Around the City

Urban affairs, neighborhoods, subways and the people who are affected by them all.

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February 11, 2011 | 4:57 PM | By

Potter’s House: All Races, All Classes, All Good

DCentric

The Potter's House: food, books, more.

The Potter’s House has been in D.C. for over five decades. Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. I’ve been here for 12 years and even when I lived on Columbia Road–where it is located– I wasn’t aware of its existence. I finally noticed it two weeks ago, when I was taking a walk. It looked like a small, specialty bookstore and that was intriguing enough. When I tried to check out its hours of operation, I saw something surprising in small letters, on a weathered sign. On Tuesdays, a group meets there to discuss “Racial Reconciliation” at 12:30 pm. What kind of bookstore was this? Well, it turns out– it’s a unique one:

Potter’s House Books offers several thousand titles focusing primarily on spirituality and social justice…In addition to the Bookstore, the Potter’s House also is a restaurant/coffeehouse, art gallery, worship space, and community meeting place. On Friday nights, it also is the venue for a concert series called “Sounds of Hope,” which features mainly local musicians performing for the benefit of community nonprofit groups.

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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Adams Morgan, Delightful City, Race and Class
February 10, 2011 | 6:00 PM | By

Metro: It’s not just for drunks.

Flickr: Manuel Arrington

A late-night reveler puts her feet up.

“WMATA Board ponders cutting late-night service”, the Greater Greater Washington headline reads. Cue the comment storm from people who are outraged that late-night revelers won’t have a safe way to get home, thus increasing the possibility of those people driving around drunk, killing us and each other. But, wait! There’s more!

NOW cue the knee-jerk fury of those who are outraged that the first group is pandering to drunks. “Why should we enable hard-partying? It’s in no one’s interests! Metro is for commuting to work, not bars!”, they preach. So what’s a transit agency to do? Metro needs to save money and perform maintenance on the creaking, wheezing system that we all complain about; if we want WMATA to fix things, it’s only fair that we give them enough time to address the mile-long list of issues we collectively maintain via Twitter.

All of that is true. So is this: between the sputtering and arguing online, the plight of the other people who rely on Metro is ignored.

Yesterday, when I took my puppy out to turn our street into a latrine, I noticed that Marisol was still sitting in our lobby. That was odd; she usually works the afternoon shift, from 3-11pm. It was midnight.

“Is everything okay?”, I asked.

She smiled, sweetly. “Yeah…I had to stay a little bit late and I missed the last train home.”

I was alarmed. “Are you okay? What about your baby?”
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FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Metro, Race and Class, WMATA
February 10, 2011 | 2:44 PM | By

Righteous Real Estate

Flickr: ONE DC

Lydia DePillis of the City Paper writes about a new source for affordable housing in the District– churches. DePillis visited one house of worship, the Temple of Praise, an interdenominational megachurch that Mayor-for-life Marion Barry attends; the Temple has big plans for Ward 8. The church is so popular, it has outgrown the huge building it built just eight years ago; now it wants to construct something larger and transform the current Temple into a charter school. Beyond that, the ambitious church wants to develop affordable housing on its property.

And Bishop Glen Staples isn’t stopping there. He’s working on building a medical clinic, and wants to construct senior housing and a new community center, as well as a credit union, local retail, and restaurants—which neither the market nor the government have brought to that part of Ward 8 (even the local McDonald’s is vacant).

“There’s nothing here,” says Staples, taking a break in his dark wood and leather-trimmed inner sanctum, while the noon service thunders outside. “I don’t know if politicians are able to do anything, if they want to do anything, I don’t know, but I do know nothing’s been done. So it’s incumbent on us to try to do something.”

“Re-knitting an urban fabric” might be just what this city needs:

The particularly important thing here: These are the kinds of building projects many neighborhoods either grumble about or reject altogether. A church’s willingness to put them in its own neighborhood demonstrates a confidence in its ability to be a positive and stabilizing influence, re-knitting an urban fabric shredded by drugs and crime, in places where private capital would never voluntarily go.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Affordable Housing, Real Estate, Ward 8
February 9, 2011 | 5:48 PM | By

Black and Transgendered? Double the Suffering.

