i'm all for a clean sidewalk, but it's 11:17 p.m. and someone is out front of bloomingdale liquors with a damned leafblower blowing off the sidewalk. AT 11:17 P.M.!!!!! and now he's doing the whole block! please, tell me that NCMS didn't hire someone to do this...
ooh, ooh, i do, i do!
so, here's the best i can give for now. the latest rumor that i've heard (from a pretty reliable source) is that the purple space on 1st street next to the DC mini mart is being looked at by a gym of some sort.
then, in the big dog, the northwest corner of 1st and seaton, the latest rumor is that a coffee shop could go in. now, don't get me wrong, coffee shops seem to be good things, but with big bear and windows serving up coffee on either end of "bloomingdale's downtown", do we have the market for a third? of course, there ARE four places selling beer within a few feet of the corner of 1st and rhode island, so you never know...
ok, here's a question for everyone out there paying attention. there is a house that i've lived across the street from for over a year now (1823 1st St. NW) and i'm 99% sure that no one lives there. no one ever goes in or out of the place, birds fly in and out of holes in the facade, and it's far and away the most popular hang out place day in and out for the local drunks or people who just seem to have nothing better to do. (for example, for the last hour an elderly man has been on the stoop drinking, holding an extensive conversation with himself, and generally doing a good impression of someone who should be institutionalized in a city that has a good system to care for the mentally handicapped).
now, i was curious who really owns this place that i've seen used as a public restroom and a good place to hide and shoot up some drugs, so i went to the DC citizen atlas and went to the "real property" link in the upper right. i punched in the address, and found that an L. G. McKinnie owns the property, and that person's mailing address is 3044 Pennsylvania Ave. SE. so, i looked up that house, and found that it's owned by El S. Zulu. so now i'm confused. are those two people related somehow? and which one should i try to get in touch with to let them know my concerns that their house is not the safest or nicest place on the block.
and here's the kicker: after looking at the detailed information on the 1st Street property HERE, it appears that L. G. McKinnie is claiming the homestead exemption on an empty property. that can't be legal, can it?
UPDATE: looks like that link to the detailed tax information is a URL that times out, so it doesn't work anymore. going to this page will allow you to search for the records.
head over to the DC Citizen Atlas Real Property webpage, and you'll see a new feature (at least, it'll be new if you haven't looked things up on the page before). when you type in an address, and get to the map page that looks like the image to the right, you'll see that this guide now lets you differentiate between private, federal, DC, and tax exempt properties at a glance. this color-coding system is new, as the webpage used to just include the same color dot for all properties.
now you can see if that abandoned house on your block is owned by the district, or by some organization that doesn't have to pay taxes, so they might not care if it just sits there as a blight on your neighborhood.
at least the signs are back up. the most important thing though, the library is STILL NOT OPEN.
please, please, please, DCPL, prove me wrong. get the temporary library in shaw opened soon. i've been telling people it'll never happen, and these pictures don't make me feel that no one is paying attention to the doublewide that you've parked in the shaw junior high rec. area...
the sign has been falling down a little at a time for days now, and it's just hanging there, waiting to blow away with the next strong wind. at least, previously, people could tell this was supposed to be a library, now it just looks like a construction trailer.
can you see the white line in the middle of this picture? (the one running behind the "CLOSED" sign.) those are fluorescent lights on in the "library". i couldn't hear any generators, so it looks like the electricity is hooked up. so what's the hold up? when are we going to get our library?
i don't know if other streets in the neighborhood have had the parking lanes striped off from the travel lanes on the road, but seaton surely has--on both the unit and 100 blocks. i've been too busy to get around to look at other streets, but have others seen the same on their streets? it kind of seems like a waste of effort, if you ask me.
check this out. a story about windows in today's washington post style section. there's a video where they interview mr. abeje as well. scott's bloomingdale email gets a mention, as well as lots of talk about gentrification, neighborhood change (the stuff you'd expect in a story like this).
