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.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Lost in Cerebrum
From time to time I think of leaving DC, permanently, in defiance of my ten-year record of lauding the place top to bottom. And that record is voluminous; just ask those poor fools, among my friends, who insist life's worthwhile in the far-off hinterlands of Bethesda and Arlington, not to mention those more distant upstarts Fairfax and Loudon counties. I've refused many an invitation, in lieu of the polite "no, thank you" my mother has long suggested, with a sophisticated reply of my own choosing, modified as circumstances require, but generally amounting to something like this: "Huh? You want me to go where? I'd have to drive you know. (Sigh)... When are you going to move downtown?"
There's something lovable, I've found, in each of the many inconveniences linked with living in the District, from obvious nuisances including petty street crime and public urination, to the lesser troubles induced by ridiculous taxes and incompetent bureaucrats. Under the right conditions - lots of booze, the psychic safety net provided by one's cushy Northwest surroundings - even the city's most discomfiting sights can prove endearing. The homeless looking man meting out compliments for your spare change. The woman parading down 12th St. in too high boots and a tiny fur coat, and little else, hoping to strike up some impromptu social engagements.
I've found it easy to love them all, but have had a helluva time getting anything resembling reciprocity out of them. I'm a vote to the city councilman, a score to the street hood, an ATM to the man begging for small money by the upscale coffee shop. Yet despite this, I consistently choose the solitude of their company - walking the streets in my law-abiding way, or watching them over the top of my newspaper or book - over that of my friends, the people who care about me, in concept if not fact. Unlike these other folks, the flacks and hucksters I know only by sight or smell, my friends are stubborn organisms. They are forlorn when I demand happiness, inert when I'm looking for action. So often not what I expect and command, so disappointing.
As for those others, they never seem to deviate from my notion of what exactly they are.
Whore. Alcoholic. Homosexual. Whatever. All neatly categorized, all serving their purposes, drip dropping muted smiles and blunted heartache in the day-to-day of my existence, a facsimile relationship borne of familiarity but not knowledge. I've spent countless hours in this milieu, passing up actual human interaction in defense of the pure archetypes, unchanged by time or experience, in my mind. The friends, well, they're consumers, not unwittingly, of the non-stop charming, arrogant, childish, bullying, insightful, combative, hilarious performance that is whatever me I'm trying to sell at that moment in time. You might call it the Un-Me. Or Facet of Me.
I've been in it for the laughs, but, of late, those laughs are mostly bouncing around in my head, echoes of the mirth of yesteryear. Families and careers, or perhaps some problem with the tired haunts and routines of the deposed ringleader, have left me laughing at myself. It's still fun, but with each lonely cackle, another tiny link to everyone else fails and breaks away, like a fleck of paint chipping away from a high-gloss figurine, and I retreat further into my mind and the nameless characters that inhabit it.
People want more than good times, I think. Authenticity. Open arms. Vulnerability. These are the requirements for the new age, my new age, the fourth decade. With some laughs, sure, but with honesty too. I've understood this for some time, but it's amazing how one weekend, 36 hours at an out-of-town wedding, can crystalize the difference between bullshit, the freaks and cads from my beloved hometown, and those wonderful people who've been dragging me down life's path all these years, trying to get me to see.
The irony - and what would this disjointed tale be without any? - is that I stopped kicking and screaming, and took a good look around, not at the behest of my stalwart friends, but through the contrivances of a lovely five-year-old.
There's something lovable, I've found, in each of the many inconveniences linked with living in the District, from obvious nuisances including petty street crime and public urination, to the lesser troubles induced by ridiculous taxes and incompetent bureaucrats. Under the right conditions - lots of booze, the psychic safety net provided by one's cushy Northwest surroundings - even the city's most discomfiting sights can prove endearing. The homeless looking man meting out compliments for your spare change. The woman parading down 12th St. in too high boots and a tiny fur coat, and little else, hoping to strike up some impromptu social engagements.
