Tag: misc

Well someone is “thinking” about redoing the look of that prison school on New Jersey, called Dunbar.

The BACA blog announced that North Capitol Main Streets has announced an effort to clean up North Capitol from RI to NY Aves.

Somehow my Truxton Circle updates started up again. For a while I got nothing, and now, for no reason I can tell, I’m getting the TruxtonCircle.org updates. It’s a Thanksgiving miracle!

Speaking of the TC, I have restarted the TC Census project by bartering with my cousin. In exchange for a big ole spreadsheet tracking the 1900 era residents of the TC, their occupations and such, she gets to live with me free and I feed her. So far, she’s discovering occupations that no longer exist like milliner, coppersmith, and compositor. It appears that a number of folks worked down at the GPO on North Capitol, a walkable and bike-able commute.

Food.
Well Corduroy, Cork and Etete are Shaw (or close enough) area restaurants that made it onto Tom Sietsema’s Top Restaurant Recommendation list.

Bread for the City is launching a blog, and having a launch party. It’s going to be at the Big Bear Cafe on Oct. 24th at 5pm. See more info here.

Halloween.
Yes, kids trick or treat here. Buy candy what you don’t give to kids, dump at your office and feed to the hungry interns. See past posts on the topic of trick or treating here and here and here.

Rehab
In the sad tale of apparently two nice guys, one a homeowner the other a contractor, Stu Davenport, good guy AND competent contractor steps in and saves the day. Stu is also a 5C ANC commissioner and co-owner of Big Bear.
The horror story told in the Washington City Paper’s blog The Housing Complex reminds us that if you are having major work done, don’t expect DCRA to protect you. If you’re paying over 10K for some guy to rip up your house it is on you to take a look at his previous work and talk at least 2 or 3 of his most recent clients. I do remember talking to David’s clients, and he’d done work for some friends of mine whose house I admired. It’s great if a contractor is nice and well meaning but you really need to check that he knows what the heck he’s doing.

There are links of stuff from other blogs I keep meaning to comment on or share with others but for one reason or another don’t so I’m going to try…

Scott Roberts of Bloomingdale has a post on this week’s BACA meeting and the LAYC issue.

PoP reports on a Penn Quarter Farmer’s Market hater who wants the joint shut down.

There’s supposed to be a DDOT presentation regarding Richardson Place on October 8th. I don’t know where or a what time.

The 5th St Hardware store is offering personal shopping and 9 volt batteries (between 10/5-10/11 for fire safety week). For the personal shopping order before 1pm and pick up by 5.

Longview Gallery on 9th St will be having a grand opening party on the 22nd. RSVP by October 19th to info [at]longviewgallery.com .

Blagden Alley has an email in regards to the Dr. Ximena Hartsock issue and the disapproval of her appointment as Director of Parks and Recreation.

The condos being built on the 400 block of Rhode Island have a website. However I disagree that Big Bear recently opened and it isn’t a weekend Open market. It’s the Bloomingdale Farmer’s Market! The market has a name, use it. And whomever drew that map, needs to be hit with a newspaper.

And lastly the effort to hinder one’s first amendment rights with an ounce of crazy and a stay away order has been defeated. A neighborhood bully, who shall not be named, filed for a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) against the CCCA prez, as part of that bully’s tactics of trying to silence critics, when the usual threats and insanity doesn’t work.

