My next door neighbor B. has a blog. It’s still new so he’s feeling his way around. Jimbo and I have been helping him grasp the concept and purpose of blogging, so when you visit be nice.
The main, and eventual purpose of Bohemian Yankee in the Capital: Salty dog author talks history, sports, queer imagery and urban development is to promote two books that he has coming out, one on GLBT Hollywood and the other on stadium development in the District of Columbia. Of the two I’m more interested in the stadium book, Capital Sporting Grounds as it tells of some of the wheeling and dealing of getting the RFK built, and the location of various other sporting venues in the city.
Tag: neighbors
Mojitos & Tater Tots
Friday I was in the mood for some homemade mojitos and store bought elementary school quality tater tots. But I wanted to share this desire & joy with others. So Saturday morning I decided I was going to have an impromptu party.
I’ve been wanting to do something along the lines of Apartment Therapy’s Open Door Family Dinner idea where there is little to no planning. So I figured on a very simple menu, mojitos (and a lemonade for the kids and non-drinkers) and tater tots. That was it, and that’s all I promised the guests when I started calling around noon. I kept most of the guest list kinda close to house as there was an alcoholic small-bites theme, so if someone was really hungry or got tipsy, their front door was only a few feet away.
It was a good neighborly bunch for such short notice on a Saturday night. I invited some new neighbors, as I had been meaning to do something to welcome them for the longest while. I don’t remember how many people I called and visited to extend invitations to, but there were 2 kids and 7 adults who came and it was a nice manageable number. The being close to home part was good, as someone was up past her nap time and got a little tired.
I may try the open door gathering thing again. Worrying about everyone’s schedules tends to keep me from asking friends out and planning gatherings. I guess if I just leave it up to fate I don’t get fixated on trying to get things right.
As a bonus for reading the post here is the recipe for the party items
Tater Tots
Store bought tater tots
Ketchup
Buy bag from Giant.
Follow directions on bag.
Serve in big bowl with spoon and have squeezable ketchup on the table.
Mojitos
Big bunch of spearmint (about 1 cup or more)
10-12 limes
1.5 cups of sugar
1.5 cups of water
1/2 cup or more of white Rum
Splash of Meyers Dark Rum
Ice
1 bottle of Tonic Water w. Quinine
1- On stove top mix the sugar and water in sauce pan, stir on mid/high heat. Let boil for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool. This is your simple syrup mix.
2- Squeeze the juice of the limes in pitcher or other container.
3- Toss in mint
4- Muddle mint with wooden spoon or a proper muddler (you might want to remove the mint after this, something I failed to do, but whatever…)
5- Pour in rums
6- Pour in simple syrup (the sugar water mix). Make more if needed. Depending on taste.
To serve in glass, put in ice cubes, pour in mixture up to halfway, fill with tonic water.
Organic Strawberry Lemonade
Organic Lemonade (you may find it at Whole Foods or Timor)
Strawberries from Bloomingdale Farmers Market
1-Hull strawberries and place them on tray where they are not touching each other.
2- Place in freezer and freeze
3- Take frozen strawberries and place in pitcher 1/4 of the way
4- Fill with lemonade
5- Sit in refrigerator covered with plastic wrap (if pitcher has no top) until guests arrive.
Strawberries act like ice cubes and as they melt, they release their juices into the drink.
Jolly’s Mommy in the Post
If you knew Jolly, he was the wheezing slow walking chicken bone finding beagle of Richardson Pl. Well his mommy (who is also the mommy of a child and another child to be) got featured in the Post magazine. I’m trying to figure out how I missed the article completely, so thanks Scott Roberts.
Though the family has just recently relocated for a great new job for Ben, Lyric is still running her house staging business Red House Staging here in DC. Lyric loves what she does, and it is wonderful to see that it is possible to create a career that brings you joy.
Degentrification, gentrification and something to think about
Frozen Tropics pointed it out and Richard Layman did too, the NY Mag article about a neighborhood that seemed as if it was going to get gentrified, but is now heading in the opposite direction. I enjoyed reading the article as well as the comments at the Curbed blog that shed some light on the Red Hook neighborhood.
