The forces of gentrification, like commercial-strength Liquid Plumr, are foaming into the holdout buildings and street corners preventing DC from achieving the demographic ideal coveted by the myriad holders of interest-only home loans. All the easy growth has pretty much come and gone, with the bombed out crack houses and brownfields of yesteryear transformed, by this obliging developer or that, into gleaming towers in which no surface goes ungraced by high gloss granite or endures the shame of non-recessed illumination. Oh yes, and there are the Viking appliances; can't forget that. Takeout and Whole Foods fricassee just doesn't taste the same without them.
But with the profits from no-brainer investments long since diverted to the oversized flags fluttering from every crane in the universe - Americans, like beavers, are natural-born builders - a smaller battle rages, building by building, for the remaining real estate unoccupied by people partial to the joint ownership of Metrochecks and BMW 700s. In the new calculus, cash poor homesteaders are selling out to dual-income power couples in an uneven process of organic change. Sure, there are still more new construction projects than you can count on your fingers and toes and teeth, but with homebuyers finally trading their heroin for methadone, it's less likely entire blocks and buildings will be rejuvenated overnight.
This also means rickety rental apartments, once fixtures on the condo conversion watch-list, will remain entry-level dwellings for commitment-phobes and non-profit do-gooders for some time to come. And then there's Northwest's forgotten elderly, who, if they're not living in well-appointed row houses, are often leasing tiny apartments near sunswept patios flooded with margaritas, young scrappers, and puke. Changing economic conditions have surely saved their asses, though I'm certain this blessing doesn't extend to residents of the The Sedgewick on 19th St. just north of Dupont Circle, which is where old folks go to die, unless the management is simply killing them, I can't figure which.
Tonight, for the fourth time in about a year, I came across the possessions of an expired senior splayed on the sidewalk outside the building. The cool spring air deprived my senses of the musty odors no doubt wafting from the afghans, mattresses, and easy chairs clogging the walkway, but this sad fact didn't hinder my inner scavenger from embracing the upside of the circle of life. I spotted a three foot tall table piled onto a heap of plastic bags, its 18-inch square top perfectly sized for my hard to furnish foyer, but an unfortunate split on its surface dashed my hopes to benefit from Louella Barkley's death.
I continued to poke through her things, however, and was intrigued by a pair of brass lamps dumped in a box filled with her old pill bottles - treatments for diabetes and ossified stools. Alas, the lamps were also damaged. I walked away, though, with a wide-angle photo taken in 1936 outside the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, just before the Supreme Court came to its senses and started striking down the communist provisions of the New Deal. Everyone's smiling, perhaps even Louella somewhere among secretaries - trust me, all the women were secretaries back then - packed in the front row. It's a simple piece of history, but I intend to keep it as my own personal treasure, nevermind the disregard the landlord and maybe Louella's family have for the stuff that, in the end, is her legacy.
Hopefully my demise will inspire more recognition, but even if it doesn't, one thing's certain - there's no fucking way I'm moving into that damn Sedgewick.
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