DC Going to Hell in a Handbasket

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up here. OLD 930 club was a death trap if a fire broke out, city was geberally unsafe and most parts were beyond dull. Downtown was a ghoatown unless you were really jnto Lernees discount and 1/2 priced wig stores. This isnt old versus new Times Square. There is no "old" atimes Square in DC. Pls do not.romanticize. You want Fugazi? Start a band!

OMG, those wig shops! All over 7th St NW area.

This is what DC had going for it:
The record shop on Conn Avenue by Dupont
"Food for Thought"
Drinking Age--18
"the Compliment Guy"
Sunshine, hippie who rain the fruit stand by Dupont metro
Kramer Books (still there)
Old Georgetown Mall (better than new big box complex)
Tracks Nightclub
I'm racking my brain here...

Education was a morass, crime was high, downtown was a boring, almost physically depressing wasteland (yes, wig shops), no parks and rec though you could walk through cigarette littered traffic circles and get offered Boat as a pre-teen, MLK Library was skeevy, ....

There are plenty of gritty places OP can hit. I don't think OP realizes that gentrification was mostly driven by the gay + artists + small, locally owned business community in areas like Adams Morgan. They didn't push out a vibrant, black jazz scene or whatnot (I've hard this said). They actually revived it. 14th and 16th street looked like Beirut when I was a kid (not swinging Parisian Beirut, but mid Civil War). The winos on boarded up doorways. Oh my...! I always felt like I was walking the gauntlet to catch the bus. And one of my elementary school classmates was shot in the butt crossing Park Road on the way to school. Yeah, "the good old days"

Sorry, should have said "Can still hit" . I seriously doubt that OP really seeks grit if he/she is complaining about gentrification changing the 'character' of the neighborhood. That means they already chose and choose to live + play in a less gritty area than a lot of the options.

[Anonymous]

He was compliment man, not compliment guy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He was compliment man, not compliment guy.

You're right! I think that should be an official city position. I'd trade a Councilmember - have a few in mind.

[Anonymous]

Another DC native here from the 80's on Cap Hill. I hear what you're saying but it's obvious you lived in a fancier area that had minor grittiness and not the hood. Come on over EOTR, it feels like Cap Hill east in the old days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another DC native here from the 80's on Cap Hill. I hear what you're saying but it's obvious you lived in a fancier area that had minor grittiness and not the hood. Come on over EOTR, it feels like Cap Hill east in the old days.

That's exactly what OP wants, "minor grit". A little locally sourced and upcycled crime and dirt for ambiance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about anyone else, but I despair at what I see in DC. I have lived here for 30 plus years. I find the gentrification is bringing things to DC I don't need or like and pushing things out I used to enjoy. I actually enjoyed the grittier, dirtier feel that I exisited when I arrived in 1984. Downtown was certainly much more alive, with a varietyof shops, four department stores, bookshops everywhere. Now, it's all cookie cutter chain stores. Locals who have lived here forever are being pushed out and have to fight with the gentrifiers who want to take away their parking for bike lanes or complain about homegrown art forms like loud go go music. I guess maybe I'm like my old New Yorker friend who liked the pre-Giluiani, pre-Disneyfied New York.

Last night I took a very long walk from Mt. Pleasant to downtown and noticed so many missing places. It was sad. And you still cannot get good pizza in this town.

We are in the middle of a pandemic OP. DC is changing, and obviously things are not great now...but it will change again when this is all over.

[Anonymous]

Yawn. If you want gritty, Baltimore is just 45 minutes away. Or even go to Wards 7&8. But you don’t really want gritty, you want a few stores you’re nostalgic about and none of the crime, poverty, and other crap that went with it.

[Anonymous]

We get it. You miss listening to the Pixies, hanging out high in Reno Park, smelling sex + candy, all that! Do you really miss the rest?
Welcome to middle age! Throw a rager; be the grit you seek!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up here. OLD 930 club was a death trap if a fire broke out, city was geberally unsafe and most parts were beyond dull. Downtown was a ghoatown unless you were really jnto Lernees discount and 1/2 priced wig stores. This isnt old versus new Times Square. There is no "old" atimes Square in DC. Pls do not.romanticize. You want Fugazi? Start a band!

OMG, those wig shops! All over 7th St NW area.

This is what DC had going for it:
The record shop on Conn Avenue by Dupont
"Food for Thought"
Drinking Age--18
"the Compliment Guy"
Sunshine, hippie who rain the fruit stand by Dupont metro
Kramer Books (still there)
Old Georgetown Mall (better than new big box complex)
Tracks Nightclub
I'm racking my brain here...

Education was a morass, crime was high, downtown was a boring, almost physically depressing wasteland (yes, wig shops), no parks and rec though you could walk through cigarette littered traffic circles and get offered Boat as a pre-teen, MLK Library was skeevy, ....

There are plenty of gritty places OP can hit. I don't think OP realizes that gentrification was mostly driven by the gay + artists + small, locally owned business community in areas like Adams Morgan. They didn't push out a vibrant, black jazz scene or whatnot (I've hard this said). They actually revived it. 14th and 16th street looked like Beirut when I was a kid (not swinging Parisian Beirut, but mid Civil War). The winos on boarded up doorways. Oh my...! I always felt like I was walking the gauntlet to catch the bus. And one of my elementary school classmates was shot in the butt crossing Park Road on the way to school. Yeah, "the good old days"

Over the Christmas holidays I was delivering food to many, many, many gritty parts of DC. I worked for a DC council member when Marion Barry was still a council member. He often asked us to go to events in Ward 8, and it seems as gritty now as it did then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another DC native here from the 80's on Cap Hill. I hear what you're saying but it's obvious you lived in a fancier area that had minor grittiness and not the hood. Come on over EOTR, it feels like Cap Hill east in the old days.

That's exactly what OP wants, "minor grit". A little locally sourced and upcycled crime and dirt for ambiance.

This made me giggle yesterday, and now I'm back for more. Thank you, PP!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just move to Baltimore. Real gritty there

This.

There’s plenty of random crime and drug addled zombies right up the road. Nothing stopping you from moving to Sandtown, Montgomery Park or Winchester. So much more authentic than Logan/DuPont, Eckington or Shaw.

[Anonymous]

I bet true locals in San Francisco, Seattle, Brooklyn, and many other heavily gentrified cities miss the way things once were like OP. I guess the only recommendation to OP would be to hope it’s cyclical and wait it out in hopes the boring, uncreative gentrifiers move on to the burbs.

[Anonymous]

I get it. I miss department stores and bookstores too. Blame amazon, not gentrification. Everything looks like an Apple store now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get it. I miss department stores and bookstores too. Blame amazon, not gentrification. Everything looks like an Apple store now.

I blame a little bit of NIMBYism- The Georgetown Mall redevelopment was kind of a disaster. Not that the mall was that charming to begin with, but the big box stores that replaced it lack all character. My understanding is the initial redevelopment vision was resisted for good reasons, but what they got was worse than it originally could have been. I'm a big fan of NIMBYism (I think residents should have a say in their neighborhoods) but that effort failed. I think their hearts were in the right places, it just boomeranged on them. Otherwise agree with the above. Shop local OP!

[Anonymous]

So I guess I shouldn't say I blame NIMBYism--yeah, I blame that what is commercially viable today is the big box. That's not really gentrification, that's a business model and consumer pattern.