is to die for. I’ve always thought it was the cutest thing ever, even before it was renovated.
Just imagine waking up, going outside on a glorious morn and looking down upon New Jersey Ave… ooh! A drug bust! No, really, that would be cool. Just to sit out there, above the traffic and have a private (no other balconies on the neighboring houses) view of the city below. Cool.

A walk down 14th St

After work I was determined to get 1 bag of rice from Fresh Fields (now Whole Foods). 1 bag. So out the U Street metro I wandered down 14th St. 14th Street is the way cool street of Shaw. It’s not my part of Shaw, but it is Shaw and it is way cool. The sky seemed almost ready to wet itself and me so I didn’t have time to fool around, but there were some stores that just begged for a walkthrough.
I haven’t been in Home Rule for the longest. I think the last time I was in there was to buy the organza curtains for what is now my roommate’s room. They still have those curtains, they are still $30 a panel. There are several neat kitchen things in bins that screamed “take me!” “no, me!” If it weren’t for the $15 price tag I may have actually bought the kitchen frangrances they were selling.
I skipped Go Mamma Go, Pulp and that new 100% Mexican store. I really need to go into the Mexican store. But I did not pass The Garden District I passed through it. They still got herbs, like I need more herbs. I bought my passionflower vine from them, the one taking over the fence.
Okay, Fresh Fields, bag of rice.
I also passed all the new condo construction on 14th and P. This area is going to get so crowded once all this is done. Goodbye to finding any parking. Part of me is happy people want to live in Shaw, and that Shaw is becoming hip/cool/ whatever, but how much is too much? How many more non-garden style/ high rise condos are going to be built? And really are there that many people with $300K-$700K to spend on a condo around?
***
I did get my bag of rice, and some granola.

Real Estate Agents on Crack again

There is a house at 1611 New Jersey Avenue for sale for, get this, $798,000. Crack, crack, PCP with an LSD chaser Crack is what the Realtors are smoking. And they must be giving it to their buyers. Yeah, it has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, and I’m quite sure they are big and everything, but $800K? I know this place has no parking. For $800 grand you should have parking and your own personal crack ho. For less you can get a 5 bedroom 4 bath at 34 Quincy for less than $500K, or at $500K 69 Florida Ave. With the extra $300K you could buy an extra condo or for a tad more 1647 New Jersey Ave (a 2 bedroom 1 bath) for $310K.
Please stop the maddness, just say no to the real estate crack.
11/29/05
2 anon comments are 2 too many

Elements of Crackhead design

My second floor toilet is a lovely example of crackhead design. The *&^%!! thing is incased in the tile. If I wanted to replace the toilet I’d have to replace the whole friggin’ floor. The toilet is supposed to sit on top of the floor, not in the floor. The following is a picture of what it should look like.
This is what I mean when I get annoyed with the house and proclaim that it was designed by crackheads. Well I know it was designed by an untrustworthy Nigerian named Sonny (Do not let this man design anything for you) and his crew of underpaid workers. I discovered late that although Sonny did work on several of the houses on the block, they were houses fixed for sale, not for living in. There is a huge difference.
Crackheads are cheap. They do crappy work. You will know a crackhead did your house when you look at something and go, “what the heck/hell/f*c* were they thinking?” It could be a toilet, or a wall, or a floor, or any little thing in the house where it just doesn’t make sense.

Crime prevention & DM noise update

Walking around I noticed something in the alley, the developers/contractors finally put bars up behind their house. The problem was the rear of the house had an unsecured entry from the alley. So I’d see kids, teens, bums going into this house’s alcove to do whatever. The slow progression of the owners ‘getting it’ probably started when they found people in the basement, which was open to all from the alley. Developers of Shaw, just because it isn’t visable from the street at 30 mph, doesn’t mean anyone isn’t going to notice that the door doesn’t have a lock. So over time I noticed damage to the building as it was undergoing stop/start contruction. The back door had a broken window, and so that got boarded up. I’m going to take a wild guess that there were break ins. I know, the house is empty why break in? Shelter. Contractor tools. Building materials. Later the basement got closed off. The alcove, however remained open so it could still provide shelter to a homeless person, or temporary office for a hooker. Now finally, that is closed off and teens and crackheads can stay out.
Thinking of crime prevention I always thought we could do with these signs I saw in London. Well the Kew Gardens section of London, because they weren’t in Wimbinton. Simply reminding people to not leave things in cars. I so wanted to steal one of those signs and take them back to the States, but figured it bad form to steal a crime prevention sign.
\\\\The music ended about 8:30pm. I did not call the cops.

DM little party

It’s only 4 o’clock, its going to go on for much longer.
It began around 11:30AM. I wandered off to take pictures of the neighborhood and visit folks. I came back around 3. It was still going on, now there are people there.
It’s the base. I’m sitting in the center of my house and I hear the base. I’ve got the loud fan on, NPR loud and I still hear the gd base. So I wandered over to talk to DM about the music. She was nice about it and said she couldn’t turn the base down (she doesn’t care to turn the base down or the music). She asked if she could just have a little something for her son, just a school thing (son nowhere in sight) and it will be over at 10 (when she darn well feels like it).
I am so calling the cops at 10:15.