Truxton Is In Shaw

I’ll post the grande weekend house tour later, but I have to talk about 1636 New Jersey Ave, which had it’s open house yesterday. Quick statement about the place, it would be an excellent opportunity for an investor with a lot of time, money, and vision. Or someone with a lot of time and money. What it could be is wonderful, what it is now is crap. The best thing about the place is the ‘ruins’ or the carriage house out back. Wandering inside I could envision a dance space, an artist’s studio, or two huge Hummers (the official car of SATAN). The other neat thing about the carriage house was that it had a loft area and there was this wonderful little bridge that joined the upper part of the carriage house to the 2nd floor of the main house (pictured above, thanks IT). So if you have $429,000 plus the extra $200-300K for renovations these beautiful ruins could be yours.

via James Berry
Neighbors,

It has come to my attention that wood chips/mulch will me available at
the locations listed below on Monday, March 21, 2005 until they are all
gone. Please note that these materials are for the use of residents for their
yards, tree boxes and in our community parks.

Best,

Jim Berry
ANC 5C

84 Rhode Island Avenue, NW Yolanda’s Cleaners
1743 lincoln Road, NE Harry Thomas Community Center
1st & Florida NW Park at R & Florida Avenue
N. Capitol & Fla. Ave. NW Park on NWcorner of Fla. Ave.
43 Adams Street, NW In the Rear of Adams

I’m just wondering out loud here, but I was thinking, when do you stop being transitional and just be? Shaw, by far, is not the first DC neighborhood to experience gentrification. Georgetown, that horribly expensive neighborhood with the obnoxiously expensive stores, used to be black and more economicly diverse. So was the West End which is Foggy Bottom. Now these are expensive, non-transitional neighborhoods, and so not diverse (Euro-trash of any shade does not count).
Then there are neighborhoods that seem to be continuously transitioning and have been transitioning for a forever and a half. Capitol Hill comes to mind. Of course the borders of Capitol Hill keeps changing and will include the parking lot of RFK, and the gates of Gallaudet University at this rate. And apparently, and I could be wrong, Adams Morgan has been transitioning for over 20 years.
So what will Shaw be? Well the borders are set by what was the Shaw Middle School district as it was in the 60s, and butts up to North Capitol a big dividing line, so it won’t be like Cap Hill. But even comparing the core of Cap Hill, we don’t have the same architecture, the same historical district pressures, or tourist pressures (thank G-d). It could be like Adams Morgan where the lower classes and fixed income folks are constantly in peril, in danger of losing their homes as the middle and upper classes improve the homes and define the commercial strips. Or will we be like Georgetown and Dupont, where the working class has been kicked to the curb?
Oh well, the only way to find out is to stick around.

This former In Shaw blog house of the week, is now up for sale after many, many months of off and on construction. The price, I’m sorry, I know I wrote that I accepted the prices around here but $575,000 is crack fueled. Yes, it is two units. However, it is ugly. Even with the new ulitarian staircase to the 2nd floor, still ugly and a lovely example of crackhead design.
Outside of the absolutely non-landscaped property were a few flyers about the property. The flyer tells me that it is 2 units and shows three ways to finance the purchase of this thing. No money down, with $3K in cash for closing and other costs, this bad boy will cost you $2,913.53 a month. The flier does tell you to go to a website where more info on the houses features is presented.
From the pictures the inside seems nice but I remember how this thing looked as it was getting built. It started off as a one level shop and they built up. As they were building I was confused by their logic and the upper level with no stairs confused me. Hated the vinyl siding. Then at times, for days, the property was unsecured, building materials left outside in the rain, and no activity for weeks, like all construction was abandoned. Then at points it looked like (and this is just my uninformed opinion) they gave up on the project and settled to sell it.

Frozen Tropics has been doing a great job documenting the changes over in the NE neighborhood of Trinidad and the H Street area. One of those changes has been the addition of the Joy Of Motion’s (JOM) Atlas Dance Studio which has it’s grand opening this week (March 14-26). As one who has taken classes at the JOM’s Bethesda and Friendship Heights locations, I’m glad to see classes a 90 bus ride away.
Until the Spring session they are doing drop in classes for now.
Tomorrow they are offering adult classes in Hip Hop, Modern dance, Yoga, Salsa and Social Ballroom. I’ve been meaning to take social ballroom… girl needs to know how to foxtrot when it’s too slow to lindy hop…
They also have their slew of youth dance classes so there’s something for the kids, Pre-K to 12, too.

If you can get home before 5pm or leave sometime after 8:30am, you might have used the post office at the very tip of Truxton Circle’s triangle (yeah, call it a circle when the neighborhood forms a triangle), the LeDroit Park Post Office at 416 Florida Avenue. Until recently the post office was manned by a very grouchy civil servant. She was impatient, belittling, and in some cases down right mean. Currently, the new woman in charge of the post office is more pleasant and customer friendly. My only complaint about her is she pushes the more expensive postal options (I just wanted to send it first class, not priority), but it is pushiness with a smile.
But I was thinking, this change in personnel, to a more customer service friendly person has made the post office visit more pleasant. I feel a bit better about my post office. Just add a few Saturday hours and it will totally rock, but I’ll take what I can get. Feeling better about my neighborhood post office, I feel better about the neighborhood.
Quality of life isn’t simple crime stats and economic indicators, it is how I feel about my block and my hood. I get excited when a retail or restaurant business opens around here because I hope that will improve my quality of life. Having the business in the hood, in this case the US Post Office, there is one plus, looking forward to going to the business and feeling positive about it, a thousand other pluses.

