Category: Observations

2017 wasn’t as bad as it could have been

View down Florida AvenueSo we’re coming to an end to 2017.

It could have been worse.

I’ve been in Truxton Circle since 2001, sixteen years. Not a new comer, nor native. There have been worse years. There have been worse years with more gun deaths than this years’. There have been worse years with more drug dealers intimidating residents (and bringing those ‘pop’ ‘pop’s in the night). Have there been worse years with ugly a$$ buildings? Maybe.

The bright shining bright spot in 2017, was the ‘Triangle Known As Truxton Circle’ exhibit, I and my neighbors put on at 410 GooDBuddY.

Illustrating the neighborhood changes from 1880-2010
Neighborhood change 1880-2010

I think I was able to show something that logically makes sense, the neighborhood is always changing. There are always threats. Be it middle class flight (white and later black), urban renewal, drugs, the War on Drugs, and so forth. Does the neighborhood overcome those threats? Sure, lets go with that narrative, as it is true in the case of urban renewal.

I see the change occurring because of the many minor and major decisions of the thousands of residents, property owners, business operators, visitors and others. So I hope 2018 brings more civically minded residents, enlightened visitors, positive businesses, developers with a sense of exterior beauty (seriously some of y’all hit your buildings with an ugly hammer), great landlords and even better tenants, pro-active parents, responsible pet owners, and courteous drivers. I can wish for fewer drug dealers and the gun violence they bring. I can hope for cross cultural exchange across different age, ethnic, racial, religious and non groups, because what is the point of a diverse neighborhood if we’re just going stay in our little silos, you have to interact to really get the depth of what is this neighborhood.

So make peace with neighborhood change and be part of the change for good.

Have a good 2018!

Clever Parlor

Corner Art gallery/ tattoo parlorSo the Help and I have been spending a lot of time in Baltimore, dealing with a rental property. So that’s why we found ourselves in the Washington Village (aka Pigtown) neighborhood on a Friday night. Taking a break from grouting a shower, we wandered out to get some dinner.

There is a mix of commercial and residential buildings on the main strip of Washington Blvd, and I had passed by this shop (pictured) several times. It looked like it was an art gallery that might want to be a low key skate shop.  That night the lights were bright and the art on the wall called out to me. At the time the shop’s operator was hanging out with some skinny art student, sketching a drawing, in the door and invited us to come in.

We came in to take a closer look at the canvases on the wall and the t-shirts in the cubes. My dear spouse, the Help, is a super chatty fellow and began chatting up the operator, who explained that they feature different artists’ work and the owner’s tattoo art.

Holy crap we’ve walked into a tattoo parlor.

Clever!

Very clever. People tend to object to tattoo parlors in their neighborhoods because, face it many tattoo storefronts have the charm of a low rent pawn shop. However, art galleries are cool and people like art galleries. Tattoo artists are artists and it totally makes sense to have them in an art gallery! And it makes sense to have their art alongside other artists.

I think this, having a gallery/parlor, would make sense in other areas where a tattoo parlor wants to come in and pretty up the neighborhood.

Homelessness close to home and 3000 miles away

Homeless stuffSo this is personal.

We knew my sister-in-law was one kind of homeless. That kind of homeless where the person is couch surfing. Recently we discovered she’s a different kind of homeless (living in a truck) and close to the classic kind of homeless of being on the street.

At this point someone, maybe you, are saying well I and the Help (she’s his sister) should do something. And I respond, it is so friggin complicated and we are doing something, but that something won’t stop her trajectory to the streets.

We’ve concluded that my sister in law has some serious mental health problems (she self medicates), along with the anger management issues (yes, that can fall under mental health), add to that she’s on the other side of the country, we cannot provide or impose the kind of help she needs. Those anger, drug, and mental health problems have irreparably damaged the bridges other family members made available. The ‘something’ we’re doing is trying to salvage the damage left from the last time family helped. She managed to drain her mother’s retirement, leaving my diabetic mother in law destitute with no life savings or assets, so we’re trying to keep the old woman alive from 3000 miles away.

