I’ve been getting the odd email from Karl and others in the Richardson Place area (1700 blks of 4th & New Jersey, Richardson, R & FL) about some “Streetscape Improvements”. Richardson needs the improvement. The short bit of road and the linking alleys look like a big lot. That road isn’t really looking paved. The residents who have spoken up would like brick, or concrete, but not asphalt. Brick is preferred.
Jim Berry, BACA Prez, in a letter to the Richardson Place focus group suggested meeting prior to the next BACA meeting to talk about it. Okay people BACA meeting is at Mt Sinai Baptist, Monday, starts at 7, but for this email Jim (JBerry ayt PDSDC daht ORG) as it was a suggestion and not a firm date.
Category: Uncategorized
Renovation 2007: Phone line in the loo
My contractor has one of those smart phone things, so he can be overly communicative in various ways. He sends me text messages, email and will call, a lot. The problem is, I don’t think he reads the email till later. He’ll give voice mail and texts an immediate response, so if I’ve emailed him on something and then he later calls about the same subject, there is a chance he hasn’t read it.
The subject in this case, wiring. Electrical wires, phone wires, cable wires, and Ethernet wires. In the email, I said I wanted one bedroom to have several electrical outlets, phone, cable and Ethernet and the other bedroom to just have electrical and phone. Nope, the 2nd bedroom is getting cable and Ethernet ’cause he thinks it’s best. Okay, whatever. Then on the phone he says something about running a phone line in the 1/2 bath. Um. Something seems oh so wrong about that.
I had a bit of a struggle with him on the Ethernet. He mentioned how everything is going wireless. Well, yes, but I want it hard wired, because these houses are small and thin and I really don’t want to have a neighbor’s wireless dohicky interfering with my wireless doohicky.
More on Eastern Market
I’ve just finished reading some of the comments on the Washington Post site about the Eastern Market fire. The big theme I see is that what mattered wasn’t the architecture of the building, which was lovely, but the merchants, the running into neighbors, the relationships formed was the thing that mattered. My concern for the people of Capitol Hill, is that those in charge will get too fixated on the body of the market, the systems, the size of vendor space, etc., and make the soul a second thought.
Another theme I noticed was a concern for the merchants, a by product of those relationships formed between patron and shopkeeper. Realizing while the powers that be figure out what to do, the merchants need support. The Capitol Hill Community Foundation has already set up a fund so that people can contribute.
Call before you dig event
You can find more information on CGA and its “Call Before you Dig” campaign here: http://www.call811.com/
What: Launch of 811. The 811 “Call Before You Dig” event on the National Mall will formally “launch” the 811 number, mandated by Congress and established by the FCC.
When: Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Where: The National Mall, 3rd Street, NW (between Madison and Jefferson Drives)
Time: 10:00 a.m.
As you may be aware, before beginning any digging project, local DIYers or professional landscapers are required to call Miss Utility to have a crew come out and mark their underground lines. Now, diggers can use a single three-digit number to reach Miss Utility and all other One Call Centers across the country—that number is 811.
Homeowners often make risky assumptions about whether or not they should get their utility lines marked, but every digging job requires a call—even small projects like planting trees and shrubs. Research shows that while 46% of Americans are active diggers who have done or plan to do a digging project at home, only 33% of DIY’ers plan on calling before they dig, which means they are taking a huge risk each time their shovel disturbs the dirt. And failure to call before digging results in more than one unintentional hit per minute, according to CGA research. Hitting an underground line can also lead to injury, penalties, repair costs and expensive and inconvenient service outages.
See PSAs:
60 second TV PSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHAfC02NEC4
30 second TV PSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G9rhpJLyPM
Stuff catching on fire
What’s going on?
In the wee hours Eastern Market catches fire.
Then this afternoon the Georgetown library catches on fire.
See more at DCFD, and scroll down to the working incidents stories. Also the April 18th shows the fire at the sign shop on New York Ave, and the apartment fire on 6th St.
