Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, Justin wrote Iceland, a blog about his band’s American tour. Justin isn’t on tour anymore, but Iceland continues, twice a week, on City Desk.

“I fear I have a hardware-related problem,” I explained to the owner of my local hardware store. “Subcategory: plumbing.”

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“My house is equipped with a, ahem, main, ahem, hot water, ahem, delivery line,” I continued. “My terminology is incorrect, but you understand my meaning?”

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“And the small, ahem, wheel that turns this, ahem, delivery line on and off has gone missing,” I explained.

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“Because this wheel is gone, I fear that, in the event of a water emergency, I will not be able to, ahem, turn off the water that flows to this, ahem, main water-delivery valve,” I explained. “My terminology is incorrect, but you understand my meaning?”

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“So, my question to you, sir: Do you sell the replacement, ahem, wheels that, ahem, turn this water-delivery line on and off?” I paused. “Do you understand?” The hardware-store owner nodded and walked to the back of the store. I followed.

“You know, Justin,” the hardware-store owner began. I blinked—I was not aware that this local businessperson knew my name. “I sense that you are reluctant to call a plumber to complete a small job like this one. After all, such a job may be difficult to do on one’s own, but not so extensive as to require an expensive contractor.”

“Correct,” I replied.

“However, you should know that you are part of a community,” the hardware-store owner explained. “This store is founded on this community principle. Thus, I have the names and numbers of many handypersons who would be happy to complete small jobs like this one at a fraction of what a professional plumber would charge. I do not give these numbers out willy-nilly. However, we know you and are here to help you. Would you like one of these numbers?”

“I am speechless,” I replied. I considered the hardware-store owner’s generous offer. I have become an insider at this hardware store, I thought. Thus, I am privy to insider information. But what of the anonymous householder/tenant in need of home repair? Where does this invisible man turn for advice? No specialized list of handyperson numbers awaits this tragic figure. He or she is God’s lonely man or woman. He or she must go it alone. Such is the problem of community—communities are islands and must remain exclusive to remain viable. By definition, as the community walks, it rolls up its red carpet behind itself. Will our society ever escape this ubiquitous, vicious, inescapable game of who-knows-who?

“Do you want one of the numbers?” the hardware-store owner repeated.

“Thank you,” I replied. “I think I will take one of those numbers.”

Thanks go out to the good people over at Local First D.C. for inviting City Desk out to their first-anniversary party. At Busboys & Poets there was chicken-on-a-stick, falafel, fruit, pitas, hummus, but more importantly, there were stickers!

No, no. More importantly, there were owners of a bunch of D.C. businesses and staffers with the LEDC (Latino Economic Development Corporation), including our new friends: Kate Drew, Leda Hernandez, and Daniel Perra (pictured), who explained the concept: LEDC is is incubating, like very small chickens, the Local First campaign, now in more than 50 communities. Well, they explained it a little differently, but this is a blog, people. We have to fun it up.

In D.C., there are, as of today, 72 members, most in Ward 1, about half of them restaurants and cafes and the rest of them retail and services (salons, yoga, etc.), according to the campaign’s coordinator, Ayari De la Rosa of LEDC. What they get for their membership, in addition to Super Friends who can help stop the world from becoming Wal-Mart, are group rates for expensive things like advertising, marketing, insurance, and utilities. A group of 10 of them actually went in together to switch their electricity to wind energy through Clean Currents and saved 9 percent on costs, says De la Rosa. Go wind!

And not only that: Go D.C. Dept. of Housing and Community Development! The department contributed enough to the LEDC to pay De la Rosa’s salary so that she could get the campaign off the ground. “So many people think D.C. is doing nothing to help small businesses, and of course they could do more, but they’re supporting us on this and we hope they will continue,” she says.

Want to find out more? Of course you do! Read The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, by D.C.’s own Michael Shuman, an economist and lawyer who’s the go-to on going local. But don’t get it on Amazon, dude. Walk your ass over to Olsson’s.

