The Bates Civic Association had it’s Flower Power Awards ceremony last night at Ella’s Coffeehouse/Frame shop/ Art gallery on North Capitol. It was the first time I had been in Ella’s. It is many small cozy rooms with comfy (2nd floor) chairs. There was a small crowd there about 20 or more people, with Jim Berry ANC for 5C0?, and a rep from Councilman Orange’s office.
Unlike the usual Bates CA meeting, it was a pleasant affair where everyone was generally pleasant. There was no peanut gallery making snide comments. No direct mention of drug dealers or unsavory kids hanging out on the corner. The unpleasantness was spoken of indirectly, using that code talk that we use, talking about “change”. It was an environment of supportiveness. Yes, very unlike the Bates meetings, which the next one is Sept 6th @ Mt. Sinai.
My neighbor wanted to talk about the demographics of crowd, while we were there. Good lord man, can’t take you anywhere. I shusshed him. We talked this morning and he observed that the crowd was basically gay men and older single black women. There were a few black men 4. One white married couple and one lesbian couple.
My block won a block award for our beautification efforts. I don’t remember if it was for first or 2nd place. Like the Special Olympics, everyone there was a winner. I did not win any individual prize for my yard, which currently looks bad. I did win a door prize of a plant. A plant I gave to a neighbor I spotted while heading home, ’cause I don’t grow indoor plants, and I don’t care for plants I can’t eat.
In Alexandria, with mo gentrification
I would link back to my friend Nora B.’s livejournal post, for the love of me, I can’t find it and the girl is a prolific poster.
Background
My friend Nora B. has a condo in an area of Alexandria and her area, particularly her condo, is experiencing the joys of gentrification. First, let me describe N. She’s a big white girl from my native Florida. We met at a confirmation class a few years ago and she was one of the several people I knew buying houses during the wild years of rising prices between 2000-now.
She bought, with he help of her parents, a condo on the western edge of the Alexandria city/county (what is Alexandria?) limits for $140Kish. The condo is this huge, not so pretty 15 floor monster on Duke St filled with brown people not born of this country…. who apparently drive cabs. So Nora was fine with being the only (with the exception of her roommate) Anglo EFL (English as a First Language) person under the age of 50 in the building.
The area of Alexandria that she’s in is experiencing a different sort of gentrification. I don’t know how to describe it as…. different. From Nora’s living room window she sees Yuppieland (which we have a song for) otherwise known as Cameron Station. Yuppieland used to be a military. Now it is a place where people who can afford near million dollar townhomes live and breed. Outside of Yuppieland it’s pretty much bluecollar/ whitecollar, eh. Pretty much what Arlington’s Wilson Blvd area used to be like in the early 1990s. You got the dinner theater, porn theater, CVS, cruddy Magrudgers, Mango Mike’s, and other generic run of the mill businesses.
Nora remarks gentrification
Her first sign that gentrification was coming to her condo was “Republican Guy”. A white man, married, father, American, in a suit spotted. Apparently the condo was affordable, and he wasn’t scared off by the huge number of Africans and Latin Americans running around. Then another night Nora spots, in the building, the Bennetton ad hipster kids. Last weekend we spotted white people in the pool. The typical pool attendees are Islamic grandmas who’ll only show off their feet and the grandkids they are watching.
Another sign came from the condo board. Nora would like more parking, or at least parking for her friends who visit, and the building rules force visitors to park across the 4 lane street at odd times. So she has taken to going to the board meetings. From attending the meetings she has learned that the porn theater’s days are numbered, as well as the Magrudgers. They will be replaced by the yuppie grocer Harris Teeter. Also in a move to attract white people with money, the condo is considering updating the decor that hasn’t been changed since the Nixon administration.
Gentrification in Shaw- Manna Report
If you haven’t read Manna’s 2003 report you should. It covers rising rents, displacement, the personal impact gentrification is having on long term residents, good stuff. The best part is the photo on the cover (this is a PDF file) of 7th Street right after the riots, with the burned out shells. Okay, not the best part, but the jewels of the report are the personal stories of residents who have experienced the rent increases and non-renewal of leases.
