Tag: BACA

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.

Friday Miscellany

PoP reported a shooting outside of Windows Cafe. An injured shooting victim was part of a Pepco crew working around 1st and Rhode Island Ave.

BACA is having December party in lieu of the usual civic association meeting this coming Monday. There will be chili and persons wanting to come are free to bring a covered dish and or a book to be donated to the library for the charter school in the Armstrong building. When? December 7th at 7pm. Where? Basement cafeteria space of the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church at 3rd and Q.

Some of y’all, like me, work for Big Brother, I mean Uncle Sam and it is CFC time. Please consider supporting two Shaw area non-profits. One being Bread for the City (CFC #61733) at 1525 7th Street NW. They have made a great effort to engage the community, not just those in need but also those who want to help. The other organization is N Street Village (CFC# 90946) at 1333 N St. I have given to them off and on over the years and they keep a clean space.

Great Weekend


Block clean up
Originally uploaded by In Shaw

I want to thank BACA, Anita Bonds our ANC and my neighbor Brian for making for an awesome block treebox planting. BACA (regular meeting is tonight at 7 @ Mt. Sinai) provided a tree, Anita provided the plants, dirt and mulch and Brian was just amazing. Bri organized the residents, going door to door (if you didn’t get the message you weren’t home) a week or so before, talking to neighbors about the treeboxes in front of their homes, getting commitments from neighbors for particular tasks (supervising, digging, etc), and picking up the donated material from Bonds and BACA. The result was a fun work filled morning where new neighbors got to meet each other and older neighbors, kids running around, plants getting planted, treeboxes getting built (Thanks John!) and the block being totally awesome.
More pictures of efforts all over north TC at the BACA blog.

We did get trick or treaters but not as many as last year. I don’t know if it was due to rain, or it being a weekend night or what. We started off with the big gang of 15-20, kids and their parents. They all had barreled out of one parent’s house and slowly made their way down the block. Then a few small clusters of families and I swear one drive by… parents in an SUV who saw some candy action, dropped the kids off, got candy and drove off. I shut down about 10 mins to 9PM, when some neighborhood teens who sorta made an effort came by. When I get teens it’s time to quit.

Brief on BACA meeting

I left at 8.
Mayor Fenty arrived fairly early in the meeting and it was well attended with a long table of students on one side of the room. When I left, Cook School was still the topic and despite the kids presence, residents, and their elected leaders let it be known that the LAYC’ dorm with some classroom’s plan wasn’t wanted. Residents told the mayor that the processes, which he kept focusing on, was flawed and someone failed in the process. The mayor tried to point out that in locations where LAYC was development wasn’t hampered. I don’t know if anyone pointed out that in those areas, the zoning and height restrictions are different and can accommodate the density that would make LAYC’s impact unimportant.
I got a brief report of what happened after I left. Someone questioned the wisdom of having the LAYC students at the meeting where they would be exposed to opposition to their school. Jim Berry was very good at keeping the meeting moving. Yay Jim. And the mayor seemed open to making out community a part of NoMa. ??????!!!!