I've found it easy to love them all, but have had a helluva time getting anything resembling reciprocity out of them. I'm a vote to the city councilman, a score to the street hood, an ATM to the man begging for small money by the upscale coffee shop. Yet despite this, I consistently choose the solitude of their company - walking the streets in my law-abiding way, or watching them over the top of my newspaper or book - over that of my friends, the people who care about me, in concept if not fact. Unlike these other folks, the flacks and hucksters I know only by sight or smell, my friends are stubborn organisms. They are forlorn when I demand happiness, inert when I'm looking for action. So often not what I expect and command, so disappointing.
As for those others, they never seem to deviate from my notion of what exactly they are.
Whore. Alcoholic. Homosexual. Whatever. All neatly categorized, all serving their purposes, drip dropping muted smiles and blunted heartache in the day-to-day of my existence, a facsimile relationship borne of familiarity but not knowledge. I've spent countless hours in this milieu, passing up actual human interaction in defense of the pure archetypes, unchanged by time or experience, in my mind. The friends, well, they're consumers, not unwittingly, of the non-stop charming, arrogant, childish, bullying, insightful, combative, hilarious performance that is whatever me I'm trying to sell at that moment in time. You might call it the Un-Me. Or Facet of Me.
I've been in it for the laughs, but, of late, those laughs are mostly bouncing around in my head, echoes of the mirth of yesteryear. Families and careers, or perhaps some problem with the tired haunts and routines of the deposed ringleader, have left me laughing at myself. It's still fun, but with each lonely cackle, another tiny link to everyone else fails and breaks away, like a fleck of paint chipping away from a high-gloss figurine, and I retreat further into my mind and the nameless characters that inhabit it.
People want more than good times, I think. Authenticity. Open arms. Vulnerability. These are the requirements for the new age, my new age, the fourth decade. With some laughs, sure, but with honesty too. I've understood this for some time, but it's amazing how one weekend, 36 hours at an out-of-town wedding, can crystalize the difference between bullshit, the freaks and cads from my beloved hometown, and those wonderful people who've been dragging me down life's path all these years, trying to get me to see.
The irony - and what would this disjointed tale be without any? - is that I stopped kicking and screaming, and took a good look around, not at the behest of my stalwart friends, but through the contrivances of a lovely five-year-old.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Metro Vigilante Assails Minority Muncher
For years, the sight of the impossibly innocent girl drawn crudely on the packaging of Utz snack foods has brought me nothing but joy. I've always been impressed, actually, with how her attire - limited as it is to a matching bow and blouse, her torso obscured by a bag of something yummy - always matches the colors assigned to the specific snack vacuum-sealed into the package. Green for the sourdough pretzels, red for the classic chips, orange for barbeque style anything; it all works, in a fashion sense, with her stubbornly sixties mop, which seemingly requires gallons of gel to achieve its helmet-like appearance.
Alas, as with all things virtuous and good, I'm sad to report this little girl, with her milky skin and cheerful expression, is no longer capable of making me smile. Not after today, when, during the evening rush-hour, unwitting teens instigated an outburst from a fellow subway passenger while consuming a brand of the ubiquitous Utz potato chips.
I was reading an article about Liberia's new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the ridiculous challenges she's facing trying to turn that decrepit hellhole around, when out of nowhere this guy starts shouting in the sanctimonious tones of an elementary school crossing guard. "No! That behavior is not allowed on Metro transport vehicles! Listen to me; put that down! No! You are not allowed to eat on our trains! You must keep the cars clean!"
While his language, his exact phraseology, could have come straight from the Metro employee handbook, from the "Semi-Confrontational Demagoguery" section, his tone resembled that of HAL in his death throes, an uncertain and plaintive coo which made him somehow endearing even though he was being an asshole. I followed his invective, starting from his quivering self-righteous lips, to the orange bench across the aisle, where a Minority-American duo sat crunching on their snack, oblivious to the cackling mainframe ten feet away.