Hear Mount Pleasant, a group that has been fighting to bring live music back to the neighborhood’s bars and restaurants, and its foe, the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance, will both be holding live concerts in Lamont Park this Sunday. In a press release, Hear Mount Pleasant’s Natalie Avery calls it a “weird showdown.”

The concerts will begin two hours apart. Hear Mount Pleasant will present “Black and Latino voices…to speak about neighborhood, identity, race,” according to its Web site, at 4, and will feature *Lilo Gonzales* of Machetres. The Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance’s band, Cheverly Hot Noodle Concern, part of its Music in the Park series, will begin playing at 6.

A couple weeks ago, Hear Mount Pleasant, which aims to promote arts and culture in the neighborhood, hosted a Lamont Park performance of The Evens, and a few months ago, they sponsored a showing of Footloose at Marx Cafe to publicize their cause. The group wants to replace voluntary agreements, brokered by the establishments and the MPNA, with agreements that permit live music, poetry readings, karaoke and dancing.

Late Monday evening, while lounging on the couch, perusing the Internet, drinking a beer, and watching Stanley Cup Playoff hockey on my 37-inch LCD HD television all from the comfort of my own bedroom, I found myself reading this ABC News report, entitled, “Men Say Bye to the Bar, Hang Out in a ‘Manspace.’”

Sports bars and pool halls used to be the haunts of men craving time alone.

But now, some men are creating guys-only spaces in their own homes.

Tired of being sidelined to the neighborhood pub, basement or garage, they’re creating chic retreats for their enjoyment—and no one else’s.

These spaces include an old water cistern in California, a backyard barn outside Boston, a room in a Harlem apartment—each different, each a “manspace.”

Of the many supposed “manspaces” ABC News would have you believe populate the United States at an ever-increasing rate, the article goes on to specifically mention, uh, the same old water cistern in California, backyard barn outside Boston, and Harlem apartment room mentioned in the beginning. Which is not actually all that impressive a list. It’s the last of those three that I find the most disconcerting, however: Sure, an entirely separate building completely redesigned and/or refurnished with one man’s manly needs in mind could, arguably, make a case for “totally awesome, brah!” But a fucking room in an apartment that somehow climbs above the status of “study,” “den,” or “hobby-area” to earn the dubious distinction of “manspace?” In my book, that screams of Grade A-level douchebaggery. And yet, it’s a crime that—after casting a quick glance around my immediate surroundings—I now begin to worry is one of which I am guilty.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mount Pleasant activist Laurie Collins has never had a problem taking on the merchants in her neighborhood. As head of the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance, she spearheaded a successful effort to ban the sale of single servings of booze in the area and was willing to take on anyone who opposed the idea down at the Alcohol Beverage Control Board.

Her activism was understandable, given that the home she’s lived in for more than two decades on 17th Street NW is within earshot of the main drag.

So when a new neighborhood group was organized with the aim of lifting a ban on live music in Mount Pleasant, Collins wasn’t about to stay out of the fight. Live music is banned under another Collins initiative—voluntary agreements signed by bars and restaurants several years ago. She plans to protect those agreements.

No one was really surprised by the biting Collins money quote in reference to the live music proponents that appeared in a recent story by Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher. “I will be damned if people outside my neighborhood come in and do something that affects my property value,” she told the Post.

There’s only one little problem: Collins doesn’t live in the Mount Pleasant right now.

She’s a renter in a Cleveland Park apartment complex just down Porter Street NW. For the past few months she’s lived up the hill from her old neighborhood. “I am separated from my husband, which causes me to be temporarily away from Mount Pleasant,” she says.

Collins has delivered the “temporary” change of address report to the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance board. “They have absolutely no problem with it,” says Collins.

Her desire for full disclosure apparently did not extend to Fisher, who had previously interviewed Collins in her Mount Pleasant abode.

