update on operation: rename blog

well, checking out the poll from last week, eckington has a slight lead over brookland at this point, with h street being the only other one jumping out from the pack.

whoever voted for park view/pleasant plains, i have to say your neighborhood looks really tempting after this saturday. there were two houses on warder street that really caught my eye. eckington, of course, has a lot of potential, and i saw an interesting house in ledroit park that might fall in my price range, which was shocking. i thought everything there would be too expensive, and didn't include it in the poll.

still have a lot to check out, including some stuff in truxton circle and shaw (yeah, more places that didn't get listed in the poll). i'm finding more potential in the pricer neighborhoods that i thought i would, which really gives me hope.

ask the guys who hang out at 1st and seaton why they disrespect our neighborhood

quick note: i'm just heading out the door to the february shaw neighborhood clean up. this morning when i woke up, i looked out the window, and one of the guys who always is hanging around on this corner was just finishing eating and drinking something.

he looked left, looked right, and when he was sure no one was watching him, tossed his garbage on the ground. then, he got up, walked over to the street drain, and tossed his bottle in it, ensuring it a safe journey to the anacostia river.

the kicker is that there are two garbage cans on the corner (which this guy usually leans on to watch traffic and women go by), and he couldn't take the effort to actually throw the garbage in one of those cans.

this is why we can't keep the neighborhood clean. people like these guys just don't give a damn.

shaw neighborhood clean up this saturday at 10:30

this is 440 rhode island avenue nw, which is right next to where we're going to meet saturday morning at 10:30 a.m. for the first of this year's shaw neighborhood monthly clean ups. i've written about this lot a couple of times before. the owners have done a generally crappy of job of keeping the lot clean, and have also had a hard time keeping the fence around the property from eating up the sidewalk.

well, for some reason, most of the fence completely disappeared yesterday. is it because we're going to be cleaning up their property for them? not that that would be a terribly bad thing, but hopefully this is really just a sign that the owners are finally going to do something with this prime lot other than let it be a dumping ground.

see you saturday at 10:30 at 5th and rhode island!

more watha t. daniel demolition

just a couple more pictures from this morning of the bunker being torn down. they're spraying the building with water to keep the dust down as the heavy equipment tears into the building:


check out the mural of the leaning tower of pisa on the second floor wall that's about to bite the dust!

new trees in bloomingdale

wow, it looks like the ufa is already out planting trees for this season. i figured early february was kind of early, but, given the way that the local climate is probably permanently screwed up, i suppose an earlier planting season isn't such a strange thing.

these trees are on the 100 block of seaton, near the corner with 2nd and rhode island nw.

they got the maps wrong at DCA

here's a little geographic nerdiness for you. i was waiting at the luggage claims at DCA last weekend, and i snapped these two pictures of the map of the airport terminals:


notice anything weird about them? the first one shows the airport correctly, but the second one is a mirror image of how the airport is actually laid out. the old-fashioned A terminal is hanging off the wrong end of the airport in the second map.

way to mess that one up, DCA. maybe next time, you should hire a better cartographer to make your map. i wonder where one could find a decent cartographer in this town?!??

i wish every day was super fat tuesday!

there's one reason i'd like to see multiple things that distract everyone in DC in the evenings every day...

empty whole foods!

i walked into the p street whole foods around 6 this evening, and for the first time in memory, there was no one in there! all of the usual yuppies must have been out watching election returns or flashing other yuppies for beads, because the store was dead. i couldn't believe i could choose from multiple check-out lanes with no one waiting in line. it was like heaven!

could we please have super fat tuesday every day?

update on the pop-up from hell

well, prince of petworth beat me to this today, but i was out this afternoon poking around town in this amazing, unseasonable warmth. got a couple pictures of the horrendous pop-up on p street just east of north capitol that i chronicled here earlier. suffice it to say that the one thing i hoped for (the addition is made to look like it really should be part of the house architecturally) just ain't happening.





not. even. freakin'. close.

ugh.

help me rename the blog

now, the thing is, you don't REALLY get to pick a new name for my blog, but you can vote for a big thing that would influence a new name for the blog. here's how:

last year, i posted about why i named this blog bloomingdale (for now), and i said that i was starting to look for a house to buy. well, it turned out that i didn't have enough to afford anything in this town (shocker, eh?). nearly a year has passed, and in that year, i got a new, higher-paying job, and the real estate market has cooled off a bit, so i'm out on the prowl again.

this is where y'all come in.

i'm looking all over the place, and finding there is stuff that falls in my range in more than a few neighborhoods. there are a few that i'd consider moving to, and i've listed them in the poll below. i'd love to stay in bloomingdale, but there just aren't any single family houses in my range (i'm not interested in a condo). i take that back, i've seen one in my range, but i don't think i'm going to have what it takes to single-handedly gut a house!

so give me your opinion. what neighborhood should i try to buy a house in, and leave a comment about the blog name if you'd like. use the other category if you want to make a pitch for another part of town. maybe bloomingdale (for now) will become rosedale (for good).

walter reed shuttle to the white house?

my office window downtown looks over 16th street between l and m. every friday morning, police block traffic so a few buses with walter reed logos on the side can get through southbound unimpeded by traffic. now, i'm curious, what are these buses doing? i can't find any information about this with a cursory glance around the web. are injured soldiers being brought down to the white house for press availability?

please tell me if i'm wrong about this, but if injured troops are being paraded in front of the cameras for propaganda purposes, i think that's pretty low. hopefully, these shuttles are for something less sinister.