"I said no! No eating on the Metro; this is how we keep things clean!" He kept repeating this theme, and although he proved quite unable to get the words exactly right during each successive outburst, thus minimizing the effect of his rant, this much was clear: those kids weren't eating those Utz chips today, not on his watch. In traditional teen form, his adversaries invoked the "whatever" retort, which would have disarmed a lesser muckraker, but not our man, who's boiling blood nearly dislodged the yarmulke pinned tenously to his head.
"Oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna take your picture then and... and... and send it to Metro." With that he busted out his fancy pants cell phone cum camera and prepared to snap the perps for posterity. His fiance, withering beside him, shrunk into the deep recesses of her seat, whispering words of encouragement or disbelief, I couldn't tell which.
The camera gambit, while startlingly effective in warding off the Car 4 crumb factory - their half eaten bag of goodies fell to floor, and with it a bottle of juice - it had the unintended consequence of inviting hostile actions from other passengers. Another woman, seated next to the teens, whipped out her own camera phone, pointing it in the man's direction.
"You want to take picture? I take your picture." I seriously wondered what everyone was going to do with all these pictures. One thing was certain - this guy enraged the wrong fucking lady.
"You take my picture? OK, take it!" said the man, pointing his camera phone at the woman. Pretty soon cameras were flashing and everyone was gathering lots of evidence to send to the authorities or, more likely, the oblivion of the trash bin once we reached Metro Center. Finally, the conflict ended when the man's girlfriend, having found a way to get him out of this silliness, made the suspicious claim that no pictures had actually been taken. Then the woman, sensing a possible detente, said the exact same thing.
"I take no pictures." She turned around and said something in Spanish to the chief muncher, and an eerie silence fell over the car. With that, it was all over, and the bottle of cranapple juice, which had dropped to floor moments before, rolled slowly toward the exit doors, underscoring the close of this cross-cultural battle.
I tried to return to the tale of Liberia's rebirth, but, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Utz girl's smiling face undulating with the movement of our car, and I hated her for her guileless cheer. Maybe someday I will see things once again as I did in my age of innocence, but for now, that girl is one commute ruining slut.
Alas, as with all things virtuous and good, I'm sad to report this little girl, with her milky skin and cheerful expression, is no longer capable of making me smile. Not after today, when, during the evening rush-hour, unwitting teens instigated an outburst from a fellow subway passenger while consuming a brand of the ubiquitous Utz potato chips.
I was reading an article about Liberia's new president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and the ridiculous challenges she's facing trying to turn that decrepit hellhole around, when out of nowhere this guy starts shouting in the sanctimonious tones of an elementary school crossing guard. "No! That behavior is not allowed on Metro transport vehicles! Listen to me; put that down! No! You are not allowed to eat on our trains! You must keep the cars clean!"
While his language, his exact phraseology, could have come straight from the Metro employee handbook, from the "Semi-Confrontational Demagoguery" section, his tone resembled that of HAL in his death throes, an uncertain and plaintive coo which made him somehow endearing even though he was being an asshole. I followed his invective, starting from his quivering self-righteous lips, to the orange bench across the aisle, where a Minority-American duo sat crunching on their snack, oblivious to the cackling mainframe ten feet away.
"I said no! No eating on the Metro; this is how we keep things clean!" He kept repeating this theme, and although he proved quite unable to get the words exactly right during each successive outburst, thus minimizing the effect of his rant, this much was clear: those kids weren't eating those Utz chips today, not on his watch. In traditional teen form, his adversaries invoked the "whatever" retort, which would have disarmed a lesser muckraker, but not our man, who's boiling blood nearly dislodged the yarmulke pinned tenously to his head.
"Oh yeah? Well, I'm gonna take your picture then and... and... and send it to Metro." With that he busted out his fancy pants cell phone cum camera and prepared to snap the perps for posterity. His fiance, withering beside him, shrunk into the deep recesses of her seat, whispering words of encouragement or disbelief, I couldn't tell which.