“I am not a hypocrite,” says Collins. “I’m not an outsider, so I can’t be a hypocrite….My body may not be there, but my head and my heart are there in Mount Pleasant,” she says.

Chuck Caspari enjoys camping: Each year, the 42-year-old property manager treks to someplace like Assateague or New Jersey to reconnect with the great outdoors. But Caspari has traditional notions when it comes to what constitutes a campground, so when his wife alerted him on Oct. 29 that there was a tent on top of their Mount Pleasant row house, he grabbed his kid’s T-ball bat before going to check it out.

Standing astride his Kenyon Street NW abode, Caspari saw that there was indeed a two-man blue-and-gray North Face tent pitched on his new tin roof. “I immediately thought it was some homeless guy up there,” he says. “We get weird people. I’ll be out on the front porch having a smoke or something, and I get all sorts of strange people coming up and bumming smokes off me.”

But the tent was empty: There was only a foam mat and a wet sleeping bag inside; a heavy motorcycle lock was weighing the setup down. Caspari collapsed the tent—”The roof, I draw the line”—and deposited it into the alley.

Now he’s trying to crack the problem of its provenance. “I walked around the block a couple times, and I couldn’t figure out where somebody would be able to climb up, much less with a tent and camping gear,” he says. But just in case there was a secret trail, he’s decided to reinforce his attic hatch with a couple of eye hooks.

Some Mount Pleasant residents have been waiting since the late ‘90s for the city to repair sidewalks pocked by tree roots, utilities maintenance, and time. But when the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) finally got around to replacing the walks on the 3100–3300 blocks of 19th Street NW this past summer, residents weren’t sure they wanted their new sidewalks to look so new.

According to advisory neighborhood commissioner Jack McKay, for years the sidewalks in this historic district were a beautiful but expensive composite of pebbles. “The new stuff,” McKay says of DDOT’s standard gray cement, “is very unattractive.”

When residents went to DDOT expressing their concern, the agency came up with an easy solution: put a dye into the cement mix, making a color it deems “pebble.” (No additional pebbles are in the mix, though.)

McKay says the new/old sidewalks look so good that his constituents on nearby streets are begging for the 19th Street blend. But that won’t happen anytime soon, says DDOT spokesperson Erik Linden. “It’s not something we would adopt for general usage at this point in time, but we would explore doing it again in the future if residents responded positively,” he says in an e-mail.

Residents on 19th Street, though, are enjoying their custom cement. “It’s easier on the eyes,” McKay says. “It blends better with the grass and gardens.”

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

DC_MD_VA_Rap_list
One man’s fatal impaling by sea creature is, of course, another man’s marketing opportunity. On the always lively DC/MD/VA Rap List, rapper Whitefolkz sends out a message with the subject line: “R.I.P Steve Irwin ‘Crocodile Hunter,’” which turns out to be more a plug for his new album than a tribute to the fallen Aussie naturalist. “THIS IS JUST ANOTHER REASON WHY YOU SHOULD 6UY THE NEW WHITEFOLKZ AL6UM, THE WAY THAT I LIVE, INSTEAD OF PLAYING WITH STINGRAYS,” the rapper writes. “THE WHITEFOLKZ CD HAS SHARP AND ON POINT LYRICS 6UT THE CD IS NOT POISONOUS. SAVE AN AUSTRALIAN, 6UY THE WHITEFOLKZ CD.”

MountPleasantDC
When Eric posts to the list wondering if there’s any chance of recovering a laptop stolen from his apartment, neighborhood resident Karen responds that she has seen Eric’s computer—thinking it was hers, a few cops tried to give it to her a few nights ago after someone tried to rob her. She adds that the thief was apprehended by her neighbors, but she decided not to press charges because “he said he was MS-13 and I don’t want a gang pissed at me.” Turns out, the laptop is indeed Eric’s—he finds it down at the 3rd District station, but Mt. P residents were less interested in Karen’s good Samaritan lost-and-found services than her complete wuss-out. Says neighbor Marty: “I represent the Harvard Street Hellraisers, an affiliation without the PR machine that makes MS so well known, but we are pretty tough in our own right. We’d like take a look around your place and see if there’s anything we’d like, hopefully you will grant us the same immunity from prosecution that you’ve extended to MS-13. After all, I’m sure you don’t want us to be mad at you either,” he writes, with this addendum: “please note there is no such group as the Harvard street hellraisers and that this is sarcasm and not a threat.”

