Tag: BACA

Old timers, new timers, and possibly misplaced credit

If you work at a place that has been around for a long time and in an industry is not known for quickly chewing up people and spitting them out, you may have a number of old timers about. You know, the guy down the hall who has been working there since the 70s and should have retired a decade ago, but hasn’t because this is all he knows. Those are the folks with seniority, with lots of institutional memory, but if they are an asset or burden really comes down to the individual.

 

I thought of this during a portion of the last BACA meeting I attended. There was the perennial “we should respect the old-timers” discussion that came up. Yes, some neighbors helped make the neighborhood what it is, but there are also scores of people who also made the neighborhood a better place who have since moved on, and a bunch of lumps who at best have been neutral assets and at their worst helping hold the neighborhood back, who never left.

 

It’s a great injustice to have the lumps receive the credit of those who did positive work.

 

Jim Berry, former ANC and former BACA president moved on to Bates in the 80s maybe and moved out in the 21st century, he deserves a lot of credit. That man worked hard. Very hard for the residents of the northern half of Truxton Circle and parts of Bloomingdale. So hard I doubted he had a personal life. I have not encountered anyone since who was as dedicated and caring as Mr. Berry.

On my own street we have a range of hard neighborhood workers and useless lumps. We’ve also had people in the 15 years I’ve been here who have come did well, pitched in, started something, be the right man/woman at the right place/time, and move on. Miss Becky, Emil, Kelly, Liz, and Paul are the names of a few of those who came to my street, actively did their part to make it better, and moved on.

 

There are also those who did a lot of activist work for the neighborhood when they were younger or working or whatever and have faded in the background. I haven’t seen Mary Ann Wilmer lately, I know she’s still around. Nor some of that crowd of older women (who I’d complain about) whose gift was constantly complaining and calling the police. Newbies can be a little bit too tame in calling the cops, so the older women’s persistence was how they helped. I feel obligated to mention a neighbor, she and Miss Becky got me involved with BACA, and an accident and it’s super long road to recovery has kept her at home. She is one of those neighbors who deserves a lot of credit but isn’t getting it because someone else is swiping it up.

BACA Clean Up Tomorrow and Something completely unrelated

First, BACA Saturday, 1st & P @ 10AM. See more here. I won’t be joining this cleanup as tomorrow is run around town looking for something and dropping stuff off day. My main goal is to get sample sizes of various Benjamin Moore paint colors (used to be able to get them at Monarch Paints but no more) and get rid of an old pre-HD TV.

Unrelated- history. Everyso often I think of papers I would write if I were really inspired to write and had the time to write. One topic I’d like to spend some more time on is the topic of urban renewal looking at some long term things. For one I’d look at the gensis of DC urban renewal by NCPC and DC government and any non-government players and get a sense of what their motivations were. Then try to figure out what happened to those individuals as they dropped out of the process when plans changed, and plans do change. Second, changing plans. The experts and planners start off with one set of plans and then due to budget, staff, political pressure, the odd riot, or whathaveyou the plans change. The big freeway that is currently I-395 does not continue up New Jersey Avenue and on to U Street. And the big thing is I’d want such a paper for people to look up the primary sources for themselves. I don’t want people to automatically take my word as gospel. I have biases, and some of them I will publicly admit to, others I won’t. Some will look at the same information and draw different conclusions, but the main thing is that they look and think.

BACA Clean Up Tomorrow and Something completely unrelated

First, BACA Saturday, 1st & P @ 10AM. See more here. I won’t be joining this cleanup as tomorrow is run around town looking for something and dropping stuff off day. My main goal is to get sample sizes of various Benjamin Moore paint colors (used to be able to get them at Monarch Paints but no more) and get rid of an old pre-HD TV.

Unrelated- history. Everyso often I think of papers I would write if I were really inspired to write and had the time to write. One topic I’d like to spend some more time on is the topic of urban renewal looking at some long term things. For one I’d look at the gensis of DC urban renewal by NCPC and DC government and any non-government players and get a sense of what their motivations were. Then try to figure out what happened to those individuals as they dropped out of the process when plans changed, and plans do change. Second, changing plans. The experts and planners start off with one set of plans and then due to budget, staff, political pressure, the odd riot, or whathaveyou the plans change. The big freeway that is currently I-395 does not continue up New Jersey Avenue and on to U Street. And the big thing is I’d want such a paper for people to look up the primary sources for themselves. I don’t want people to automatically take my word as gospel. I have biases, and some of them I will publicly admit to, others I won’t. Some will look at the same information and draw different conclusions, but the main thing is that they look and think.

Flower Power 2010- Call for volunteers

Help!
The Bates Area Civic Association will be having another Flower Power Walk this year and well people are needed. Hopefully the walk will take place on a Saturday in late June, so what will be needed are people to volunteer to give tours. Before that can occur volunteers will be needed to get the word out, help with signage (producing) and volunteering to host a sign. If this interests you contact Flower Power at bacaflowerpower at gmail period com or me.
Related to neighborhood beautification, BACA is planning on having a big spruce up on May 1st. The last clean up I was able to make a dent in the trash in my alley. I picked up a big yellow bag at the start location, went back to my street, then hit the alley, and dropped it off at one of the trash drop off points.
But once again, I really need help with the Flower Power walk so please, if you can volunteer for one or more things, drop a line.