The camera gambit, while startlingly effective in warding off the Car 4 crumb factory - their half eaten bag of goodies fell to floor, and with it a bottle of juice - it had the unintended consequence of inviting hostile actions from other passengers. Another woman, seated next to the teens, whipped out her own camera phone, pointing it in the man's direction.
"You want to take picture? I take your picture." I seriously wondered what everyone was going to do with all these pictures. One thing was certain - this guy enraged the wrong fucking lady.
"You take my picture? OK, take it!" said the man, pointing his camera phone at the woman. Pretty soon cameras were flashing and everyone was gathering lots of evidence to send to the authorities or, more likely, the oblivion of the trash bin once we reached Metro Center. Finally, the conflict ended when the man's girlfriend, having found a way to get him out of this silliness, made the suspicious claim that no pictures had actually been taken. Then the woman, sensing a possible detente, said the exact same thing.
"I take no pictures." She turned around and said something in Spanish to the chief muncher, and an eerie silence fell over the car. With that, it was all over, and the bottle of cranapple juice, which had dropped to floor moments before, rolled slowly toward the exit doors, underscoring the close of this cross-cultural battle.
I tried to return to the tale of Liberia's rebirth, but, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Utz girl's smiling face undulating with the movement of our car, and I hated her for her guileless cheer. Maybe someday I will see things once again as I did in my age of innocence, but for now, that girl is one commute ruining slut.
Monday, March 20, 2006
World Baseball Classic?
Well folks, it's down the final, and Japan and Cuba are fighting for the title of "World Champion". Actually, I don't think the winner can rightfully make that claim; I believe the victor, officially, will be the "World Baseball Classic Champion", leaving the arrogant front-runner of the US major leagues to lap up the "World Champion" imprimatur sometime in October.
Makes you wonder, really, if the victor in any American sports league - the NFL with it's lunatic battle-gear the lone exception - could ever, with any degree of seriousness, say its dominion extends much beyond the Rio Grande. It would be nice if, as in soccer, the Major League Baseball champion - either the Red Sox or Yankees, I don't care which - had to face the reigning kings of other leagues, in a champion on champion face off to determine club team superiority.
Could the White Sox, those darlings of the South Side, beat the Tigers or Giants of Japan? That would be the truest test of our baseball superiority, if the pampered American squad could fend off the disciplined stalwarts of a foreign club team. Of course, there aren't any MLB team's that would qualify as "all-American" in the Republican sense, but if some Fortune 500 outfit bought the rights to the club team championship series, they'd probably support the Marlins even if they are minority American.
If that couldn't be worked out, maybe the "World Series" survivor could contest the reigning WBC-winning team, either the Cubans or those scrappy upstarts from the Far East, as things stand now. If Japan pulls it off, my money's on them against the American representative - if mullets, per capita, are symbolic of baseball prowess, the US will have no chance. Same goes if we face the Cuban team - obviously our decades-long sanctions-regime just isn't working, not in Havana, and definitely not on the baseball diamond.
Makes you wonder, really, if the victor in any American sports league - the NFL with it's lunatic battle-gear the lone exception - could ever, with any degree of seriousness, say its dominion extends much beyond the Rio Grande. It would be nice if, as in soccer, the Major League Baseball champion - either the Red Sox or Yankees, I don't care which - had to face the reigning kings of other leagues, in a champion on champion face off to determine club team superiority.
Could the White Sox, those darlings of the South Side, beat the Tigers or Giants of Japan? That would be the truest test of our baseball superiority, if the pampered American squad could fend off the disciplined stalwarts of a foreign club team. Of course, there aren't any MLB team's that would qualify as "all-American" in the Republican sense, but if some Fortune 500 outfit bought the rights to the club team championship series, they'd probably support the Marlins even if they are minority American.