The stories do help illustrate the problem that gentrification has brought. Saying rents have increased, nothing. Saying that one day a renter receives a letter that their 2 bedroom apartment that had been $634 a month was soon going up to $954 in 5 months, says a lot.
Conversions are another thing Manna writes about, that I didn’t think much about before. Not just apartments to condos conversions but from boarding house to single family residence. There are several townhomes that you can see along New Jersey Avenue that are divided into two residences next to homes with the same exterior that are just one residence. The report mentions large townhomes that were formerly boarding homes housing several people at low rents that are now for one family.
A good thing about the report is that is does get into the specifics, naming names and addresses. It mentions location, address of particular apartments and converted and rehabbed homes and also businesses that have felt the impact of gentrification hard.
Of course I disagree with Manna on some points, but that is just my opinion. I don’t disagree that there is gentification going on in Shaw. Hence the title of the blog “In Shaw (now with more gentrification)” which acknowledges the gentrification. I don’t disagree that people are being displaced and the sadness of that.
I have a problem with the concentration of bemoaning the areas west of 9th St. That area has been gentrified. Dead to any hope of making it affordable. Move on. Don’t wring your hands about the unaffordable even to mid middle class folks, lofts and condos. Another problem I have is Manna not coping to it’s role in the gentrification game. Yes, Manna sells homes and condos at rates affordable to the people it is trying to help. I gather to cover operating costs, it also has sold homes AT market rate, reflecting the crazy prices in Shaw. Manna is a non-profit, so is it any better when Manna does it and worse when a for-profit does it too, doing what it was created to do…. profit? I remember when I was first looking to buy they and other non-profit developers had some pretty expensive homes. For the ones you could afford you’d have to get in line or belong to a certain group, or wait for …. whenever.
The solutions that Manna presents, would at best preserve small islands of affordable renting in a sea of gentrification. They desire to preserve Section 8 by helping tenant associations. Good if you are in large enough building where tenants can buy the building. Land development, well maybe public land but with quasi-public organizations like Metro (WMATA), I don’t think so. Maybe they hadn’t heard but Metro doesn’t have enough to pass up maximum money making opportunities. New jobs, well, that might help some. But the kinds of jobs needed to afford the market rate rents and houses around here are a bit unaffordable to folks with “good jobs”. And as with my former neighbors, when the opportunity to pull up stakes so your kid can get a yard, with grass, and enough room to play and run around in, presents itself because you got a good job or can sell the house at $$$, there is nothing saying you’ll stay in Shaw.
Glad I don’t live in Bethesda
I might develop a complex.
Going to Bethesda for dance classes once a week was bad enough.
I’m not going to trash Bethedsa, It is a lovely suburban DC neighborhood filled with well to do Anglos, some of my dearest friends live there. Or used to live there. Or live in North Bethesda, which is actually Rockville (Hi Cammy-Cam). And there are good places to eat, two movie houses, and a slew of other neat stuff.
But for me it would be a horrible place to live.
Going to Bethesda to do stuff with friends was fine, my focus is on my friends. Yet going to Bethesda for dance classes and being stuck there while waiting for those classes to start, I began noticing things. Bethesda has a high population of skinny blonde women. Well skinny women in general. If you are constantly bombarded with the image of skinny salon-perfect-pilates-going-couture-wearing women, you might develop a complex. I would. I might be like Carla, who lives in Bethesda, and worries about weight.
The good thing about Shaw is I feel average and ok. Women in Shaw range from crack-ho skinny, plain skinny, average, chunky, fat, muumuu wearing fat, and “oh my g-d push her back in the water she’s gonna die.” I don’t feel like I’m running around in some beauty contest here, especially after seeing a 50 year old woman in a short top and lowriders with her beer belly hanging all out.