I can’t really talk about a neighborhood I know nothing about, but the idea of de-gentrification is curious. Of course, the question is has gentrification occurred in the case of Red Hook, or was it really strong wishful thinking? And if a neighborhood is gentrifying and then the process is stalled indefinitely, is that de-gentrification, or does it only count if the neighborhood reached a gentrfied point? To me degentrification seems to hint at disinvestment, but reading the NY Magazine article, they appear to define it as something else.
Today I got an email from the folks over at Neighbors Project with their 7 Rules for Talking About Gentrification and they make some excellent points. I especially like #2. Get your history right. I’ll call Shaw an historically Black neighborhood, mainly because it a) in it’s most recent history been predominately African American, and b) the history bonus points of notables come from the Black History basket. Yet I will totally acknowledge that once you go further back than 1930, Shaw is mixed, if not white.
Flipping around on their site I found a link to some Instructable guides they produced. Some are so simple that it should be like ‘duh’, such as “How to Pick Up Trash In Front of Your Home.” But I guess if you lived somewhere where this was never an issue, then a how-to is in order. (My excuse for not cleaning up in front of my house, I’m just lazy) They have some other guides like “How to be a trick-or-treat stop for apartment-dwellers“; “How to Shop at a Downtown Farmers Market”; and “How to say hi to a stranger on the street“. These guides, though a little dorky, can help people integrate into the neighborhood and foster neighborly-ness.
Check out their 7 Rules, what do you think?
Road to Hell: DCs renter protection laws
I’ve been meaning to post something about the problem with nuisance renters, the neighbors who have to put up with them, and the landlords who can’t get rid of them. And then I spot this on the 5D listserv:
I live in a privately-owned 2-story (total of 4 units) apartment building in Ward 5. It is a relatively quiet block. However, one of the residents has blatantly moved in other people, and refuses to pay rent (not since July). That is not my battle to fight (NOTE: The property owner, a federal government retiree/widow, recently went to court to get an eviction order); however, there is constant ‘traffic’ in and out the building at night…for quite a while now. Often, the exterior (front and rear) security doors are left unlocked – an obvious security issue/violation. We suspect that the rear exterior door lock has been ‘jimmied’ to allow ‘anytime’ access. Do I suspect illegal (drugs?) activity? I don’t know what to suspect anymore. I know that it’s not NORMAL to see someone (female) walk out of the building at 1:30am to an awaiting car, stand at the driver’s side window and talk for 2-3 minutes, get into the car, and 20 minutes later, she is being dropped off. YES..I stayed up that late to observe that happen. In particular, there are at least two cars (a dark green Cadillac-MD tags driven by a black man with thick long braids) that come and go as much as the building residents. This would not be a problem except that at one point, he obviously had his own set of building keys. I understand that he has a lengthy criminal record – as well as some as the others that come in as late as 11:30pm and may not leave until 5 or 6am. The building owner has expressed her frustration at not being able to legally remove this resident (who, incidentally, moved a girlfriend in, but denies this fact when confronted about it, and has refused to have her name added to his lease). She/property owner has been told that the Marshall service will not be able to serve the eviction order sooner than 60-90 days. Keep in mind that she has not seen any rent from this tenant since June. I’ve often heard how difficult it is for landlords to evict tenants; therefore, tenants can ‘live for free’ for months at a time….until they are forced to move on and inflict the same thing on another unsuspecting landlord.
[SNIP]Our sense of safe and security is gone. We don’t know WHO and WHAT is living around us anymore…and for those of us not yet retired, heaven only knows what goes on in the building while we are at work.
At the last BACA meeting the DC Attorney General (I think that was her title) for 5D mentioned that dealing with nuisance renters who endanger the safety of neighbors is ‘challenging’.
I am not attacking the good intentions and the desire to save DC renters from unscrupulous landlords. However, the neighbors who get terrorized by bad renters have little recourse it seems. I know of a situation where crackhead renter blasts music so loud that it shakes the neighbor’s wall among other things. The neighbor has been told that landlord is sort of making the attempt (maybe, this was mentioned a good while ago), but in the meantime there is calling 311 or 911, police maybe showing up to quiet things down, and repeat.
