Author: Mari

No fun.
I think I spotted the homeless guy who found it. I’m beating myself up for not asking him if he found it. I don’t care about the money ($30-$50), it’s the cards. I’ve been on the phone cancelling all the cards I could. Tomorrow I have to call for replacements of the healthcare card. Good thing I do keep the cards of other accounts out of my wallet so I’m not totally screwed. There was a $8.00 metro card in there too.
I guess I’ll have to take a day to replace my driver’s license which will be no fun as I still had the old address on 12th St on it. I didn’t own a car and besides the odd Flexcar trips did not drive. But the license is a de facto ID card. I’ll just run around with my expired passport until it is replaced.
I used to have this problem a lot in college, loosing my wallet. But the worse was loss of the driver’s license and my one ATM card. Now DL and 3 credit/check cards, health insurance, business cards, receipts (some needed for refunds), a check I needed to deposit (stop payment fee almost as much as check) in other account. The lesson learned from my college days was not to have anything of major personal value in your wallet. So I don’t have anything with my SS#, or pictures of loved ones, or anything of that nature. Figured it be a good thing for this neighborhood considering some of the crime. But the neighborhood isn’t that bad, just me.

This loss because I was too busy racing to the metro station to go to church. Teaches me to stick with the bus. Please Lord give me peace.

Friday after work I met up with John (Logan Circle Guy) who is leaving this lovely area we call home for sunny Houston in a few days. It is really nice to meet up with folk you know from the online world in the real world. Same goes with BL and Nathan over in Eckington.

It was also good to compare notes on tiny little townhome living. His place 12 feet wide, mine 14 feet. Apparently houses like ours were built with very little between each unit making for difficult sleeping when one has party hardy neighbors.

Well with the house sold, job relocated to TX, and movers awaiting to decend on his home to carry off his earthly belongings I wish John the best. Vote wisely, you’re getting a Congress member and a Senator.

Two businesses along R St have closed their doors. I don’t know if anyone really close is sad.

First was Jorge’s Body Shop. There used to be cars and trucks littering the corner and sometimes they’d spill out on to the parking spaces on the street. I know the shop had some cars up for sale. So I am guessing one or two things happened that spelled the demise of the shop. First the city cracked down on dealers and temp auto tags. As I understand it, a lot of businessmen made good money off of selling temp tags but not cars. Secondly, the property values in the area have been getting high and I don’t know if business was keeping up with that.

Second place was Majestic (?) Cleaners on the same block. Now first off I’ll tell you what was wrong with that cleaners and why I would never use them, no posted hours. I walked by many a time and never once saw their hours of business. Also they were just opening as I was heading to work and were closed when I came back from work and I didn’t see them open on Saturday. Obviously they weren’t out for the 9-5 working person’s business. One of my neighbors made the mistake of doing business with them, and needed his clothes back for a special event. Well they were closed when he went there and had no idea when they’d open again. Another problem was that there was little from the outside that gave you the impression they were for the general public. In addition to the lack of useful business hours there was no visible register or anything that hinted at business other than for commercial bodies.

You could say both businesses have been pushed out due to gentrification. Well you could say George Bush is a giant Cicada. You could say a lot of things really. But I hope those businesses are replaced by places that service the community and post business hours.

My compost bin stinks.

I mean really stinky stinks. Stinks so badly I thought it was the alley that smelled so bad. I thought crack-heads were using the bathroom near my fence. But after puting a thick board over the compost can, I discovered it was the compost that was creating the stinky stink.

Well I will have to start from scratch with the composting. Buy composting worms and all. I’ll make my own bin again but try to follow the New York City Compost Project as opposed to what was supposidly working for two years. I guess I didn’t spend a lot of time in the back yard to notice the smell.

Come one, come all! Saturday, June 5, 2004, 10am to 2pm, join Shaw EcoVillage and Manna CDC for the Shaw Bike Festival. The Bike Festival will occur at Shaw Skate Park, 11th St. & Rhode Island Ave.,NW, nearest the Shaw/Howard U Metrorail stop on the greenline.

Activities include: helmet give-away, fittings and safety checks, obstacle course and “slowest person” race , raffle, face-painting and crafts, a ‘petting zoo’ featuring bikes and other human-powered vehicles, advice and workshops for adult bike enthusiasts- commuting and technical skills- bunny

hopping, log jumping, guided Shaw Historical Bike Tour, developed by EcoDesign Corps program interns, rain barrel construction/water conservation workshop, food and fun!

Contact Noel Petrie at 202.265.2019 for more information.