I also feel like I belong here. One of the best things about Shaw is it’s the diversity. Eventhough Shaw is becoming less black and less lower and middle income, it is still diverse. The newcomers accept, on one level or another, the diversity more so than their Fairfax, or Prince William Co. counterparts. It doesn’t make me feel that I don’t belong because I’m not rich enough, nor young enough, or not married, not radical enough, not with it, not white, not skinny, or a whole other litany of things that I am not. I can be a single black average weight middle class govt drone who buys her clothes off eBay, and be ok.
Admin changes
After speaking with Jimbo I have decided to allow anybody and their grandma to post comments. Let’s see how well that goes.
Homelessness & Crime
Looking back at Jimbo‘s “Don’t feed the bears” post and all the comments, I’ll have to agree with him on some level. Just to clear up one thing, I don’t think all or most homeless panhandlers are the source of crime. However an environment where people just have cash money burning in their pockets to give away make an attractive environment for people who want to rob those people.
As mentioned in a previous post, my homeless policy is not to give away money. Food, tokens, and other objects, yes. Cash, no. Of course it helps that I don’t carry cash on me. I’m plastic. Cash and me have a problem. Cash constantly whispers to me and begs to be spent on stupid stuff. I have found that it is better for me not to have any cash on me for the sake of my bank account.
I have taken friends to task on giving to panhandlers. I sneer “white guilt”, because of the racial dynamic, the panhandler is usually black and my friend or associate is white. It disgusts me on a certain level. (channeling Malcom X) As a people we cannot be truly free and equal if we are begging the White Man for anything. Another racial/gender dynamic, I tend not to get bothered by the panhandlers for money. They know I, or possibly any other black woman (I can’t speak for men) won’t dig in our bag for them. I do get bothered for bus transfers by various types. Come to think of it, homeless women are more apt to approach me, but not men.
Ah, you heartless person you, you may think.
No. I give on a very regular basis to charities that actually help the homeless. I won’t go believing the lie some folks tell themselves that their measly $5 they give to the guy begging is gonna actually help. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help them get off the streets. It doesn’t help them seek out the resources they need. It doesn’t help the less visible homeless who do work, or the homeless families, or the non-panhandling set of homeless. So out of my paycheck, a portion goes to support N Street Village and Bread for the City also I know a portion of my church tithes go to support Arlington, VA and DC homeless shelter and feeding efforts. I encourage you, yes, you. Yeah, you reading this blog. To regularly support your local homeless shelter. And don’t give my any lame-O excuses either, if you had $5 or more to give to the bum on the street you have $5 keep a shelter open or support a soup kitchen. Oh, but you just want to make someone happy? And you wanted the instant gratification of someone who seems worse off than you to say thank you for your $5? I sneer at you. This is me sneering. sneeeeeeer.
If you do give, I take back the sneer. Delete, delete, delete. G-d bless you.
Back to crime.
A heavy panhandling population, not to be confused with the plain old homeless that aren’t paying you no mind, seems to signal there is a money source. Tourists and suits who feel guilty, want that instant gratification of giving. Ummm. Yeah. People wandering around with cold hard cash in their pockets. People wandering around with cold hard cash in their pockets and unaware of their surroundings. People wandering around with cold hard cash in their pockets, unaware of their surroundings, at night/ when the area is deserted. Crime.
Lawnmower man
There are several lawnmower men to keep an eye out for in Shaw. Bicycle lawnmower man, wheelchair lawnmower man and regular lawnmower man. Bicycle lawnmower man drags his lawnmower behind his bike. Same as wheelchair lawnmower man, who has his mower attached to his wheelchair that he slowly wanders around in. And well regular lawnmower man needs no explanation.
Don’t use bicycle lawnmower man or at least don’t pay him in advance, as he failed to do a job one of my neighbors paid him to do.
I have used wheelchair lawnmower man, whose name is Jack. He doesn’t move fast and is easy to catch up with. I have decided to use him because he charged me $3 to cut may lawn. My lawn is horribily small. There are area rugs larger than my front yard. Others have come by and offered to cut my yard at $5. At that rate I could do it myself, by hand, with scissors. But Jack’s rate was hard to pass up.