Eastern Market people, don’t let the city sit on this for years on end. Start planning the rebuild….now! Lest ye have an O Market situation, lotsa planning and pretty architectural drawings, building in stasis.
North Capitol Main Streets event @ the Big Bear
The North Capitol Main Street had a Volunteer Recruitment Happy Hour, but face it, many of us was there cause we wanted into the Bear. Some were there for the free food. Anyway there was a huge crowd packed inside the Big Bear. Big enough that sometimes the easiest way to get from one end to the other was to go out the door, walk outside and make your way to the other.
The crowd was also diverse. Whites, blacks, gays, straights, people with dogs (dogs stayed outside), seniors, babies, and all in between. There were little black girls and little white girls (ages 4-6ish) running around outside, trying to lift each other, while adults warned them about spots where they needed to watch it. There was the trio of middle school aged boys who walked in from somewhere, checking out the scene, scarfing down food and displaying a deep interest in the coffee making machines. There were a couple of babies, they really didn’t do anything ‘cept look cute.
But the main reason for the Bear opening its doors was the North Capitol Main Street org. There were a few speakers who spoke briefly. First was Vicky Leonard Chambers the chair of the volunteer organization. She (I think, I wasn’t taking notes) mentioned that unlike some other Main Street organization, North Cap gets no money from the city and it is completely a volunteer effort (thus the happy hour recruitment). They would like to get funding from the city, but even then the problem is the city hasn’t budgeted a lot to the Main Streets program. Then Elizabeth Price of the NoMa BID spoke, she is new on the job and has no phone, yet. After her a few other NCMS persons spoke and there was a raffle. I left.
Can’t wait till the Bear is open for business.
Quick blog before church
I don’t write about everything that goes on in the hood. I still need to get out the shin-dig over at the still unopened for business Big Bear (yes, in Bloomingdale). And there was some sort of shoot out in the TC this weekend. The big items I haven’t written about, mainly because other Shaw bloggers have, were:
Shaw being the 2nd bloggist neighborhood
The Warehouse Theater in danger of closing because of property taxes
The Shaw EcoVillage bike shop Chain Reaction closing (dang it where am I going to get my bike fixed now!?)
Okay I gotta go.
Hey is that a new addition
Walking back home after getting my hair did, I noticed some cinder block coming up between 436 S Street and the house on the corner of NJ and S. There was some permit thing in the window and I wondered, what will that be?
Renovation 2007: I’ve got framing
The floors are now level.
The exact layout of the upper floor has been figured out.
There is framing.
All is right with the world.
The Plan & Wiki
Not the Florida Market Plan. Another plan. A plan that I thought was born in the fifties and sixties and died possibly in the 90s. But like an aging celebrity you thought was dead because you haven’t heard about them doing anything recent, this thing is still alive too.
I write of the Shaw School Urban Renewal Plan. Poking around the National Capital Planning Commission website I found the plan, buried down the list:
Shaw School Urban Renewal Plan, Washington, D.C.
7/7/05, Modifications to the plan
So, it was adjusted in 2005, for what I don’t know, but that hints that The Plan is still alive. Admittedly, I’m too lazy to walk over and ask for a copy of The Plan from their offices, and they might charge me for it. The District Government may also have a copy of The Plan, but I fear it is in the hands of the Department of More Important Things, where they never return your phone calls and really that’s handled by someone else.
*****
Another thing I noticed poking around on the Internet, was the Wikipedia entry for the neighborhood formerly or currently known as the Shaw School Urban Renewal area. “Shaw, Washington, DC” has in it’s history that
Shaw grew out of freed slave encampments in the rural outskirts of Washington City. It was named after Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
Can anyone provide a dead tree reference for the slave encampment part? I’m aware of encampments around the city, and the big Freedmen’s camp was out in Alexandria, not so much one notable here.
And this is one of those moments I wish the African American papers were in an accessible database. ProQuest allows me to search the Post back to the late 19th century, but it was the white paper, and up until the Shaw School Urban Renewal Plan, the Post called this area the 2nd District. I’m curious about what Black residents called the area prior to The Plan, well besides Northwest.