We’ve pondered before whether Anacostia, a neighborhood in Ward 8, is actually being gentrified. But residents will get their chance to chime in on the topic during tonight’s roundtable focusing on the “demographic transformation” of Ward 8.
The event, which starts at 7 p.m., is sponsored by Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry and the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8D. I’ll be there, so follow me on Twitter for occasional updates.
Wally Gobetz / Flickr
We have an update on this story here.
Lincoln Theatre, which was a U Street landmark since the corridor was known as “Black Broadway,” may close next week because it’s run out of money, DCist is reporting:
Earlier this year, Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At-Large) and [Councilmember Jim] Graham, who sits on the theater’s Board of Directors, were able to secure $500,000 in funding for the Lincoln during budget negotiations. However, that money will not be allocated until the next fiscal year. [Mayor] Gray responded to Graham’s news by stating that the city couldn’t “pour money in” to the theater, which he described as having a business model that was “not sustainable.”
In its heyday, Lincoln Theatre regularly featured Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. It eventually added movie screens, offering entertainment options to African Americans at a time of segregation. The theater fell into disrepair after the 1968 riots, but reopened in the 1990s with federal, local and private financial support. Since then, the theater has hosted a diversity of performances while U Street experienced gentrification and rapidly increasing property values. But in recent years, the Lincoln Theatre has struggled to keep its doors open as money dwindled.
Courtesy of Bora Chung
Aaron Martin (left), Brandon Moses (middle) and Michael Andrew Harris (right) practice in Gold Leaf Studios.
Brandon Moses and Michael Andrew Harris, members of the band Laughing Man, met up at their studio space in a worn warehouse on a recent Thursday evening. Moses strummed his guitar and sang into the mic. Aaron Martin, who shares the studio with the band, joined in on his saxophone for an impromptu jam session.
Seemingly neglected, the vacant warehouse has been repurposed for just this sort of activity — for artists to create without concern of disturbing neighbors. Harris rapidly hit his snare drum without constraint. The music went through open window and spilled onto the Mt. Vernon street below.
But through that window, you could see the new high rises across the street, a sign of D.C.’s healthy real estate market. And soon, the warehouse — home to Gold Leaf Studios — will be replaced with a $57 million, 11-story mixed-used complex. About 30 artists who work out of 11 Gold Leaf studios will have to vacate by January 2012.
“Obviously they’re going to make a lot more money,” Harris, 31, said. “We’re just artists paying a couple of hundred dollars for the space.”
Money ran out for a program that provides groceries to poor D.C. seniors. But advocates pushed the city, and money has been found to to pay a new provider to run the program.
America’s Fertility Class Divide: What new numbers from the Center for Work-Life Policy and the Guttmacher Institute reveal. “There’s little question why poorer women are having more unintended pregnancies. Only about 40 percent of women who needed publicly funded family planning services between 2000 and 2008 got them…During that same period, as employment levels and the number of employers offering health insurance went down, the number of women who needed these services increased by more than 1 million.” (Slate)
Dismal DCPS Statistics Shared at Council Hearing “10 percent of DCPS eight graders have attempted suicide…Some pretty dismal stuff…considering the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the rate of suicides among children ages 10 to 14 (the age range of most D.C. eighth graders) is merely 0.9 per 100,000.” (DCist)
How does the UC Berkeley ‘diversity bake sale’ rub you? “A group of Republican students at UC Berkeley is moving ahead with plans to hold an ‘increase diversity’ bake sale this Thursday in mockery/protest of legislation awaiting the governor’s signature that would consider race and gender in college admissions. The method of protest? Charging higher prices for the baked goodies to white customers, especially white males, and lower ones to minorities and women.” (Multiamerican)
DDOT DC / Flickr
A year ago, Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy penned his now infamous column after Mayor Adrian Fenty’s defeat, in which he described white gentrifiers as bike lane-loving, “myopic little twits.” Washington City Paper reporter Rend Smith asked Milloy to “reflect on his contribution to the District political dictionary.” He responded:
Yeah, another year and the Myoptic Twits are older, blinder and wise-asser. I did notice that a few volunteered to help spruce up some DCPS buildings before classes began. So miracles do happen. The rest of them seem more interested in bringing a 19th century flava to the city, with their gas lamps and trolley cars. Then again, when you’re on their side of the wealth gap, inheritance gap, employment gap, education gap, you can act like landed gentry. But Im not hatin’. In fact, what I’d like to do in this next year is team up with DCist for a Myo-Twit public safety campaign. Tell these folks that if they want more Bike Share they could at least learn how to ride the damn bike, stop weaving in and out of traffic. Car bumpers are harder than their butts if not their helmetless heads. Hey, I just want them to live to see another birthday.
To which DCist editor Aaron Morrissey writes: “Since we’ve been so far unable to connect via Twitter, feel free to drop us a line when you’re ready to film that public service announcement, good sir.”
Funding has dried up for a program that provides free bags of groceries to about 6,600 of D.C.’s poorest seniors.
“Generally, D.C. politicians are not eager to get seniors angry,” Andersen says. “I can guarantee you this will be an issue if they don’t act.”
The Epistemology of Race Talk “Further, I am grateful to live in a time when white Americans are furious about anyone suggesting that they are racist. I much prefer to live in a country and at a moment where the idea of being racist is distasteful rather than commonplace. In many ways the angry reaction about even the suggestion of racial bias is a kind of racial progress.” (thenation.com)
Unemployment: Older Jobless Twice As Likely To Become 99ers “Older workers are less likely to lose their jobs than younger workers, but once they do, they’re more than twice as likely to be out of work for 99 weeks or longer.” (Huffington Post)
Gaurav Gopalan’s DC Murder Remains Unsolved [article with video] “Members of Washington’s gay, lesbian, and transgender community are concerned that Gopalan might have been targeted because of his sexual orientation. A concern heightened by the fact that several transgender people have been attacked recently in Washington, and all the attacks, including the one on Gopolan, have so far gone unsolved.” (WUSA Washington, DC)
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Flickr: Images_of_Money
Blogger Mari of “In Shaw” alerts us to a possible scam:
There is a scam going on where a youth will knock on the door of a resident and ask for money for…the Eastern Branch Boys & Girls Club, which has been closed for 5 years. As far as I can tell minors are not supposed to do any fundraising of this sort (going door to door, going on the Metro, etc) for the Boys & Girls Club.Unfortunately there wasn’t any guidance on what to do when one encounters one of these youths.
The Eastern branch has been closed for five years, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Gigi Ransom confirmed on the MPD-5D listserv, an email list hosted by MPD to alert subscribers to news and information for the fifth police district.
“Report it as a crime. Call 311 and report it, like any other crime,” said Sgt. Raul Mendez, public information officer for the police department. He added that having a description of the kids and where they are targeting people for donations would be helpful.
“But when they approach you, ask them for identification, a call-back number, something official” and give the information to police, Mendez said. The documents could be fake, in which case police would consider that fraud.
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