Instead of going on and on, I’ll say eldercare is expensive, unbelievably complicated and oh so emotionally draining. There is not enough left to do anything for the person who caused the eldercare abuse (and there was serious financial and emotional abuse*), except to pray for her.

From where we stand homelessness is complicated and there is no simple long term answers.

 

*We don’t know if there was physical abuse, mother in law is tight lipped about the whole thing. We do know sister in law has physically abused others.

Death, Taxes and the 60% Senior Citizen Property Tax Discount

I’ve complained about my dead aunt paying property tax before. I’ve even reported it to the DC Office of Tax and Revenue in 2016 and nothing, so I’m going to treat it like a very open secret, and assume DC government doesn’t give a rat’s rear end.

My great Aunt Geraldine died in February of 2012, she was over 100 years old. Prior to her death she was in a nursing home somewhere in Maryland. Her estate, which is a side of family I’m not familiar with, has been paying the property taxes. That’s fine except, they’ve been paying at the hugely reduced Senior Homestead Deduction.

Forgive me, math is not my strength, but without any deduction she’d be paying $2368.09 annually. Her estate and not my dead aunt, because being dead she’s not doing much these days, has been paying $685.82 annually. Roughly that’s a 60% discount.

The Senior Citizen Homestead Deduction is one hell of a discount. So when you encounter someone who 65 years old or older and or disabled who is a homeowner complaining about property taxes being too high, ask if they are receiving the deduction. Of course they could be receiving the deduction and still complain, as old people are wont to do. You could also look their house up on the DC Property Tax Database to check if they are receiving the deduction.

It is such a great deduction that estates, like my Aunt Geraldine’s estate, has no incentive to transfer the property into the names of younger hands. It is also a problem for vacant properties where the owner is dead.

Gentrification seems to bring less High Fructose Corn Syrup

So I spent last week in Baltimore in a neighborhood that isn’t one of the super cool neighborhoods. Washington Village/Pigtown might be gentrifying, and if it is, it is going at a snails pace. So there are corner markets (7-11, Family Dollar, the odd convenience store) and most of them stocked with various drinks, most containing high fructose corn syrup.

Yeah, I read labels. I’m at the age where I’m reading them over my glasses (I need bifocals) and I’m avoiding HFCS and sometimes sugar (cane sugar/ cane juice). Here in Shaw, there is a whole section of fruit and veggie juices at the Giant. I can get some grapefruit juice concoction at Glen’s Market. And then there is is the Whole Foods.

Sometimes, I just need cold, fresh juice.

So in Baltimore, I had a hankering for juice, that wasn’t orange. I went to the Royal Farms, where you can get a box of fried chicken, but no non-orange juice. Monster drinks and Red Bull a plenty, but no Naked. Family Dollar, no dice. Lots of colorful drinks in glass or plastic that mention a fruit that juice may come forth from but alas it is HFCS water with a smattering of juice. 7-11 did come through, but I’m so accustomed to a lot of healthy choices from living in Shaw.

People Who Show Up at Your Door – In Shaw – Mari in the Citi

Reevesalley1I’ve been talking with someone who lives in Baltimore and works in DC, and we have been comparing DC and Baltimore. We got on the topic of Jehovah Witnesses which led to talking about other people who show up at my door. However, it seems the other people I get beyond JWs are a DC thing, and others, I’m guessing a Shaw thing.

1. Religious People– These are your Jehovah Witnesses and more rarely Mormons. Everyone gets them, and everyone has their own opinion on the topic, so moving along.

2. Political/ Advocacy– They want you to sign to allow such and such on the ballot and they will come door to door to get those signatures because standing outside the metro and accosting people apparently wasn’t working. Lately, I had someone from Save the Children show up on my door. I believe they wanted donations. So, no.