TakomaDC
Everything in moderation—including e-list moderation. Sharon, who calls herself the “TakomaDC List Mum,” announced she’s taking a break from such draining tasks as deleting spam and reminding posters to trim their tails. She’s passing duties off to Rich for a few weeks, she says, adding “I hope for a few weeks—we’ll see how long everyone lasts!” Why the break? Heated conversation over the upcoming elections have sapped her energy—and patience. “I was short with a couple of people last week and realized that I need a break from making decisions. My anxiety was less the result of the specific messages involved than anticipation of more to come as the election nears. The upcoming primary was turning the joy of this political season into something less like a freedom and more like a bull fight,” Sharon writes. “So, have fun everyone, and listen to Rich if he has to remind people to play nice.”

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

ustreetnews
If you’re a beat cop, what’s worse than getting chewed out by your commander? How about getting showed up by him at a crime scene. According to Councilmember Jim Graham, after a woman was robbed by a BB-gun-toting perp in Mount Pleasant, police found the firearm in a nearby abandoned house. Once 3rd District Commander Larry McCoy got a looksy at the gun, he “went to the house, talked to the officers, saw the gun and some stolen property.” The way Graham tells it, McCoy then showed the investigative scruples that had apparently eluded his officers: “McCoy asked if anyone had gone upstairs to make sure nobody else was in the house. There were holes through the floor, and the staircase was unstable. Yet, he went up the stairs. Commander McCoy found the suspect hiding in a back room. He was identified as Paul Henderson, a registered sex offender with a lengthy record. Henderson had a crack pipe in his hand.”

MPD-4D
Careful where you mark your territory in Petworth. According to a 4th District crime report, on Aug. 17 a man “was urinating in the alley, when a white truck pulled up. [The suspect] exited the vehicle, asked [the victim] why was [he] peeing on the side of his house.” The suspect then took “an [unknown] object and struck [the victim] in the head causing injury, while [the driver] sat in the truck. [The victim says that] while running to his vehicle, [the suspect] took an object & struck his vehicle causing damage. [The suspect and his driver] fled westbound into the 700 blk of Kennedy St. NW.”

hstreetdc
“I think having a block party or at least the concept is really a good idea,” one resident carefully writes of an upcoming bash just off H Street NE. Then comes the catch: “I think the parking rules are inconvenient and as a working resident, I do my shopping and normal house errands on Saturday.” In a response entitled “Sour Grapes,” party booster stainless_steel_justis plays the role of welcome wagon: “Good grief, it’s just one day, get over it.…Also, why not just take a moment to meet your neighbors, then maybe you will be included in the planning next time.”

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

Brookland
Dissatisfied with cops’ sluggish response to non-emergency 311 calls, Brian tries to buck society’s commonly held notions of what constitutes a 911 emergency. With a touch of semantic massaging, the Brooklander can turn a noisy Catholic U party into a five-alarm crisis. “[D]rinking alcohol in public, public urination, littering, DWI, etc. these are immediate, *SERIOUS CRIMES* covered by specific statutes in the DC Code,” he writes. “If you are losing sleep (i.e., your health), your ‘peace’ is being disturbed after say, 10 p.m. at night…than I would argue that it is an exigent, criminal event, worthy of a call to 911.” Anyone bother to think about this for more than a few seconds? Oh, there you are, Kelly: “What if ya’lls calls diverted a cop from an armed robbery, car jacking or was the difference between apprehending a murderer and leaving a crime unsolved?” Nice effort, but Brian’s not persuaded. “One person’s indigestion may just as easily be another’s fatal heart attack in progress,” he rationalizes, after looking up “emergency” on his Mac’s dictionary. “Accordingly, ‘emergency’ may rightfully be given very broad interpretation by the victim (or Samaritans) calling.”