If that couldn't be worked out, maybe the "World Series" survivor could contest the reigning WBC-winning team, either the Cubans or those scrappy upstarts from the Far East, as things stand now. If Japan pulls it off, my money's on them against the American representative - if mullets, per capita, are symbolic of baseball prowess, the US will have no chance. Same goes if we face the Cuban team - obviously our decades-long sanctions-regime just isn't working, not in Havana, and definitely not on the baseball diamond.
Sunday, February 5, 2006
My LCD is Bigger Than Yours, and I Know How to Use It
America's coffeeshop culture is really getting me down. What used to be a haven, a neutral territory rewarding introspection and trivial diversions, has for me become a hostile battlefield, overrun with climbers inflamed with visions of success. Sure, you can hang out and read a book if you want to, but if it's just for fun, nowadays, you really get the sense you're just wasting your time. How can you enjoy yourself when there's so much striving going on at the next table?
The problem really began when laptops entered the realm of affordability. Next thing you know, would-be novelists, students, and shouting entrepreneurs are scurrying from shop to shop, like frightened rodents, monopolizing the cushiest chairs and questing for self-realization. Their power cords wind across the floor, entangling the feet of passersby and confirming, in the event of uncertainty, that public safety is a small price to pay for a chance at true success.
What can they all be working on? Should I be working on something too? I wonder, as I page through my City Paper and ponder things to do, if I'm overlooking - or worse, purposefully evading - the hard work needed to achieve my dreams. But then again, what if they're only playing solitaire?
The problem really began when laptops entered the realm of affordability. Next thing you know, would-be novelists, students, and shouting entrepreneurs are scurrying from shop to shop, like frightened rodents, monopolizing the cushiest chairs and questing for self-realization. Their power cords wind across the floor, entangling the feet of passersby and confirming, in the event of uncertainty, that public safety is a small price to pay for a chance at true success.
What can they all be working on? Should I be working on something too? I wonder, as I page through my City Paper and ponder things to do, if I'm overlooking - or worse, purposefully evading - the hard work needed to achieve my dreams. But then again, what if they're only playing solitaire?
Saturday, October 1, 2005
Don't Bring a Knife to a Gunfight
I'd heard the rumors.
"Watch yourself around the Columbia Heights Metro late at night." It had become a standard admonition among DC's new gentry, the pioneers too broke to live the downtown dream closer to areas suitable for The Gap and Ann Taylor. These were the folks hoping the successful turnarounds of the Logan Circle and U Street neighborhoods augured well for their new homes, in "transitional" zones called Mount Pleasant and Petworth, atop the lowlands to the south.
"It can be dangerous," they'd occasionally add, looking at me but also past me, as if I were purposefully blocking a street crime now in progress.
I considered myself immune to such thoughts - I'd moved to Washington nine years earlier, before the flood of homebuyers bouyed by the tech and then defense spending booms, and later insanely low interest rates, drove real estate prices through the roof. Back then, my neighbors were working class Latinos, hardscrabble non-profit types, and holdovers from DC's long gone era of prosperity. The streets of Adams Morgan were dirty, the bars dingy; out-of-towners, from heartland America and inside the Beltway, sniffed at the prospect of walking its sidewalks.
"What a shithole," they'd say. "Is it safe there?"
Of course it's safe, I thought. My housemates and I shared a crumbling a row house and strolled around town, at all hours, with an abandon familiar to Opie Taylor and the Mayberry crowd. Sure, we ran into some kooks now and then, but they were the eccentric kind, known for aggressive panhandling and not much else. And as they disappeared, replaced by upscale coffee shops and users of ubiquitous MP3 equipment, I thought wistfully of the early days, when I was an Urban Trendsetter.
Now the newcomers, those on the Northwest frontier, were complaining of their dangerous neighbors, sounding an awful lot like the suburbanites I disdained years before. Columbia Heights, dangerous? No more than the Adams Morgan of not-so-long ago. I knew that kind of danger; Columbia Heights is nothin'.
