I like the urban tradition of leaving books on the curb for strangers to carry off. To one like me who has built his library from cast-offs, secondhand stores, and less honorable means, there are few better surprises than finding abandoned stacks and a sign that reads, "Free Books."

That's just what I found this morning on Calvert Street NW. The collection was mostly political history and biography with a socialist bent, and bits of literature mixed in. I snatched most of the latter: Dostoevsky, Kundera, Woolf, Nietzsche, Plato, Solzhenitsyn, Nick Hornby.

Try to call me selfish; I call myself struggling. At $7.50 an hour, I can't pay full price at Kramerbooks, Olsson's, or even most of the secondhand stores, which usually overvalue their stock (Letters To a Young Poet was $6 for one battered edition. That's an 80-page book.). And given that whoever owned this collection was strong on worker's rights, I assume that person will not mind my taking my fill. The books may still be out there. They're on the north side of Calvert just east of the Ellington Bridge.

With all this talk of racism in the gentrifying parts of town, I thought I'd share this anecdote.

On Tuesday, I interviewed a middle-aged black man in Columbia Heights. He was angry about construction that had encroached on his mother's land, and I mention his race because it is relevant. This man expressed racial attitudes that were in step with the policies of a certain Western country between 1933 and 1945.

As we stood in his backyard and looked at the construction, he intimated that the Jews wanted to take his mother's house. Of one of the persons involved, he said: "She's a member of B'nai B'rith. You got me, man? You got me? Yeah. Member of B'nai B'rith."

I took his story with more than a spoonful of salt. But just because I'm a careful reporter, I checked with a Jewish friend to see if she and her acquaintances were hatching such a plot. "I haven't heard any plans like that," she said. She did assure me, though, that the Jewish Conspiracy to Take Over the World was still holding regular meetings. "We're about to have a press conference," she said.

My friend is from the North, so she's quick to spot racism. Since I'm from East Texas, it takes me a while to notice, even when racism is leering down at me in form of a loud man with booze on his breath. I grew up with this stuff: Confederate flags as makeshift curtains, prolific use of the N-word by white men, a Bible-class teacher who said whites and blacks shouldn't mix. ("It's bad for the children," he told me when I was 10 or 11.) In coming to D.C., however, I thought that urban blacks might be less racist than the whites down South. After all, the grandfathers of those Klansmen who marched in my town never had to get hosed or go to jail for their rights.

Illusions, farewell.

Back in Columbia Heights, I was hoping that the angry man's 80-year-old mother would offer me some faith in people. Not a chance. She said, with a hiss, that white people were the root of her troubles. One of her neighbors, who was white, made a nervous joke over the fence. She let loose on him: "You come out way after I was here! I been here since 1953! You come down here 'bout four years ago!"

I wish the story ended there, but it doesn't. As I was walking away, the man offered to bribe me. "You do this story. I take care of you," he said. "I get you paid."

In April, thousands of cherry trees on the banks of the Potomac will open their petals.

Sponsored by Target.

This sign at Florida Avenue and T Street NW stood under a tarp until Friday, when DDOT director Emeka Moneme and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham unveiled it for a photo op. Nothing new in any of that. But the sign, for some reason, had to be erected twice. "I watched them install the thing once, as I made my coffee, and by the time I got home that night it was gone," writes Puja Telikicherla, whose house is nearby. "I watched them put it up again, last week." DDOT spokersperson Erik Linden says he was aware of only one installation.

As a resident, I'm a little concerned about the impact on Capitol Hill if the Old Naval Hospital were to get back its fence.

I mean, how would the guys in big coats sleep on the grounds and stare at passers-by? The neighborhood wouldn't be the same.

Woman: "I'm gonna just forge his signature."
Clerk: "What? You can't do that."
Woman: "It won't be nothin' but this."

On Feb. 19, 16-year-old Brittany Wright was boarding a Metrobus in Foggy Bottom. She set the brakes of her wheelchair while the driver prepared to turn on the lift that would hoist Wright into the bus. "Like, the next thing I know I'm flipped over on the ground," Wright says. "I flipped over and hurt my back really bad, and I'm still in a lot of pain, like, a lot of pain."