Mount Pleasant DC
Councilmember Jim Graham heralds the addition of two more crime-fighting surveillance cameras to Ward 1. “We already have a crime camera at 14th and Girard,” he boasts. “That will now be joined by a camera at Georgia and Morton, which will scan the area of the small mall there. And another will be on 18th Street just north of Belmont. I think both locations are excellent choices which I hope will soon be joined by others.” Then, perhaps in a wink to his civil-liberties-minded voters, Graham takes the opportunity to express his rather mealy-mouthed, cover-all-the-bases stance on said cameras. “Let me repeat that I am opposed to cameras used for surveillance of First Amendment expressions. I have consistently voted against such use. However, to my mind, cameras do have an appropriate though limited utility to dislodge embedded crime. However, police must be prepared to give chase once that dislodgment takes place.” Got that?

WardOneDC
Laurie Collins e-mails the group a Washington Post op-ed article in which Colbert I. King chides a Linda Cropp supporter for delivering the columnist a 146-page, dirt-filled dossier on Adrian Fenty (and requesting anonymity). Dominic Sale, a known Cropp booster and former Mount Pleasant advisory neighborhood commissioner, then chastens Laurie for disseminating the King column. “Laurie, I understand how someone as zealous as you are about Fenty could see this article as advantageous to…his campaign, but have you even considered the downside?” he asks. “The sad fact is that negative campaining has been proven again and again to work, and you have become the unwitting messenger of information that could do more harm than good to your candidate’s prospects.” But Laurie seems to have gotten just what she wanted. “Ok, whatever you say Dominic,” she writes. “You are so bait-able.…”

Last time Tommy Keefer visited the annual Celebrate Mount Pleasant Festival, he says via e-mail, “I had a dream.

“I imagined one day I would actually live in Mount Pleasant and would invite my friends over for Mojitos and we would all walk up to the Festival and eat and have a good time and then maybe go home and drink some more.”

Last month, inspired almost solely by his dream, Keefer moved to a place on Harvard Street NW within spitting distance of the festival location. By the Friday before this year’s bash, scheduled for June 4, he had welcomed his girlfriend home after six months abroad and stocked a minibar with mojito mix. Everything was perfect, he says. Then the fest was canceled.

Well, sort of. On the traditional first Sunday of June, instead of the usual blockslong bash humming with live music and brimming with food vendors, Mount Pleasant residents were treated to a small community fair and booths distributing health information.

Festival director Robert Frazier, who has produced the past nine fetes, cites time constraints for the demise of this year’s festival; when his workload unexpectedly increased, he wasn’t able to find enough sponsors to help defray the costs. On neighborhood Internet groups, residents expressed their disappointment and moved on.

Keefer took it a little harder. “Obviously, I didn’t have a party,” he says. “I don’t even think I got out of bed that day.”

What’s going on in local Internet discussion groups

3DSubstation
The Christian maxim “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is still alive in Mount Pleasant. On Sunday March 26, two cranks on Walbridge Place NW got into an argument about “religious beliefs,” according to a police report, which identifies them as Complainant 1 (C1) and Suspect 1 (S1). “S1 THEN GRABBED A TENNIS RACKET AND BEGAN TO HIT C1 OVER THE HEAD. S1 THEN GRABBED A 2×4 AND BEGAN TO STRIKE AT C1’S HANDS. S1 WAS PLACED UNDER [ARREST.]”

MPD-4D
Don’t wear these shoes: A crime report reveals that a teenager leaving a Brightwood dollar store last Tuesday was trailed by five ne’er-do-wells who asked him “How much did your shoes cost?” and “Can I wear them?” A member of the group then tackled the teen and, presumably, is wearing those shoes today.