That's what I figured when I bought my condo at 16th and Columbia Rd., a 5 minute walk from the Columbia Heights Metro. I'd only used that stop on my morning commute, but my travels last Friday brought me to the steps of the subway platform at 2 AM. I walked a friend there on my way home, then headed toward my apartment building after parting ways.
Enroute, I approached two men lurking in the shadows, conversing in low tones before parting ways. I passed the first man and was fast approaching the second, walking in the same direction as me. He was a small man, with the wacky hair of a comedian counting on general craziness to compensate for a lack of good material. Within moments, we were walking abreast, and then...
"Hey man, what's goin' on?" he said, angling toward my left side. I bolted into the street, less fearful of the oncoming car than my new little friend. I struggled to summon some appropriate small talk, but he thankfully relieved me of the responsbility when the oncoming car veered away from us.
"I don't want to hurt you. Give me your wallet." He sounded like my accountant.
I checked him out as if assessing the attributes of a seventeen-year-old cheerleader, substituting my tits and ass scan with a quick search for guns and knives. I could only discern his fists, so, looking him dead in the eyes, I replied in the manner of a seventeen-year-old cheerleader: "Whatever." I wanted to give him a second chance to brandish his weapon. I could always give him my wallet later.
With this my foe abruptly changed tactics: "Can you give me a dollar?"
My database of incredulous put-downs provided numerous suitable responses, but in the end I chose the simplicity of Nancy Reagan's anti-drug campaign: "No." With this we were approaching the floodlights of 16th Street, so my friend, sensitive to bright lamps, receded back into the shadows, offering an olive branch before disappearing for good...
"No offense, ok?"
Referring back to my database, I shouted back: "Enjoy it while you can!"
My scream provided a satisfying release, but it didn't dispel my new suspicion that maybe, just maybe, this Columbia Heights place, beyond being a little dangerous, is nothing quite like the Mayberry I knew when I first moved to Washington.
"Watch yourself around the Columbia Heights Metro late at night." It had become a standard admonition among DC's new gentry, the pioneers too broke to live the downtown dream closer to areas suitable for The Gap and Ann Taylor. These were the folks hoping the successful turnarounds of the Logan Circle and U Street neighborhoods augured well for their new homes, in "transitional" zones called Mount Pleasant and Petworth, atop the lowlands to the south.
"It can be dangerous," they'd occasionally add, looking at me but also past me, as if I were purposefully blocking a street crime now in progress.
I considered myself immune to such thoughts - I'd moved to Washington nine years earlier, before the flood of homebuyers bouyed by the tech and then defense spending booms, and later insanely low interest rates, drove real estate prices through the roof. Back then, my neighbors were working class Latinos, hardscrabble non-profit types, and holdovers from DC's long gone era of prosperity. The streets of Adams Morgan were dirty, the bars dingy; out-of-towners, from heartland America and inside the Beltway, sniffed at the prospect of walking its sidewalks.
"What a shithole," they'd say. "Is it safe there?"
Of course it's safe, I thought. My housemates and I shared a crumbling a row house and strolled around town, at all hours, with an abandon familiar to Opie Taylor and the Mayberry crowd. Sure, we ran into some kooks now and then, but they were the eccentric kind, known for aggressive panhandling and not much else. And as they disappeared, replaced by upscale coffee shops and users of ubiquitous MP3 equipment, I thought wistfully of the early days, when I was an Urban Trendsetter.
Now the newcomers, those on the Northwest frontier, were complaining of their dangerous neighbors, sounding an awful lot like the suburbanites I disdained years before. Columbia Heights, dangerous? No more than the Adams Morgan of not-so-long ago. I knew that kind of danger; Columbia Heights is nothin'.
