Ode to My Hood

One of DC’s homegrown daughters waxes nostalgic about her ever-changing city.

By Shaun Rodriguez

I am a native Washingtonian. Really. People never believe me when I tell them that detail of my history. Probably because I don’t have a stereotypical DC accent. You know which one. That hybrid of Southern drawl and lethargy that transforms Sharon into "Shern" and Eric into "Erk." The older I get the more I realize how rare we DC lifers are. I personally think we are in the running for the category of rarest group of people on earth right up there with hydrophobic scuba divers and Pigmy super models. Almost everyone here is a Washingtonian via some place else and those who were born here made the mass exodus to Maryland and Virginia back in the late ‘80s and early ’90s when, as Dave Chappelle so eloquently put it, "crack was going on." Now I have a

I have seen DC through the lean years where, due to controversy, scandal, and flagrant mismanagement, the city looked and acted less like the nation’s capital and more like the nation‘s eyesore. I have watched DC outgrow such monikers as Dodge City and the Murder Capital of the World. I have watched the District transcend a period when the many abandoned buildings in the city were autographed by the infamous Cool Disco Dan. And now, as we enter what seems like DC ‘s Golden Age, I marvel at how aesthetically far we have come as a city and the plans for a luminous future.

Being a native Washingtonian, I have had the pleasure -- or displeasure, depending on the circumstance -- of living in every quadrant of this fair city at least twice. I am a self-proclaimed connoisseur of DC neighborhoods. I find Northeast quaint and charming but too suburban. Southeast and Southwest are beautiful but lack convenience. Admittedly, I’m a little biased. After all, I’m a city girl. If I can’t look out of my front door and see a 7-11 on one corner and a Starbucks on the other, I break out into hives. Having said that, there is only one area that any self-respecting city girl would call home in DC: Northwest. And of all the streets in all of the neighborhoods in Northwest, this city girl decided to call 14th and U streets her home.

When I moved to the 14th and U St. corridor three years ago, the winds of change had begun to blow. Pockets of development were everywhere though the neighborhood as a whole was still reasonably scruffy. I thought to myself "This is great. It’s about time this neighborhood got a makeover."

However, nothing would prepare me for the full-fledged onslaught of progress that is happening everywhere I turn in my neighborhood today. Condos to the left of me. Over-priced lofts to the right. Fresh Fields in front of me. It’s enough to make your head spin. Everyday another building is being leveled to the ground so that a bigger, better, and yes, more expensive one can take its place.

How a neighborhood transforms from a dilapidated, crime-ridden has-been into one of the hottest addresses in city baffles the hell out of me. I remember a time when people wouldn’t come into the U Street area without pepper spray and full riot gear. A time when the only nightlife consisted of a dark alley and a controlled substances.

Now, streets lined with chic restaurants, night clubs, and home furnishing stores bustle with activity until well after midnight. People are paying upwards of $1,400 a month for a one bedroom apartment in the glass and steel leviathans that pop up every nanosecond or so. And now, a well-known U St. bakery is charging $40 bucks for a cake. What a world.

But I’m not complaining. Being a luxury person myself, I enjoy the many conveniences my current digs afford me, even if I can scarcely afford my current digs. Change is inevitable but positive change is a miracle. And though many may disagree with me, the 14th and U St. metamorphosis really is positive change if it is wrapped in a healthy dose of capitalism. So l enjoy DC’s time in the sun. For if history has taught us anything, it has taught us that storm clouds are always lurking somewhere in the horizon.

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