# # #

The Shaw Bike Festival is an event of Shaw EcoVillage and Manna CDC

The Shaw EcoVillage Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, was founded in 1998 to train youth to be creative leaders for meaningful and sustainable change in our urban neighborhoods.www.shawecovillage.com

Manna CDC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit community development organization in

the District of Columbia collaborates with Shaw residents, business owners and other community stakeholders to maximize the community’s assets. The program of activities includes community organizing and leadership development, affordable housing development and preservation, and community economic development. www.mannadc.org

Last night I saw a trail of ants up my wall just outside the door. So I sprayed them, sprayed the crack they were in, sprayed around my door, sprayed.

This morning a whole host of sleeping ants covered my stairs.

No.

No.

No.

PSA 312 is gone.

Gone.

Gone.

Gone.

No more.

Some of the neighbors went to Jack Evans to complain, but I knew it was too late cause if people had been going to the boring PSA 312 meetings, or the Bates Street Civic Association (slightly less boring), they would have known.

So now we have PSA 501, which is big. It includes a lot of NE DC. It has Catholic U, Trinity, the Hospitals, some other large campus of some sort, Eckington, Truxton, and that other stuff on the other side of North Cap.

At the meeting the cops were talking big. We’ll see. That’s my view. Right now my big thing is getting the kids off the R and 4th corner. Some neighbors attributed the crowd of kids on the corner to the arrival of Dramma Mamma. Well I can’t blame her or her son entirely. There were people hanging out on that corner before her. Just now, they are younger.

Well, if I see them I will try to remember to call 911 when they start fighting with each other.

Neighbors,

Please be reminded that there will be a meeting of community residents

from PSA 501 (i.e., the PSA that we are now located in) on Thursday, May 20,

2004. Specifically, the meeting will take place in the auditorium of

Dunbar Senior High School, New Jersey Avenue and O Street, N.W., between the

hours of 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. This is the first meeting of residents from

this newly configured PSA, since the time of our relocation from the Third

to the Fifth District.

Please make your best effort to attend this important public safety

meeting.

And, also bring some neighbors.

Best,

Jim Berry

ANC 5C

I roam the Washington Post’s Real Estate discussion lists. When people from other areas or first time buyers start looking for houses the usual exchange goes something like this:

“Ohmagawd it’s expensive”

“Go live in West Virginia, BFE Virginia, Baltimore, Anapolis, St. Mary’s Co.”

“Traffic horrid”

“Don’t go to PG County or live in DC”

“Please suggest a nice safe neighborhood for a family”

“The Real Estate bubble will burst”

Well of all that I came across this:

From: dariaesq May-13 7:45 am

To: ALL

I think anything in that price range is going to come with some negatives. In the end you have to balance what negatives you can live with….moving a gazillion miles away to farout counties as I see people on boards suggesting West Virginia even!!! thats not a realistic or desirable option for many people (may not have to sit in traffic for a short distance but you’ll drive twice as many miles???); is living within the vicinity of METRO (not VRE or MARC…but the actual METRO System) important; dealing with Rt 7, 66, 270, American Legion Bridge, Wilson Bridge, 95, yadda yadda yadda (there are choke points all over this area…even those living in $600k plus neighborhoods have choke points to deal with and even if you live and work in the city sometimes getting from one part of DC to another part of DC can take 45 minutes!); you might compromise on neighborhood aesthetics and safety…but look into the neighborhood yourself versus assumptions about what it is like, the cheaper neighborhoods are not all as bad as many stereotype them to be; you might be limited to condos vs. townhomes or single family; it may need a lot of renovation if you are up to that.

I guarantee at $130k you’ll have to bend on one of those negatives, but despite the hype you CAN find something in that range close in, in nice neighborhoods and move in ready with limited renovation without having to give up or move to Bmore West Virginia Fredericksburg or some other extreme. Good luck.

Article of interest: Risky Neighborhood Or Investor Paradise?

Bold mine

I like Shaw. It’s my neighborhood. It is close to the metro, so I can ponder getting a car, and not get one. It is within biking distance of Dupont and Downtown. The buses take me straight through Dupont to Georgetown, or the Business district, or Catholic U, or Adams Morgan. But I think I have gotten tired of trying to sell it to middle class suburbanites who like a Disneyfied DC.

There are certain people who should stay in Arlington and Alexandria. Those areas fit them. There’s parking and lots of winding roads. At 40 mph you can ignore the immigrants. Oh and there are good schools for the children they hope to have. In DC, now I don’t want to seem as if I’m hating ’cause I do like a lot of NW DC. But parts of NW DC is too homogeneous and doesn’t reflect the diversity of the city. Some areas do, but we must face some folks aren’t comfy with a lot of diversity. That diversity could be economic, age, family, orientation, and race.

Shaw is a wonderful neighborhood. It is a very diverse neighborhood. It might not fit some folks vision of a “nice safe” neighborhood, but it is mine.