November 16, 2010 | 11:24 AM | By

The most dangerous block in Logan Circle

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Gentrification, Hate Crimes, LGBT, Logan Circle

dnewman8

I couldn’t stop reading this piece on gentrification and hate crimes in TBD:

The 1400 block of R has always seen more than its share of crime, and the building’s new low-flow showerheads have done little to douse that problem. “If there’s a report of a robbery, assault, anything of that nature in the area, the first place that officers will go is the 1400 block of R Street,” one D.C. police officer told me. “If I’m off-duty and walking by myself, I would walk five blocks out of my way to avoid that block.”

According to a search on the D.C. police website, the 1400 block of R Street records a crime rate two to three times that of the surrounding blocks…The block’s criminal element occasionally has priorities higher than financial gain. When Puntanen came to, he found his watch still on his wrist and his wallet and cell phone in his pocket. “The assault had nothing to do with money,” Puntanen says. “Obviously, I had no money. Everything I have is from the dump or from the corner or from the secondhand store. I have a 14-inch TV. I don’t even have a computer. No stereo,” he says. Stanley, too, was never robbed in his four months on R Street. “They only wanted one thing: To get the faggot white guy out of there,” Puntanen says.

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →

  • DCentric Fan

    This was a pretty interesting and sad piece about the state of the District. In the same way it was depressing it was intriguing on a social level. Moving back to the District a little over a year ago from the South, it was intriguing to see the black and seemingly gay youth in the popular hang-outs of teens around the area. Perhaps this is more of something that was always there and never noticed when I previously lived in the area, but I have assumed this is a growing and vibrant demographic. With all that and assuming that the teens and young adults live in the District or the immediate surrounding areas, I would have thought tolerance would have grown for the gay community as a whole. I wonder how the assailants would view gay friends and families of their own race (sense race seemed to be a theme in the attacks)? Then again a lot of bigotry and racism seems to have been based around groups striking out at those who they feel took something from them as a whole (or whoever is convenient) and not necessarily grounded in some logical analysis of what or who can change things. It would have been interesting if the writer could have found someone to talk to, who could give some insight into the perceptions/justifications (if any) of the assailants. Overall interesting read.

  • Joe Vaughan

    By far the most violent element in Logan Circle are the cowardly, belligerent heterosexual yuppies men. They are constantly slamming into older, weaker, and queerer looking people and forcing them off sidewalks. If you stand up to them, they threaten to kill you, then attack you from behind in gangs.  They are scum. Until they learn the meaning of fear, nobody is safe.

    The gay men around Logan Circle should have noticed by now how surrounded they are.  I heard one of these stroller Nazis stand up in a meeting and give a speech about how the people with children are taking over and the rest of us had better shut our mouths and do as we’re told. “Thinks aren’t the way they were a few years ago and you had better get used to it.”  Meaning, suck it up fags, y’all are on the way OUT.

    Do you want to bet that these “gentry” are behind a good part of the anti-gay violence?  I wouldn’t bet against you.

    But the illusion of safety among the 1%–an abiding dream of gay men–is so strong that gay people would rather kiss the feet of these parasitic bullying whoremongers than seek solidarity with ordinary human beings.

    So embrace racism and classism with all your hearts, boys.  You yourselves will lose your homes to these filthy bastards–and perhaps at a loss if you moved in within the last five years or so.  Then whom will you spit at?

    I sat in Logan Circle park tonight and watched SEVEN cop cars converge on one broken-hearted old guy about my age who was drunk and crying because he was homeless. Seven swaggering Nazi pigs on one harmless old fuck who had a half-empty can of beer.

    The previous Saturday I took a walk up Fourteenth Street around ten thirty and saw fifteen or twenty loudmouthed Yuppie alcoholics staggering from side to side of the street  ten times as looped as my hapless old pal.  Not a cop car in sight. All of them should have been arrested.

    This is Logan Circle.  It’s the Third Reich.  It stinks like shit.  Something will have to be done about it, one way or another.