I’ll probably get back to my regular blogging after Labor Day. But I wanted to start blogging about a topic I keep coming back to and that is neighborhood names. Part of the problem is I’m not from Washington, DC. A lot of us aren’t from the District. And some few natives I have known, hailing from other parts of the city aren’t necessarily familiar with all parts of town. Armed with ignorance and unencumbered with any childhood attachment of names, we get into petty squabbles of if where Bloomingdale ends and Eckington begins and if Bloomingdale is a part of Eckington at all.
Why does it matter?
When I went home to Florida and when I started looking to buy property I noticed that place names aren’t uniformed or well known or even written in stone. Some time back my mother said we lived on Tucker Hill. Which, when she told me this was news to me. It was the name of a cemetery not too far from the house. But not the name of the cemetery closer to the house. When I was looking for property close to my mother Tucker Hill was not a neighborhood search term. It was ‘West something’. When I checked the municipality’s property tax website, it was ‘West something else’. The only commonality was it began with ‘West’.
Growing up it seems that everyone just used landmarks and street names as neighborhood identifiers. You lived over there by that elementary school, the library, or on this street near the old Winn-Dixie. And it helps to know that the vacant box strip-mall was a Winn-Dixie in the first place. Friends in cul-de-sac neighborhoods hardly referred to where they lived by the developer’s name. Turkey-Pine-Willow-Creek-Run-Farm all sounds alike after awhile. It was just the sign you turn at. There were a few developments, retirement villages whose names wound up describing whatever happened to be near it. But those were the few, everything else, 50th St near the Publix out on Pine.
So I come here and I live hear in the District. The DC tax website says I live in Old City. The mid-20th century urban renewal projects of the National Capital Planning Commission say I live in Northwest and later the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area. Efforts in the 80s by the District government describe the particular area where I currently live and where they then were selling properties is Truxton Circle. There was a circle in the early 20th century. It’s gone now. It’s parts rotting in a park elsewhere. There was a post office of that name. That went away in the 60s or 70s. Google and several other maps and some DC Planning brochures currently call it Truxton Circle. Then came the eight Wards in the 70s and Shaw got divided by four wards, most of Shaw is in Ward 2. I’m in Ward 5. Somehow a small block group grew from Bates Street and it now describes the northern part of Truxton as the Bates Area Civic Association.
Dunbar High School on New Jersey Avenue looms over the neighborhood. You can see the top of this tall ugly prison-like building from the corner of Florida and North Capitol. And I am near it, so I concede on that point that Dunbar could be a description of the neighborhood, as in ‘near Dunbar’. It’s tall enough and takes up enough acreage to be a landmark. Yeah, there was a nicer looking Dunbar, and a more notable Dunbar before the current building, but that’s gone. And it is so close to several other schools, Cook (no e), Armstrong, Slater and Langston.
So where do I live? Old City? Ward 5? ANC 5C? Truxton? Shaw? Bates? Northwest? Over by New Jersey near Dunbar? All of the above.

Today we are saying goodbye to a few of our interns here at Fight Club* and at the good bye party we had for the gaggle of them there was one that stood out. This guy was passionate and infectiously enthusiastic about what we do here. Infectiously enthusiastic. His love of history just constantly beamed unashamedly from his face and was expressed in his movements when he talked about being in DC and going to the other cultural institutions. When I saw him a day or so later I said, “Don’t ever lose that enthusiasm.” He plans to become a teacher.
We’ve had a great batch of students this year. They were good natured, followed instructions, had a great interest in the work we did here, got along with each other, and tore through projects with amazing speed and accuracy.

*I’m just going to refer to the place I work as Fight Club or the Bureau of Fight Club, because the boss told me the 1st rule about Fight Club.

I had another post in mind, but figured I should take a picture of the subject. So until I do, let’s play a game. I call it, “Make Up A Non-Profit”.
Pretend you’ve been given 3 million dollars to set up a non-profit that needs to last at least 5 years. The 3 mil is for operational (staffing, office rent, supplies) and other expenses (grants). And the mission can be a little off the wall or unusual. And major rule, it cannot already exist. No homeless shelters unless it’s a homeless shelter for people and their pets.

Lots of you work for non-profits, and I onced worked for a non-profit, so you know, 3 million doesn’t go very far. So what would you create?

Me? The Tom Bard Scholarship for tall guys named Tom and the “Oh Crap I Lost My Scholarship” Scholarship Fund. For people, who like me, lost their scholarship because they did something stupid like take ‘challenging’ classes their first year.

The BACA blog has the meeting info here.

Hopefully, it will be a constructive meeting where the actual needs of Safe Shores, dog owners, and the community at large will be addressed.

What do I need? A safe block that doesn’t become a dead zone after the sun sets. P Street is a straight shot from the Giant and the G2 stops along there. The lack of life on that block is quite noticeable at night when you’re lugging groceries, which is why I no longer do that.

Nicholas Cage can be a great actor and sometimes he’s been crap. Sometimes, it’s the roles and you really can’t blame an actor for shytastic writing. If you want to see Nick Cage for free tomorrow, because you want to see a movie with bad history that makes no sense the Archives downtown is showing National Treasure II.
You’ll see Pennsylvania Avenue and the University of Maryland, where the main character goes to chat up his mom. The problem is though she’s supposed to be a professor, her office is bigger and way cleaner than any prof’s office I’ve ever seen. You’re tenured, you get the closet with the window. And almost all my professors had piles of paper and books and stuff.