Cabs
For the past few Sundays when I have been too lazy to get my butt out of the house in time to catch the bus to church, I have tried to catch a cab. Lo, and behold, I have caught them.
I remember when I couldn’t. I would walk along Rhode Island Ave to the metro and keep an eye out for a cab. Most of the time, I’d be at the station before I saw a cab. Now, I can seem to catch one between 6th and 5th Streets.
I know I could catch one quicker along Florida, but Florida is the border between zone 1 and zone 2 and I don’t need to pay extra when I could move over one block. Also, I like to clearly catch a cab in zone 1 so I don’t have to argue with the cabbie about the zones. That happened when I caught one from Union Station (50 Mass Ave, NE), which is still in zone 1, but the cabbie argued that it was in zone 2, which is at 2nd St NE.
Anyway, I have to test the cab catching theory on a weeknight. I see them, but it is a different story when you’re trying to catch them.

Yeah, a compost posting… again. I don’t want folks to get the wrong idea, but this compost bin is not large. It’s a 20 gallon garbage pail. I know not a large pile, but it is much better than the earlier compost bin I had which was a white 10-15 gallon kitchen trash can I found on the sidewalk.
I began composting soon after settling in here in Truxton, I know this because of the cherry tomatoes. I had a house warming party and a guest (Matt) brought a big bowl of cherry tomatoes from his garden. All the tomatoes didn’t get eaten and I tossed them in the small white bin. I used the compost for the front yard and the next Spring got cherry tomatoes growing along my gates. I didn’t plant them, so I guess some seed from Matt’s tomatoes survived the composting and germinated in the ground.
My approach to composting then was toss and sort of ignore. Everyso often I would try turning the compost but it was a square bin and kind of heavy. It sat in the corner of the backyard and was fine until I noticed the stench. I thought it was bums using that area of the alley to go to the bathroom. No, it was my compost. Smelled like a hog farm in July.
I knew what my mistakes were. For one, it was left uncovered. I had tried covering the top but got lazier and stopped putting the cover on and water got in and the holes in the bottom of the pail were clogged, so I had standing water. Second, I also failed to turn the compost. Aerating the compost allows oxygen to get in and keep it from stinking. So I used up most of the stinky, but well decomposed, compost in some containers and in the front yard and started a new bin in the green 20 gallon garbage can.
The green can is much better. Besides being bigger, it has its own cover, holds more, thus a greater chance to generate heat (a good thing), and its shape allowed me to turn the can by knocking it over on its side and rolling it around. Well once it got a lot of material in it, I had to stop knocking it over, because matter kept escaping and the lid wouldn’t stay on. I now have to aerate by going in with the garden claw and turning the compost. The worms don’t seem to like it.
The aerating and the cover keep down on any stink, but I also try to keep it balanced. Too much nitrogen will make the pile smell like ammonia. So I throw in “browns” like crushed leaves and shredded paper. Although coffee grounds are a “green”, the strong coffee(sometimes chocolate) smell, just covers anything else in the pile.
The turning and the minimal amount of heat as well as the worms have rewarded me with some lovely looking compost this year. I’m going to mix it in with garden soil and some peat moss, to lighten the dirt, and some sand and add it to the front and the containers. But before I do that I’m going to have to test the dirt I make and see what it needs (more nitrogen? more acid?). I’m excited about this coming Spring and can’t wait to get planting.

FYI
Apparently the comment feature was down for a while. Well I use Blogger and sometimes I experience posting problems, but I only post once a day, so it get out at some point. The worst of it is when I go to post and get a 404 screen and lose my posting. I’ve lost a good number, sigh. Anyway, if you can’t post or are having problems, wait a while, or email me.

“Either way, city officials see it as a gain, because they are people in their highest-earning years who do not use many government services.” –From the 3/10/05 Washington Post Article Population Shows Gains and Losses

That phrase annoyed me.
Yes, I don’t use housing vouchers, or go to the employment office, or child services, or any of those city services, but I still need government. Also I don’t want the city to think I don’t need government services.
The middle classes, as well as the working classes need schools that aren’t falling apart. Of course, the people who can afford to, vote with their feet, as it is easier to up and move to the burbs than fight to get the city to educate kids in a clean and safe environment.
I want the city to enforce it’s laws. The quality of this service has been great to poor, depending on the day, and the agency. Sometimes you call DPW about an illegally parked car and they’ll come out and ticket it and boot it and it will be gone in a week, other times it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r for the piece of crap to move.
I want the city to get the middle class, high tax bracket, big old real estate taxed populace emotionally invested in the city government. Parks and Recreation could be an alternative to privately owned recreation facilities. But they ain’t so we don’t care about the parks as much as we could cause we can’t/don’t use them. Schools, I don’t have kids and so why should I care? I could care a bit more if the grounds and facitlies were open to the community for events and other activities (ie the track at Dunbar, hint, hint).
Okay DC, you got all this money from real estate and from higher incomes moving into the city, please, please, please don’t blow it.