Lasty, I’m going to be migrating this blog over to another URL this week. There might be several “This blog has moved” posts. Ignore them until I post something at length stating the new URL (hopefully will be blog.inshaw.com) before updating your RSS feed.

My weekend

Well Saturday was the BACA clean up which Caryn over the BACA blog mentions the turnout was low. Well I didn’t help matters by not posting the announcement earlier, though I got it earlier. Also there were supposed to be fliers about it, but of a neighborhood of our size flier distribution takes a while. Yes, it doesn’t seem like it but you never realize how many friggin’ houses are just on one side of the street until you have to place a flier in every single one of those doors. Personally, I don’t care for the stuff the flier in the fence method, as the wind can take those away. I took on the top triangular part of the TC till my bag got ripped. There wasn’t much to do as we have a few neighbors who regularly clean the sidewalks.
Before I picked up my bag I was walking with Brett to 1st & P, where BACA normally starts these things, trying to explain the “Broken Window” theory and why clean ups are important. I’m hoping B. was playing Devil’s advocate when he questioned the effectiveness of a clean up and the ‘broken windows’ theory. Quick summary, trash adds to the perception of crime and disorder.
After the clean up I ran my usual Saturday errands, one being the warehouse area on Florida Ave NE. At US Beef I ran into Ms. Frozen Tropics, Elise, who had a hunk of meat for carnitas. I had a bag full of drumsticks for curry, two pounds of butter, for making ghee, and a frozen boneless lamb. I mentioned that the frozen whole chicken there was rubbery, but the fresh chicken was quite good. Elise mentioned she was going to hit Mexican Fruit next for limes. But there were limes near the register at US Beef and I had already been to Mexican Fruit, whose limes were lackluster that day, so we both picked up bags of lemons and limes. I was going to make marmalade, Elise margaritas. Somewhere in the middle of that a friend of Elise came up with a small tub of tofu from a nearby store. I expressed my confusion with the warehouse area of knowing which stores will sell to you. Apparently there is a tofu place between US Beef and Sam Wang, you go up to the window, you tell the guy you want the white tub, and for $4 you get a small gallonish tub of tofu. Half shopping experience. Half speakeasy.
Sunday, was chicken Sunday. Chicken stock. Chicken Marsala. Chicken Biryani. Buttery Chicken. And chicken curry. Somewhere in there I decided to clean 1/2 of my alley, with some help from a neighbor. The street was busy with open houses. The house that was under contract, is back on the market. Then a new neighbor has decided to move to the west coast and rent out his house so there were people dropping by to check the place out.

Clean up tomorrow

I was meaning to post this earlier:

After our snowiest winter in history, months without street sweepers, and damage from the snow, let’s say goodbye to winter by springing into action! Here are the details for the first 2010 clean-up:

Date – March 27 (rain date – April 1)
Time – 10:00am – 1:00pm
Meeting Location – First and P Sts

We will have brooms, bags, and shovels on hand. You may want to bring gloves as well as some of your own supplies … just in case.

We have made fliers but may not be able to hand them all out door-to-door. Please email me if you are interested in distributing to your block. Also, email me or Anita with ideas for volunteers.

Pete and Anita

Big Bear Beer II

Sometime after all the youth/school related stuff at the BACA meeting, about an hour into it, we finally got to Big Bear and their general ideas of pursuing an ABC liquor license. There were two persons from Bog Bear, one being Matt Sellers, the other guy a blond barista… now if it is a guy do you call them baristas? Not baristos?
Anyway. Big Bear is aiming for a CR license. For those of you unfamiliar with the wonderful world of ABC licenses, a class C Restaurant license is one for places where at least 45% of revenues come from food sales. It is different from the class of licenses for bars or corner markets. The was one objection mentioned, coming from a Baptist minister, presenting his concerns about people getting drunk and hanging out in the park. This was countered by the Episcopalian church secretary reminding him of Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding at Cana, turning water into wine.
There were questions about Big Bear expanding and the space they have. The bear is kind of landlocked and the space above is leased to tenants, so in the near future, nope. Maybe, years down the road. Another question was the issue of vagrants/ neighbor characters. Characters do drop by to get a glass of water and to use the bathroom and for the most part they don’t cause a problem.
The idea is Big Bear has a vibe as a cafe, hang out and they have no intention of becoming a bar, they just want to expand their food service options. I asked the barista (m) if the idea is to offer something like Teaism, and he answered in the affirmative. As far as I can tell despite having a small park area and a restaurant/bar across the street, the Penn Quarter Teaism fails to produce drunkards rolling out of its doors.

Big Bear Beer?

I noticed this in the announcement for today’s BACA meeting:

(b) Ms. Elizabeth Lyttleton, an Eckington resident who provides occasional consulting services to Big Bear Café, asked for time on our agenda to apprise our group of the status of the cafe’s current efforts to acquire a license from the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. I am advised that Ms. Lyttleton developed a scheduling conflict that won’t allow her to attend Monday’s meeting in person; however, she plans to identify someone else to make her expected presentation and to answer any questions that it might generate.

TODAY! 7PM Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, in the basement cafeteria.