Category: Uncategorized

DC taxes hurt small businesses

The problem is the chains will not make the neighborhood a neighborhood, it will just make it another part of generica. Sitting with Richard Layman at a window table at the Big Bear Cafe we very briefly mentioned how the city actually hurts small business. Taxes is one method of putting on the hurt as reported in today’s Post article “Feeling the Pinch of D.C.’s Prosperity.
And the city does give lip service about supporting the arts. Having Warehouse consider closing down, and stressing other live action theaters, art galleries (particularly the ones that don’t feature art that goes well with the living room couch), and other artsy venues with high taxes is quite unsupportive.
Come on there must be a couple of intelligent people on the council who could think of a way to properly tax businesses, small businesses, the businesses who take a chance on transitional neighborhoods like mine, without discouraging them and pushing them out. Why would a 10% cap be bad? If that’s intolerable how’s about a 20% cap? Well Jack (Evans, who supports a 10% cap, though no one else on the Council seems to) I support you.

North Capitol, Catania Bakery

For news about the TC it seems I have to keep up with the Eckington listserv. How wacky is that? Anyway, as some of you know Saturday Catania Bakery was robbed, as sadly one of the many summer crimes that has occured in the area in the past month or so (I’ll be so happy when school starts up). Discussion on the listserv about the robbery brought up this from ANC leader Kris Hammond:

There is some good news. Nicole the owner is currently renovating one of the buildings. Pat Mitchell, myself, Jessica (Nicole’s granddaughter), and Paul of Warehouse on 9th Street recently viewed the property for artist studio potential. We all want the buildings filled and it has been very slow, but I recently learned that there have been some personal extenuating circumstances that are part of the reason. Hopefully it will all change soon. Nicole/Catania just recently successfully rented out office space on the second floor of another building.

Kris

Well good thing that office got leased out.

City of Magnificent Intentions

I can see why children hate history. I’m returning the textbook on the history of the District of Columbia to my library since it is ILL (inter library loan) and it is just depressing. Really, I can see why school children can hate history. I love history. It is like learning about another country, where you can’t get a visa.
The textbook, City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Washington, District of Columbia is useful in that it is crammed, crammed I say, with dates and facts. What I learned from what little I read and skimmed through has been fascinating. However, I read very little because I could not read this like I have been able to do with other books. Reading, I felt like tons and tons of facts were being shoved at me and the story, the narrative was secondary. It was like reading the encyclopedia…. for those of you who remember encyclopedias when they were in book form.
I understand why the book was written the way it was written. Gotta shove those dates and facts at the kids. You can test for that. But it does not make for leisure reading and I can see how a reader can get resentful.
It is most enjoyable when you flip through it. The photographs of people and locations around the District are interesting and the maps showing growth in the region has been helpful. Reading subsections of chapters is do-able, and pausing to think about what was written, and applying it to the present, allows for ah-ha moments. For example there is a section on neighborhood history and white flight to the suburbs and an organization “Neighbors, Inc”. A caption in the chapter reads:

By fostering communication and cooperation, Neighbors, Inc. helped halt “white flight” in the part of Northwest roughly east of 16th Street and north of Kennedy Street.

It ends on a sad note as it was published in 1997. It leaves with a Control Board overseeing the District government, Marion ‘the bitch set me up’ Barry was re-elected, and downtown DC decaying. Sitting here 10 years in the book’s future with no control board, a young bald mayor named Adrian and a vibrant downtown, I feel good.

Truxton Circle RE location

Between painting (if you haven’t seen me, it’s because I’ve been painting) I stopped to read the Sunday Post. Curious I wanted to see what houses were advertised for sale in the area, and how far Logan East is these days. Well to my surprise I spied a house advertized as “Truxton Circle/ Shaw /Eckington”. Two out of three isn’t bad. But it isn’t in Eckington. Eckington is the other side of Florida Avenue. This house is at 26 Hanover Pl. NW. Nope, Eckington several blocks over. And you can be in Shaw & Truxton Circle at the same time.

Crime and spats

King Karl has reported that the most NW block of the TC has had another robbery this weekend, making it about 5 in the last month for that block. This is a problem, living on the edge of 5D, the getting ignored bit. I don’t know if more patrols would help as for 3 of the 5 (I don’t know what the other 2 were) the houses were entered from the rear. So it would not have been something a passing patrol car would have noticed from the street. Another thing was 2 of the houses, maybe three, had alarm systems. From what I know it seems that having a motion detector helps inspire intruders to vacate promptly.
And filed under ‘I’m not quite sure what to do with this information’ is a spat between neighbors. Not literal neighbors, but people who live in close enough proximity to give the other nasty looks on a regular basis. The problem for me is I know both and a possible 3rd party, and I consider them all to be very nice people. Neighbor A accuses Neighbor B of committing a very bad neighborhood sin (I’m not going to say what it is lest I attract the attention of Neighbor L who gets all worked up about these things) via possible Neighbor C. A confronted B about the thing C was doing on behalf of B. B dismissed A who is now pissed and telling the story. The event seems a little out of character, but completely possible*, for B. So it is another set of people who need to stay away from each other.
I remember surprising someone on the topic of old timers vs newcomers that old timers can have longstanding neighborhood feuds with other old timers. Wrongs that were committed way back when that have never been forgiven or things that were started and just snowballed from there. Newcommers, the same, just the start date is more recent. And sometimes, newcommers can join the old vs old spat and visa versa.
This whole thing just ruined what I was planning on posting, inspired by my priest’s sermon on ‘who is your neighbor’. He said a neighborhood does not make love, love makes a neighborhood. Maybe spats do too, but I’d like less of them, cause I really can’t remember who all can’t be in a room together.

