Author: Mari

Okay, yesterday was my post that was a little anti-child, well more anti-stupid knucleheaded child. Reading an article about the lack of walking and the troubles with programs to promote walking to school I have one good thing to say about the children of Shaw, they can get from point A to point B without getting killed or kidnapped, without parental supervision.

In the Salon article “Walk to School yes, but don’t forget your lawyer,” the problem with getting kids to walk to school are SUV driving parents driving their kids to school. Reading about the attitudes some parents had regarding their children, I was thinking about the kids around my hood, which were the opposite. The kids around here have a bit more leeway. They might be limited to the block or a few blocks but they walk. I know a few who walk to school alone, navigating New Jersey Avenue to get there.

Raise your kid in the city and get free streetsmarts. The kids of this city are somewhat smart enough to navigate the subway, buses and streets alone. Now if they would just not act stupid I’d be so happy.

“Let me tell you something, your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day. It’s cursing and calling each other ‘n*gger’ as they’re walking up and down the street. They think they hip — can’t read, can’t write — 50 percent of them,” — Bill Cosby

“Dirty laundry” is the code word between my neighbor and I when we encounter the idiotic kids between work and home on the green line and on the street. The dirty laundry seems to get out around 3 ’cause that’s when we see them.

They are loud and obnoxious. They hit each other. They curse at each other. On the train we encountered a loud burp/hit couple, made the trip unbearable. The problem is you can’t ignore them.

Around 3-4pm weekdays the streets are filled with kids. Some of them seem to get from point A to point B without talking, offending, hitting, jaywalking, or loitering. There are others, girls and boys, who will hang out on the corner being as loud and obnoxious as ever.

The worse part is not so much the volume, thought that is bad, but what is coming out of their mouths, and I’m not just talking about the cursing or the burping. They can’t speak English. My drama teacher used to call it lazy tongue, when apparently it too much energy to enunciate. These kids sound just so ignorant, and they are loud and ignorant. They advertise their ignorance. Maybe this is a call for better schools? I don’t know.

Sitting in the car trying to turn on NY Ave from NJ Ave I saw two fellows selling squint is that… yes… that looks like a DVD for National Treasure, which is still in theaters, and I got an idea….. the ghetto gift basket(ggb). The GGB would include 1)bootleg DVD or CD 2)the most popular scent sold by those guys in the Metro with the little bottles (I think they sell “booty call”) 3)a bag of chips sold in bodegas with the picture of the brown woman against the brick wall, I forget what they are called but I see the bags littering the street all the time and 4) a do rag. You can present this in a lovely black plastic bag or a plastic milk crate filled with crumpled pages of the Washington Post, the City Paper, or what ever.

Yes, I vote this as my most offensive post ever.

Quick note: The Garden District over on 14th Street & S has a boat load of Christmas trees in. If a Christmas tree, well a live one, is too much for you they also have green garlands, mantel pieces and wreaths. Also herbs are 50% off. There aren’t too many herbs left, lot of sage, 1 laurel bay, some yellowy thyme, and cilantro.

A used … pink bathrobe

A rare … mint snowglobe

A Smurf … TV tray

I bought on eBay

My house … is filled with this crap

Shows up in bubble wrap

Most every day

What I bought on eBay

–weird Al “Ebay”

The Post featured an article “Building with EBay” today in the Real Estate section. I am trying to think have I incorporated any ebay purchases into the house. I buy a lot off EBay. Ebay is my shoestore. I have bought plants off eBay (ps Jimbo the agave is dying so don’t worry about pick up), clothes, computer equipment, several palms, books, CDs, worms, and everything else, but no building materials. I have looked at building materials on eBay. Shipping and storage are the big hindrances.

Once I saw this really cool door up for bid. It was a solid wood door with a porthole window, like you’d find on a ship or boat. Pretty. I bid once on some stained glass windows, got out bid. I have bought oriental rugs. I wasn’t looking for high quality, just pretty wool for my feet. Some of the flooring looks good but the problem is point A to point B. Sometime the shipping looks like it is worth it, like the tiled mosaics.

Right now I deciding if I want to buy a heavy Celtic iron cross for the backyard. Shipping is about $11. Yet I really need to curb my eBay purchases. So far I have bought too much in one week.