Wright landed on her 19-year-old sister, Geneva James, who lost consciousness. Paramedics arrived. James was bruised, but Wright's pain remains. Their mother, Racshell Wright-Jones, says Metro never even called to apologize. "It could have been a situation where they had their necks broke and their heads bust wide open because of negligence," she says. "Geneva, she's still walking with a little limp....With Brittany, you can't even touch her back." Community nonprofit Bread for the City is trying to put the family in touch with a lawyer to recover the costs for treatment.

Wright alleges that the driver was in a hurry and pressed the button without checking that the chair was secure. Metro spokesperson Joanne Ferreira denies the driver was at fault. "Our understanding is that it's the customer's responsibility, and it's a very unfortunate incident, and we're very sorry it happened," says Ferreira. She adds that Metro didn't call the family because its report on the incident wasn't finished; she says Wright-Jones will hear from the agency soon.

The Brickskeller, 2/26, 10:56 p.m.:

A mouse runs through the dining room and hops in the fake fireplace. No one else notices.

New sign at D.C. Superior Court entrance: "Please!! Do not bring any weapons"

It's Black History Month, and down at the D.C. Superior Court's small-claims branch, photographs of nine notable African-Americans grace the records-room wall:

• Macon B. Allen, first licensed black lawyer (1845)
• Charlotte Ray, first black female lawyer, and first woman admitted to the D.C. Bar (1872)
• Bass Reeves, first black U.S. deputy marshal west of the Mississippi (1875)
• Samuel J. Battle, first black patrolman in New York (1911)
• Charles Hamilton Houston, first black editor on the Harvard Law Review (1922)
• Jane Matilda Bolin, first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School (1931) and receive a judicial appointment (1939)
• William Henry Hastie, first black federal magistrate (1937)
• Thurgood Marshall, first black Supreme Court justice (1967), and...
• Barack Obama, first black president of the Harvard Law Review (1990)

Courtroom 315 yesterday was full of middle-aged white people in woolly sweaters, bright scarves, and peace-sign T-shirts. These were the protesters arrested at the Capitol in September, facing their first day of trial. Since they were representing themselves in a large group, Chief Judge Rufus G. King III had to keep explaining that testifying and asking a question are different things.

For instance, one man's question to a Capitol Police officer began, "Wasn't the gathering of nonviolent peace activists that was gathered in opposition of an illegal war that has cost thousands of lives..." and trailed on 'til it hit the word "peaceful." He was trying to ask, "Was it peaceful?" But King had to untangle that one for the cop. When the same defendant used the phrase "quagmire in Iraq," the bowtied Reagan appointee cut him off. "I'm gonna ask you to ask the legally relevant questions at this stage," King said. "You can get into the reasons that you were there later."

Such instructions were the real business of the trial. Over the hour and a half that I watched, no one sparred with the major facts. The characterization was what mattered: Was it peaceful? Was it for a good cause? Did a line of a people singing and reading scripture really pose a threat? The two cops, stern and anxious, played foil to the idealists. "Being loud in a public building is not peaceful," one officer said. And said Lt. Peter Demas, "We don't allow sitting in any area where there isn't a chair."

All this was enough to make King raise his eyebrow as high as he could cock it. When defendant Michelle Grisé asked a question, the prosecution objected. King overruled; she could continue her question. But Grisé still thought she had to prove a point. "My concern, your honor, is," she said. King stopped her. He stuttered, "You...you...you won!"

Judge Gerald Fisher ruled last week that convicted slumlord David Nuyen has broken his promises to get out of real estate. As part of a 2001 plea agreement, Nuyen agreed to sell all of his holdings; Fisher ruled that he hasn't. The ruling means Nuyen now will face all 2,368 charges that were dropped in 2001. If convicted, he could serve 90 days on each count.

That's 213,120 days—almost 584 years.

Nuyen maintains that he was never really guilty in the first place. He plea-bargained, he says, because he didn't have time to fight the charges. Now he welcomes them. “I have a strong case. I like to have a chance to prove I am innocent,” he says.

Nuyen has a well-recorded history of ignoring repairs. He even wrote a book on his Scroogelike methods. But he lays the blame for his crumbling buildings on the tenants. About one building in Southeast: “It's like the headquarters of drug people.…I can't do [repairs] because of drugs there. If I go in there, they're gonna kill me.”