Halloween recap
Well it got to a slow start. 5pm, nothing. 6pm, nothing. 7pm, kids on the block hover on one side of the street and costumed relatives driven in hover with them.
Sometime between 7:30pm and 8:10pm an impromptu costumed block party breaks out, with blond little tykes in too cute costumes(with parents), running up and down the sidewalk around with black princess fairies, as teens in Scream/Jason masks gossip and josh around, while semi-un-costumed adults of the whole diversity rainbow give out candy and flit back and forth across the street. Passing slowly by twice was a police cruiser, whose occupant added to the festive spirit by giving a ghoulish laugh over the car’s loudspeaker. A few Latino trick or treat families stumbled on to this scene and one woman giving out candy had her costumed kids take pictures with the passing kids.
My favorite costume was the bloody skateboarding doctor. A kid/young adult went house to house on his skateboard and he had a blood splattered lab coat, face shield/mask, and a stethoscope. A few others on my block got a kick out of his get up as well.
Then the uncostumed gang of teens started showing up, and that’s when I turned out the lights and walked a few doors over to crash the Halloween party for parents. It was breaking up when I called it quits a little before 9pm. When enough big slovenly teens start running around and the cute kid numbers are nil, it’s not fun anymore.
Urban living
I can tell when people are not ready for true urban living. They’ve never seen people selling drugs out of the car in front of the house. Or people running down the street with guns in their hands. You will see that here. You will see grown men pull down their pants and take a poop in front of you. You will see that here. I hate to see people move in and get terrified. Maybe it is best you don’t move here.
— Scott Roberts, as quoted in October 3, 2007 Washington Post article
This reminded me of something said amongst a gathering of TC residents, that some folks (and at one time they themselves) are a little naive about living over here. Some folks are cut out for it, some aren’t and it is a pity when you’ve bought the house or sign the lease to find out that the handful of urban things you thought you could deal with, you can’t. Maybe you came from a place where the police come quickly when you call. Here, they might come, but you call anyway, ’cause you never know.
There are also assumptions, points of view regarding how to live and expectations that aren’t met. The police thing is one. Litter is another, kids and adults will toss trash on the ground like it’s nothing. I’d like it if the elementary kids would keep their language PG, I know I need to lower my expectations, but I just can’t.
But it all isn’t that bad. I and some of my neighbors have some kick a$$ commutes, with no bumper to bumper anything. Within a two mile radius there are about a hundred arts/ cultural events going on. And in this neighborhood, like the neighborhood I grew up in, I know my neighbors, I know people in my neighborhood and there is a genuine joy I feel when I bump into them on the street or elsewhere in the city.
Ugly naked man
The azzh*le across the alley from me decided to show off what he was. For some odd reason, but in line with his periodic jerky behavior, had his rear deck doors wide open and was running around buck naked, showing off his rear. I’m almost convinced that he was doing it on purpose. Not knowing where I put my camera, so I could post the fat chunky dark side of the moon for your enjoyment, I just called the cops. More accurately I called Dispatch, who then called me back 30 minutes later, asking if I wanted to talk to the police. By then he had already blasted 3-4 songs from his stereo (I decided to let someone else call the cops for that), closed the doors and abandoned his large dog on the deck.
I and B. feel bad for the dog. Poor thing howls constantly at night and doesn’t appear to be properly socialized. B. is wondering when I’ll call the city to investigate the dog’s care. I don’t know what exactly the jerk is doing that is illegal, cause ignoring your dog, not illegal. No, I’m not going to call the city. Not until he starts leaving the poor puppy out in bad weather, again. And I couldn’t tell if the dog was left out in last night’s rain, as it could have just wandered under the deck.
Characters unWelcome
I handed the keys back to Matt, because I finally got all my crap out of their house. On the way there and on the way back to my own house I had to deal with the ‘characters’ that populate Scott & Matt’s block. Anyway, during my stay over in the center of the TC I noticed the amount of ‘commentary’ from the characters I had to deal with was high, or higher than over on the western end of the TC.