3. Utilities– No I do not want to change from Pepco or switch to a cable company.

4. Wrong door or Alica don’t live here no ‘mo– This happens less these days but in the early days when I arrived and the neighborhood was truly gentrifying with lots of subsidized homes and transition and change, you’d have people showing up at the wrong door. In a row of townhouses they all look alike and it doesn’t help that the colors of the house changed and the fences changed when someone was looking for an old friend. Or when a house that used to have subsidized renters or so-in-so who was living with grandma has now been replaced by random white people. I got someone who was looking for someone three doors over who moved a while ago. I’d heard stories from other people who had people at their doorstep looking for people who moved several years ago.
I’m hearing fewer of these stories and I take it as a sign that Shaw is no longer ‘gentrifying’ it is gentrified. The middle-class and typically white people are no longer replacing poor black families, they are replacing middle class white people. There are still subsidized houses being replaced by market rate renters and owners, but not to the level it was in the 90s and 00s.

5. Sales– The door to door salesperson still lives. I think Capital Meats may have changed their name, but they do come around every so often. Typically, I say no. There have also been people hawking subscriptions for the Washington Post and other publications. Um, no.

6. Handouts/ Cons– This is seems special to neighborhoods like Shaw. I put handouts with cons because sometimes until later, until after you think about it or write about it on the neighborhood email list, you may discover it was a con. This winter we got a homeless couple at our door asking for whatever we could give. It was a cold night so we gave them a new hat and scarf I’d gotten as a present. I was planning to give those items to charity anyway, so I honestly don’t care if it were a con.
Many years ago I got a woman at my door claiming to live around the corner, saying a relative was in the hospital, her car won’t start or she needed gas because the hospital was in outer Mongolia Maryland, and she just needed something to help. I gave her a Smart-Trip card I found days earlier on the sidewalk.
Several months ago on one of the neighborhood forums there was mention of a white male going to doors claiming that he locked himself out of his house and had extra keys at work and needed money for a cab to pick up his keys. Like my lady with the relative in the hospital, he made a vague claim of being a neighbor. People who move to neighborhoods like Shaw tend not to know who their neighbors are, and con artists can use that ignorance.

This page contains a single entry by Mari published on April 30, 2016 9:01 AM.

The bad old days of Shaw is why I don’t believe in ghosts – In Shaw – Mari in the Citi

Over a decade ago when I was looking for a place to buy a home that was affordable and close to enough stuff to maintain my car-less lifestyle, I was doing some serious research on Shaw. In December of 2000 the Washington Post had a series called “Fatal Flaws: The District’s Homicide Crisis” and along with it was a map showing a big gigantic splotch of unsolved murders along Rhode Island and Florida Avenues. And when I moved to the neighborhood, I would hear gunfire almost nightly. Sad, and eventually ugly, memorials of rain sodden stuffed animals and empty liquor bottles littering the sidewalk were a common sight. The crack years were winding down and people were still getting killed over turf battles.

So with all these people dying violent deaths in the streets and parks of Shaw & nearby Sursum Corda, the area should be littered with spirits of the dead if you go by ghost rules. The Help and I, enjoy a good ghost story of the mild horror genre. The usual story is such and such a place is haunted because X number of years ago so-in-so died a tragic and violent death. By this logic 7th and O should be paved with the poltergeists.

We have friends who had to shoo people away from the Seminary up in Forest Glen when it was vacant and before it went condo. It was said to be haunted. People love haunted large buildings. People also like “interesting” haunting by interesting, middle class or wealthy persons or people associated with the wealthy. Haunted castles, yes. Haunted public housing, not so much.

 

I do relate to the supernatural, but in the regular practice of my religion. I am a skeptic regarding ghosts. That scratching in the walls? Rats. Maybe, squirrels. Lights flickering? Possibly crappy wiring by a crappy contractor or blame Pepco. Ghostly figures walking across the room? Obviously, your eyes are engaging in time travel.

I’m all about time travel.

Oh Baltimore

Baltimore is one of the reasons for renaming this blog.
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in Baltimore City lately. Why? I’m looking for an investment property there. I have another investment in my home state, but there is a time limit of how long I plan hold it so I’ve been looking for a replacement closer to home.

Anyway, I’ve spent days and some nights hanging out in Baltimore, getting to know the city better, and I couldn’t help but notice a few differences between DC and our sister city to the north.