It's still unlikely Nuyen will be sentenced to spend the better part of a millennium behind bars. “If he's found guilty, what's gonna happen? I don't know,” said Robert DeBerardinis, assistant attorney general. “You get convicted, there are only two things that happen. You get probation or you go to jail.”

In Nuyen's case, though, he says, it's clear that “probation doesn't work.”

Convicted slumlord David Nuyen has been trying to show he's reformed. At age 70, he claims to have turned over the family business to his 23-year-old son, and he's poised to move back to his native Vietnam. “I want to get out. From the bottom of my heart, I want to get out. I'm tired of it,” he says. “I just want to be quiet and read books.”

There's just one thing keeping him: his continuing legal problems.

A plea bargain in 2001 required him to sell his properties in D.C. and Maryland, but he still owns two buildings in Brightwood that he wants to sell as condos. The building's mostly Spanish-speaking tenants had the chance to buy the building, but Nuyen posted notices only in English.

Rather than lose their homes, the families sued. A D.C. Superior Court judge ruled on Jan. 24 that Nuyen's sales were illegal.

“For now, the good news is that our clients will not be tossed out of the building,” says Mark Patton of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which filed the suit with community nonprofit Bread for the City. “It would have been nice if the city had been paying attention.”

Nuyen was facing 2,368 charges when he took his initial plea bargain. Tenants had fought rodents, contracted lead poisoning, and been hurt in a ceiling collapse before he pleaded guilty. Because he still appears to be breaking his plea agreement, the city could reopen his criminal case—a move which is under consideration, says Tracy Traci Hughes, spokesperson for the D.C. Attorney General's office.

Nuyen, who wrote a book that in part explains how he cheated his plea agreement, maintains a sunny disposition. “If they reopen the case, it be great, because I be clear completely,” he says. “I hope they gonna reopen the case so that I clear my name.”

Safeway ordered a new fleet of shopping carts for its store at 17th and Corcoran Streets NW last year. The company paid a little less than $100 apiece for carts smaller and easier to handle than their forerunners. But they weren't all fitted with the security system that makes the wheels lock when they pass a boundary. So in the last few months, at least 17 carts have disappeared from the “Soviet Safeway.”

“The manager told me, anecdotally, that some customers have seen ‘em in apartment buildings, or that some customers have said they're good for laundry,” says Safeway spokesperson Craig Muckle.

Some of those customers live in the R Street Apartments a few blocks away at 15th and R Streets. One resident says he often sees two of the carts in front of the building when he goes to work before dawn; they're always gone when he returns. Another man says that neighborhood kids and homeless people claim the carts for their own. “They ain't no adults out there stealin’ no shoppin’ carts,” he says.

Resident Andrea White has spotted a couple of the carts herself. “I heard they all over D.C.,” she says. “Somebody been takin’ them things.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday Friday, we run down what's going on in local Internet discussion groups.

ustreetnews
bgsmith122 is fed up with gang shootings, and he is almost as fed up with superficial police work. Despite a pair of homicides in the neighborhood, he writes, the cops aren't doing much to make the neighborhood safe. They haven't checked out a tip on a car that drug dealers were using, and they haven't come near to ending “this little ‘gang war.'” They have, however, put up spotlights. “The lights do NOTHING but push the crime one one block away in every direction,” he writes. One went up 7th and Q Streets NW, but three drug deals happened nearby without interference, the poster reports.

TakomaDC
The Lamond Recreation Center has been open for only four months, but shawn_mc_carthy dropped by and found the doors locked. A sign read, “Closed Until Further Notice.” “This does not sound like a small thing,” he writes. “'Until further notice’ has a certain permanence to it.…Also, I've noticed that the fitness room has had a broken, out-of-order weight machine since October, and I've watched dirt pile up under and around the Cardio equipment without a thorough cleaning for many weeks.” ginadouglas replies that she heard something was wrong with the gym floor. Alonzo Patterson of the Department of Parks and Recreation confirms the rumor. He doesn't say when the center will reopen.

HillcrestDC
Thieves are into remodeling: hbv25_kathy hired workers to fix up her house. When they began carrying in their tools, a chop saw and two hammers vanished from the truck.