Well I wanted to put up a great gardening page for the main In Shaw site but left it on a remote computer, so I won’t have it till tomorrow. The gardening page was for urban gardeners and I found some really cool sites relating to small gardens, container gardens and urban issues. One site in particular I want to share is Path Project’s Urban Homestead Diary. Path Project is run by the Dervaes family who live in Southern California and try to feed a family of five on the food grown on their city plot. The site is a record of their attempt to become self-sufficient in an urban environment.

Took a look over at Ziprealty and the cheapest thing in Shaw (20001 zip code) is $299,950 1419 New Jersey Avenue a 2 bedroom 1 bath house. I guess we have now run out of crack houses to buy. Normally I would scream that the realtors are on crack. I have now accepted the realities of market forces.

There is no obvious bike parking around the New York Ave metro station. But I found something to attach the bike to. I have seen a bike attached to the station rails right near the token gates, but I figure the troll in the booth would yell at me for that. There is still construction and many, many yards of tall chain link fence around yet to be built offices. I attached my bike to the fence. Now keep in mind the bike in question is the crap bike, a rusty 3 speed thing with 1 working brake. I’m not too worried about it. Besides I have 3 locks for it. A cable, a U-lock with a round key and a U-lock with a key-key. You gotta really want my bike to steal it. Well after 3 hours of leaving it alone, it was still there. Of course the station is still new, bike thieves may not have discovered it yet.

As part of their grounds for your gardens program, you can get free used coffee grounds from any Starbucks. Well testing out this theory I found it helps to point out to employees after they look at me as if I’ve grown a 2nd head, a)where their “used” grounds are b) I use them for fertilizer (compost is too hard to think about) and c) I have a bag you can put them in. Note with plastic store bags, it helps to double them and have an absorbent newspaper under them cause they will leak.

This week I decided I wanted to hit the 4 Starbuck between the Archives Navy Memorial metro station and the Gallery Place Chinatown station. There’s 1 Starbucks every 2 blocks in this small space, silly I say. Anyway here are the results:

325 7th Street Always crowded. I can never seem to find a good time to go in and ask for grounds. So I moved on.

7th and E Across the street from Jaleo. I got espresso grounds (personal fav) and filtered coffee from the big coffee machines. Staff was confused by my request for about a minute when an older woman figured it out and fulfilled my request. She put my single plastic bag in a paper Starbuck bag. Good service.

9th and G Over by the MLK library. Young staff was totally confused by my request. Apparently there was no manager on site or anyone older than 21 working in the store. That and unlike some of the other Starbucks I have visited, they don’t dump their espresso in a drawer but directly into the garbage. So the only thing I got from them was the huge filtered coffee grounds. Not really worth the trip to me.

7th and H Streets As I headed towards the 4th Starbucks I was overcome by a superstrong smell of coffee. I could not bear the smell of it, and like the 1st Starbucks, this was also quite busy.

Another mention:

13th & U Right at the U Street metro station is the best Starbucks for coffee grounds. They used to actually have bags of grounds available but I guess not enough people picked them up. Yet with the exception of new people, I don’t get the odd look. The manager, upon request will get a nice pile of grounds without me having to explain anything.

I was lazy today.

I accomplished very little.

What I did accomplish was timing myself walking and biking between the house and the new station (NYAFAGU). 7 minutes by bike. P Street is crap too. It was okay today but there was no buffer space, this may not work during rush hour. 17-20 minutes by foot. At that point gotta wonder is it easier to walk to Gallery Place Chinatown (oh I’ve done it)? In theory, it is closer than Dupont and Gallery Place. In theory.

There’s another concern. People get ugly as I go east. There is that mass of desperate people congregating at Florida and North Cap. They is ug-ly. Almost fugly. Then along North Cap from Florida down to Hanover you got some more butt ugly people hanging out, kicking back. From North Cap to the 2-3 blocks to the station it is then empty, except for the cars going by. Scary empty to me. I don’t like large dark parking lots, or empty stretches of space where there is nothing.

Dupont Circle – pro= beautiful people, cool stuff lots of street traffic. Cons= lots of street traffic, too far to walk, only 1 bus to get home.

Gallery Place Chinatown– Pro= 70 and 71 bus run frequently, lots of street traffic, walkable in the day. Cons= Looooong walk. 70 & 71 bus not close to house.

NYAFAGU- Pro= New, 3/4 of a mile away, 90, 91 & X? bus service it. Con=possible scary walk @ night, ugly people, unit blocks with problems, annoying office buildings in the way, & crappy roads.