That's what I figured when I bought my condo at 16th and Columbia Rd., a 5 minute walk from the Columbia Heights Metro. I'd only used that stop on my morning commute, but my travels last Friday brought me to the steps of the subway platform at 2 AM. I walked a friend there on my way home, then headed toward my apartment building after parting ways.
Enroute, I approached two men lurking in the shadows, conversing in low tones before parting ways. I passed the first man and was fast approaching the second, walking in the same direction as me. He was a small man, with the wacky hair of a comedian counting on general craziness to compensate for a lack of good material. Within moments, we were walking abreast, and then...
"Hey man, what's goin' on?" he said, angling toward my left side. I bolted into the street, less fearful of the oncoming car than my new little friend. I struggled to summon some appropriate small talk, but he thankfully relieved me of the responsbility when the oncoming car veered away from us.
"I don't want to hurt you. Give me your wallet." He sounded like my accountant.
I checked him out as if assessing the attributes of a seventeen-year-old cheerleader, substituting my tits and ass scan with a quick search for guns and knives. I could only discern his fists, so, looking him dead in the eyes, I replied in the manner of a seventeen-year-old cheerleader: "Whatever." I wanted to give him a second chance to brandish his weapon. I could always give him my wallet later.
With this my foe abruptly changed tactics: "Can you give me a dollar?"
My database of incredulous put-downs provided numerous suitable responses, but in the end I chose the simplicity of Nancy Reagan's anti-drug campaign: "No." With this we were approaching the floodlights of 16th Street, so my friend, sensitive to bright lamps, receded back into the shadows, offering an olive branch before disappearing for good...
"No offense, ok?"
Referring back to my database, I shouted back: "Enjoy it while you can!"
My scream provided a satisfying release, but it didn't dispel my new suspicion that maybe, just maybe, this Columbia Heights place, beyond being a little dangerous, is nothing quite like the Mayberry I knew when I first moved to Washington.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Cuddly Yankees Tame Inflation, Sox
Those plucky Yankees have done it again! Cursed with a payroll that once dwarfed the national debt, these vagabonds, survivors of both the 1997 All-Star game and 2005 waiver wire, have overcome their rivals and now stand atop the American League East. Their improbable run, which has dampened the championship hopes of the mighty Orioles and Devil Rays, also threatens the reign of everyone's second-favorite lost cause (after Bill Clinton, natch), the Boston Red Sox. And while their lead of one game is not insurmountable, the Yankees, in their familiar underdog role, have captured the hearts of baseball fans throughout New York City, and even parts of New Jersey, prompting an unprecedented outpouring of support for the team, some say as far south as turnpike exit 7. Even George Steinbrenner, the always sensible owner of the team, is totally excited, unequivocally guaranteeing the safety of manager Joe Torre's job through October 2nd.
Alas, Red Sox Nation, unmoved by the Yankees' triumphant tale of perseverance and sacrifice, has vowed to derail New York's title hopes and deprive the country of the feel-good story it so badly needs. And thus, the stage is set: three games, the final weekend of the season. A morality play in which the forces of wholesome American goodness, the Pinstripers themselves, will face off against the rag-tag cavemen and ex-cons representing Boston. Although the result is by no means certain - there's no controlling the influence of self-serving Republican tricksters - Providence clearly favors the clean-cut Yankees over the dastardly Sox.
My prediction: Yanks take series, 2-1, win AL East.
Alas, Red Sox Nation, unmoved by the Yankees' triumphant tale of perseverance and sacrifice, has vowed to derail New York's title hopes and deprive the country of the feel-good story it so badly needs. And thus, the stage is set: three games, the final weekend of the season. A morality play in which the forces of wholesome American goodness, the Pinstripers themselves, will face off against the rag-tag cavemen and ex-cons representing Boston. Although the result is by no means certain - there's no controlling the influence of self-serving Republican tricksters - Providence clearly favors the clean-cut Yankees over the dastardly Sox.
My prediction: Yanks take series, 2-1, win AL East.
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