Flickr: Serena Epstein

Tyra Hunter was a popular African American hair stylist in Washington, D.C. In 1995, she was in a serious car accident at 50th and C Streets SE. The emergency personnel who arrived on scene started to rescue her, but they stopped abruptly; instead of providing Hunter with aid, they mocked her. When she finally reached a hospital, Doctors didn’t help her, either.

Sounds outrageous, right? It was. Hunter’s mother sued the city for negligence and malpractice– and won $2.8 million.

At this point, you might be wondering– “Why would EMTs and Doctors withhold care from an accident victim?”

Well, Hunter was transgendered. According to Monica Roberts of The TransGriot, when firefighters discovered that fact after cutting through her clothing, they discontinued care and insulted her.

A firefighter) began joking with the other fire department personnel at the scene as the bystanders pleaded with them to resume working to save Tyra’s life. One bystander is quoted as saying, “It don’t make any difference, he’s [sic] a person, he’s a human being.”

Indeed. I first learned about this appalling case via Colorlines, which “has been building a home for journalism in service to racial justice since 1998″. In their recent article, “Still No Freedom Rainbow for Transgender People of Color”, Hunter’s memory was invoked to demonstrate how little progress has been made:
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FILED UNDER: The People, LGBT, Racial Divide
February 7, 2011 | 5:15 PM | By

Welcome, United Negro College Fund

Flickr: crazysanman.history

Historical marker for the UNCF in Virginia.

Look who’s moving to D.C., and when I say D.C., I mean it and not a suburb:

Seeking to expand its support of education for Americans of color, UNCF (the United Negro College Fund) will move its national headquarters from Fairfax, Virginia into Washington, D.C. in 2012. UNCF, the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization has begun construction on a 50,000 square-foot office at Progression Place, located at 1805 7th Street, NW, in D.C.’s surging Shaw neighborhood…

“UNCF has become one of the country’s most prominent advocates for the importance of students getting the preschool-through-high school education they need to succeed in college, and Washington is the hub of the national conversation about how to make sure they get that preparation for college,” said Michael L. Lomax, Ph.D., UNCF president and CEO. “UNCF also wants to be able to provide college-focused information and services directly to DC-area students and the hundreds of thousands of students who visit DC each year. To be an effective advocate for education reform, and to help children of color prepare for college UNCF has to be in D.C.

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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Non-profits, Shaw
February 4, 2011 | 11:37 AM | By

Walmart: Bringing Groceries to a Desert Near You

Flickr: Ratterrell

Bananas at Walmart.

Over at the City Paper, Lydia DePillis tallies another hash mark for the pro-Walmart contingent:

Count another one who thinks Walmart won’t be all bad: Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning. At a D.C. Building Industry Association event at the National Press Club last night, she pointed out that the city still has food deserts, and that the super-retailer was going into several of them with smaller-format stores that will sell a lot of food. “I’m getting a lot of pushback, a lot of brouhaha, about these stores,” she said. “But you know, they’re bringing groceries.”

At the same time, Tregoning emphasized the need for national tenants to bend to the needs of the surrounding area. “We expect you to build something that fits,” she said. “We can’t expect a suburban store to work in our neighborhoods.” She also extolled the virtues of local retail, and wants to work with the smaller independent stores to “up their game” so they can compete with the incoming giants.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Food, Food Deserts, Race and Class, Walmart
February 3, 2011 | 6:45 PM | By

The City Paper’s Profile of Ali Ahmed Mohammed

Ali Ahmed Mohammed stopped existing on October 15. I use that odd phrasing because of something striking I have noticed– white people tend to say “he died”, while Black people use words like “he was killed”. Almost four months after a death which is still shrouded in mystery, the City Paper’s feature, “Something Happened at DC9. Who Did it Happen to?” doesn’t provide any additional information to those of us who wonder how Mohammed died or why.