What was said, voiced, whatever ranged from a general friendly hello to, depending on the situation, like on my bike, ‘hey can I get a ride?’ I didn’t find any of this stuff threatening, just annoying, particularly after the 3rd character. My only danger, I felt, was from spraining my eyes from them rolling in the back of my head. Maybe it was annoying since it was all male commentary. I’m wondering if the women I passed by were just as friendly, would it take a different spin or interpretation. Also maybe if the stupid commentary, with no baby/honey/ boo crap, was rare and there was more of the simple friendly acknowledgement of ‘hello’, I might have viewed it a different way too.
Staying in another part of the TC was informative. Each block is different with its own set of pluses and minuses.
A Rose by any other name can stink when it hits the fan
While I was away this weekend, mourning the death of my grandma, the whole what’s the friggin name of the neighborhood blew up. As far as I’ve been able to grasp it, a vocal party in the Bates Area that is opposed to the name Truxton Circle penned a few letters to various city officials expressing their opposition to the name. However, one of those letters was to DDOT requesting “an immediate stay on the grant application for a Truxton Circle Banner pending further review.” Considering that city grant money may be harder to come by in the future, and that it is easier to get grants once you’ve gotten one, our little disagreement about the name of the neighborhood has gone too far.
I had not seen the letter that started it when I had seen the Truxton Circle dot org’s Daily (somewhat weekly-ish) dispatch in my inbox on my cell phone. I read the dispatcher’s letter, which expressed anger and irritation, leaving me to wonder WTF? It wasn’t until Sunday night when I read the offending letter and got a fuller account from the co-founder of TruxtonCircle.Org. Dang.
I respect the right of my fellow neighbors to disagree and go into the public sphere to express said disagreement. Regarding the name and history of the neighborhood, I welcome any research that others bring forth. The problems in the offending letter were a few statements and one poor citation. Let’s review:
Specifically, the Hanover project grant states that the Hanover neighborhood is “bounded by P Street NW, North Capitol Street, New York Avenue NW and 1st Street NW”. This is inaccurate. According to the Shaw School Urban Renewal Plan, the historic borders of the Hanover Street are limited to Hanover Street.
I haven’t seen anything in the SSURP defining smaller areas, but then again, I haven’t seen the SSURP in its fullness. But the borders cited by the Hanover people are the same borders they’ve been citing for the last 5-6 years as their section of the TC, as opposed to the Bates Area. I’d hope that if we went hunting for grant money for just BACA it would not be limited to Bates Street and denied to Q, R, 4th, 3rd, 1st and North Cap.
Therefore, the grant applicant’s request for a Truxton Circle banner on 1st NW is inaccurate. According to the text “Washington DC, Past and Future ” the former Truxton Circle was located at the 1600 block of North Capitol Street NE, not in Old City, Bates Shaw East community. Additionally, there was not and is not a neighborhood called Truxton Circle. It was a landmark, not a neighborhood.
I already did the when the TC was a neighborhood and not a landmark or a post office in another post. And I can’t find Washington DC, Past and Future in Amazon or Half, nor is an author cited. I did a Google search and came up with nothing, which leads me to think this might be an article, and if that is so citing the journal would be nice.
There was some other stuff, but to go over them would be nitpicky. We’re all human and prone to error. One of the undersigned in the counter grant letter had nicely pointed out a typographical error on my main site. I am thankful for that correction and in the same spirit of neighborliness, while having differing opinions, I suggest that in this public sphere argument, stronger citations and proof be brought forth. Meaning, if you are going to cite a source if it is a book or article cite the title and author and journal if applicable. If it is an oral history, interviewee, interviewer, date and repository where the interview is housed. And if anyone has a question about any of the sources I cite or use when asserting a statement as fact contact me if you feel that my bibliography or citations are incomplete. The idea is to let you the reader and member of the public review the research for yourself (should you decide to drag yourself to the MLK or the historical society’s library) and decide.