Anyway he does a good job and I’d recommend him if you need someone to cut your small pitiful yard. He’ll bag up the clippings if you give him a garbage bag. So here I will reprint the flyer he gave to me:
I do Front and back yards- Jack is my name cutting grass is my game……
Called me and I will come by (Jack) Howard Jackson phone number (202) 329-3966
LOWEST PRICES IN TOWN “Alway” do a very good job
I left in the misspellings.
Flower Power Awards
Neighbors,
There will be a reception that acknowledges those residents who were
nominated for an award during the Bates Area Civic Association’s
“Flower
Power 2004″ beautification campaign. The reception will take place on
Thursday, September 2, 2004 at Ella’s Coffee and Fine Art, 1506 North
Capitol Street, N.W., from 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
It was decided that we would not tax the very limited funds in the BACA
treasury to produce this event; hence, we have sought in-kind
contributions
that we will use as prizes for the honorees. Therefore, BACA members
who
attend are being asked for a $7.00 donation to help defray the costs of
the
refreshments for the evening.
To RSVP, please contact MaryAnn Wilmer at (202) 328-0389. Hope to see
you
there!
Best,
Jim Berry
Statement
Recently I’ve been looking at my web stats for In Shaw and well I figure I should address some things:
A few people have subscribed to this blog and I am humbled that my rants would merit consideration. I looked at the other blogs In Shaw is grouped with and well, I don’t know if I fit. I’m not a radical. My politics can be described as moderate/ conservative. I’m straight. I’m in my mid 30s. Black. I don’t go clubbing. I am not cool. The In Shaw blog sorta reflects that, in that I’m against laws that would make it easier to get a liquor license, or anti-nightlife as some may say. I’m conflicted about the gentrification I write about, less crime good, people being displaced bad. I’m very conflicted about the rise in the Anglo population and the decrease of Black and Latino groups in Shaw as the sign of things “getting better”. Or as my Anglo friends have heard me mumble, “who are these white people and what are they doing in my neighborhood?” I’m not a Socialist, and although I sympathize with folks being pushed out because of gentrification, I do not believe in undermining a property owner’s right to sell his/her house at market rates, or rent their property at market rates. However, failure to maintain and secure property makes me less sympathetic to the owner and by all means the govt/community should be able to step in.
But those 20 or so of you who do read my blog I hope you do enjoy it and my snarky comments about my neighborhood. Feel free to comment or email me, or not, whatever makes you happy. And if you are a neighbor and I have made snarky judgemental comments about your house…. well that’s just my opinion. If YOU like your house, then it doen’t matter what I think. If I’ve bad mouthed you, then feel free to bad mouth me on your blog, then we’ll be even.
How to Gentrify a neighborhood: pt 2 1/2 the gentrifier
Warning: I’m writing this after 3 glasses of wine. I could be crazy.
In a followup to Gentrify yo hood:pt 1 this part briefy looks at the gentrifier.
First, money. Do you have it or don’t you. If you have money you might have choices, you could live in the “nicer” parts of the city, or you could buy bigger digs in the hood. Then there are the people like me, who don’t have a lot of money and the hood was the only affordable thing. So you move in and make the best of it. I didn’t move in to displace the poor. I moved into Shaw, because it was along the Green and Yellow lines (metro), close to a grocery store, decent for my car-less lifestyle, and oh I could afford it as a single person.
Second, tolerance level. The white bread population that loves the suburbs don’t cotton the city. Scared white people need not apply either. Scared [any other ethnic group] should keep to the ‘burbs as well. To be and urban pioneer and gentrify the city you need to put up with the crime, the trash, the bamas, the crackheads, the vacant houses, the whatever, until the day the neighborhood turns “nice”.
third, and last (cause I really need to go to bed), the gentrifier needs to be an object of change. This can range from the small and the really local aspect of investing in your home and inspiring others to do the same. Or harassing neighbors to be in compliance with the DC laws by calling the authorities constantly. Or it can range on the larger scale as to being involved in neighborhood wide revilization programs.
Bed.Now.