*All things are possible. It is possible that you may find me running down the street 1/2 naked chasing someone with a kitchen knife, unlikely, out of character, but possible.

Foreclosure

The house next door to mine is being sold by the bank. I suspect that the guy who bought it overpaid for the 2bd/1.5 bath no basement and probably overestimated how much he could rent it out for. Rents in the eastern Shaw area (based on a quick Craigslist search) range from $1500- $1700 for similar units. Dude paid about $400K for the place. I’ve been in it, it isn’t worth $400K. Heck, even my beautifully renovated 1/2 painted house isn’t worth $400K.
Now it is on the market for something in the mid 300K range ‘as-is’. Competing with it on the same block is a nicer end unit in the low $400K. I don’t know how the two will play off each other, but have seen at least one set of buyers look at one and then the other.
I realize that this is not the only piece of real estate where some ‘investor’ paid too much and failed to notice that the mortgage, taxes and insurance were more than what the market would bear as a rental. But I’m not all that sympathetic to a group that jacked up the housing prices because they couldn’t gage the market. Also I think this is the same group that ‘renovated’ houses for flipping without a decent eye for beauty only to have their properties sit because they u-g-l-y. But that’s another post, for another day.

BACA & Paint

There is a BACA meeting tonight but I will not be in attendance as I have some pressing paint duties. I’ve been painting my house for what seems like a month. I have formed these big nasty callouses all on my hands and I want them gone.
I have told myself I need to finish all my paint jobs by the end of this week, or else I’ll go nuts. First thing that needs to be done tonight (thus not going to the BACA meeting) is the bathroom ceiling needs a coat of paint. There are only so many times you can shower without damaging the ceiling. I hope it is not too late as there are some funny looking marks up there already.
After the bathroom everything else is whenever but I got to end this painting. The baseboards on the 1st floor need a coat, because the paint I put on was damaged by the floor guy’s sander. Also on the first floor I need to paint over the ceiling paint that hit the wall and the doorway between the kitchen and dining area. Upstairs I have to decide if I’m painting the bedroom ceilings or just leaving it primer white. Sections of the brick wall need caulking and painting. The top part of the 2nd floor baseboards need a lick of paint. The top of the wall near the ceilings in both bedrooms and the hallway need paint.
Then once I’m done painting, there is the cleaning.

July 5th

Well last night I occupied my house because there was no way in hell I was going to leave it unguarded on July 4th. Neighbors lighting off fireworks on the sidewalk is a given, I just wanted to be there to ask that the ‘fun’ not extend to in front of my house. And unlike years before the people actually living here did limit their lightings to their own fronts and rear yards. Those people on the corner shooting off the big display, I don’t know where they came from.
My block, well one corner of my block, was the site of one of the many, many, many neighborhood fireworks shows, that was best appreciated from someone else’s roofdeck. From the ground it looked and sounded like the city was under seige. Loud booms, far off bursts of light, two ghetto birds (helicopters) whirling all over the place, traffic on Florida tied up (really where are you people going?), kids gone crazy, chaos. However, up 3 floors, with a clear line of sight to the National Mall, all of NE, and northwest NW it was a pretty entertaining show punctuated by the flashing of police lights on the ground highlighting the smoke. Police weren’t stopping the fireworks, they were stopping drivers, hands against the car, whole show.
The official show on the Mall was nice, but you guys in Capitol Hill, y’all were impressive and very illegal looking. We saw fireworks shooting up high from Foggy Bottom, Columbia Heights, Georgetown (maybe), Brookland, Trinidad, SW or SE, and North Capitol. But Capitol Hill takes the cake, almost nonstop fireworks action from the east. There was a brief period when Foggy Bottom shot off a impressive light show with shooting stars and ladyfingers.
Locally, there was the exploding extravaganza on my block and some others I think I can pinpoint around Shaw. It looked like there were fireworks going off near the fire station on New Jersey Ave and Dunbar High School. Someone else in the viewing party guessed NY and North Capitol as well as something around U Street.
We broke it up around 10:30PM, but the fireworks kept going on until July 5th sometime after midnight. From my 2nd floor bedroom window I could see fireworks still going off. Instead of watching, I decided to soak in the tub and have a glass of wine. The AC units in my house are so loud (and the walls well insulated) that the fireworks were just background noise. I fell asleep sometime around 12:30AM.
Lesson of the day, have friends with roof decks.