So this is what the piece does do; it humanizes Mohammed while providing details about a man who has either been vilified or martyred, depending on whom you ask. This is what it does not do: assign blame. Maybe we’ll never know what happened, but if you are interested in one of the city’s most prominent immigrant communities, the article is worth a read:

One thing to know about Little Ethiopia: It’s not little. Decade-old census figures place the number of Ethiopians in the region at about 30,000, but community members suspect the real number is considerably higher—at least 100,000. It’s the largest Ethiopian community outside Ethiopia, says Andrew Laurence , president of the Ethiopian-American Cultural Center and the neighborhood’s unofficial historian.

Like the demographic that congregates there, Little Ethiopia has been growing. Today, Laurence says, it encompasses a “traditional border of 18th Street in Adams Morgan from Columbia Road to Florida Avenue over to 9th Street along Florida (U Street) to 9th Street and then down 9th Street to Q Street and over to 7th and Q Street.” Of course, Ethiopians aren’t the only ones who flock to the 1900 block of 9th Street NW. DC9, with its appeal to white hipsters, and Nellie’s, a gay sports bar on the corner, reflect two other populations with a growing presence in the neighborhood.

Laurence says D.C. became a hub for Ethiopian immigrants starting in the 1970s, “when Haile Selassie was overthrown.” The Marxist military regime that took over began killing off elites and intellectuals, Laurence says. Many fled to America, which had supported the deposed monarchy. The immigrant population was initially centered in Adams Morgan, near the former home of the Ethiopian embassy.

FILED UNDER: The People, Crime, DC9, Immigrants, Little Ethiopia, Race and Ethnicity
February 3, 2011 | 10:58 AM | By

al-Qaeda on the Red Line

DCentric

Lots of bags to search here.

DCist talked to the new CEO and General Manager of Metro, Richard Sarles. While escalators and rude personnel were discussed, the part that stood out to me had to do with terrorism:

A large amount of the discussion revolved around bag searches, and Sarles’ affinity for the program…

It’s obvious that Sarles has a great amount of passion for the program, which many have criticized as little but security theater. Sarles was quick to defend with rhetoric. “We are the symbol here of a great country,” he added. “We call ourselves America’s subway. We are something that people would like to attack. Can you thwart every attack? Absolutely not….[But] all these things try to thwart or discourage terrorists from attacking here. This is a highly visible target, and to think it’s not, is to put your head in the sand.”

He continued: “Terrorists have a specific plan how they’re going to do it, and if you make it unpredictable, maybe there’s something else they can plan,” said Sarles, diving deeper. “The unfortunate thing is someone sets a bomb off on a subway train, it’s not the same as someone getting punched in the face, an assault. A terrorist could walk up here today and kill somebody, but that’s not making a statement — they bombed the World Trade Center because it was a symbol of capitalism, and we’re a symbol of freedom.”

I don’t know if Metro is a target because it’s a symbol of freedom, but it may be a target because attacking it would be hugely disruptive to this area. I guess those popular bag searches are here to stay.

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Metro, WMATA
February 2, 2011 | 3:33 PM | By

Dogs: Good for Irving Street and D.C.

DCentric

My puppy on 14th Street, last spring. Note the prominent poop bags. We scoop!

First I blogged about dogs, then I pointed you towards some controversy over a Greater Greater Washington post…funnily enough, this post is about dogs and GGW. A few days ago, Lynda Laughlin wrote a post there called, “Irving Street becomes unofficial dog latrine“. In it, she asks, “how much dog urine is just too much for such a public space?”. That question hit home for me, literally.

For those of you who are familiar with this stretch of sidewalk, there is very little green space and the sidewalks are particularly crowded in the morning with commuters going to the Metro or waiting for one of the many buses.

With so little green space, dogs pee on the large planters in front of the apartment building, leaving behind noticeable puddles of dog urine. For the dogs that do make it to the tree boxes, they are not the first for the ground is already fairly saturated by 8 am…If you plan to own a dog in a city, shouldn’t you at least consider taking your dog further then just the nearest tree box?

I am going to dispute this respectfully, and then I’m going to present a different view, because lost in all the judgment of animals and their owners is one potent fact; dogs can make a neighborhood.
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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Animals, Columbia Heights, Gentrification