More Industrial
DC was never an industrial city. The government is and was our major industry. Not just the government politicians, but government bureaucrats, and government contractors. Somehow you throw in a lot of non-profits, including universities and that’s us. This creates place for a lot of literate people who may or may not be intellectuals and thinkers, a knowledge based economy.

Baltimore has a strong unquestionable industrial history and sorta present. I highly recommend wandering over to the Baltimore Museum of Industry just to learn a bit about the various blue collar employing industries that made Baltimore great. But now, since American manufacturing isn’t as big as it used to be, the joke is maybe one can get a job at John Hopkins, the behemoth school that seems to be taking over a large portion of the city and is its own industry. The University of Maryland- Baltimore and MICA (two other schools) are attempting to carve out their own parts of the city at a much slower pace. Industry-wise a lot of people are placing their bets with Under Armour (you thought I was gonna write Horseshoe Casino?).

And Baltimore is either more accepting or comfortable with its industrial side as you could be walking along in a neighborhood, turn a corner and find garages where people work across the street from houses where people live. Washington wouldn’t stand for it. DC’s industrial areas are shrinking and being replaced by housing. At some point we’ll be nothing more than offices and housing, with a little retail on the ground floor. Yes, I know of the small breweries and distilleries, but we are not going to sprout a tiny Brooklyn (NYC) anywhere as there is very little industrial space for this sort of experimentation without having to hop through permitting and zoning hoops. DC may give industry lip service but our heart is not in it.

Poor White People
Baltimore has plenty of what you don’t see in the District of Columbia. Poor white people. Goes back to that industry thing. We (DC) don’t have a lot of the kind of jobs that hire poor people. No industrial jobs and job gentrification, where the job is more costly for the employer than it needs to be, so the employer is less likely to take a chance on someone with less education and experience.

Loosey-Goosey
It is hard to put my finger on and it does not apply in all areas.
The best example was experienced when the Help and I went dancing in Baltimore. The Help remarked there was more “flailing” on the floor than we were accustomed to. When we dance in around DC, even beginners make an attempt to do it the right way. The message we got in Baltimore was there is no right way, just have fun. And when people are just having fun it looks like a whole lotta chaos to those of us accustomed to more orderly events.
Sometime ago somebody foolishly tried to make “Keep DC Weird” a thing. That’s Austin, TX thing, not ours. Something like “Keep DC Wonky” is more appropriate, because we can get wonky. What do you expect in a city based on a knowledge economy? Baltimore is friendly, but not at all wonky.

Vacant Houses
As you may know I still control the DC Vacant Properties blog. It’s a slow project because really, we don’t have a lot of vacant properties with our real estate booming and all. Not a lot when compared to Baltimore. O-M-G! I see vacant houses coming in on the train, walking around scoping neighborhoods, they are all over the place. Blocks upon blocks, rows upon rows of vacant properties.
I know 20 years ago, DC also had blocks of vacant crumbly rat holes. Say what you want about gentrification, it does cut the number of vacant houses down, leaving the hard to deal with sticklers (Shiloh properties, 509 O St NW, etc).
Baltimore has a great vacant properties blog, Baltimore Slumlord Watch. I love how the blog’s author names the city council person, state senators and state delegates for where the vacant property sits, along with links to those politician’s contact info or websites. By naming those persons of power in the posts and tagging them, it can tie that vacant property to their name.

Maybe just don’t talk on your cell phone on the bus/train

Friday. 79 bus to Silver Spring. Woman, maybe 50-60 years old reads her credit card number into the phone on the bus.
I was close enough that if I were younger I might have been able to read her expiration date.

People. Do not do this. You are not in a cone of silence. I wish you were. But you aren’t.

I ride the bus and the train and for fun the MARC. I can hear people yabbering off very sensitive information like credit card numbers, the last four digits of their social security number, their address, oh and one time a “counselor” talking about a juvenile and his issues.

When I am on the bus, and sometimes on the train (I can’t hear my phone, I have a subtle ring for everyone but the Help) and I think the conversation isn’t confirming where I am or a meeting, I say, “Can I call you back in ___ minutes? I’m on the _____.” It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it does.

So to the woman with all those mystery charges on your card, I wish you well.