Much has been reported on the renewed crew violence in Shaw. On Feb. 18, four youths were shot standing near the Washington Convention Center on 7th Street. In the midst of constant reports of shootings, one 5th Street resident came home to find a bullet through her window. Her response, according to an e-mail posted on a local listserv: “My husband thinks that it was someone shooting at the political sign that I had in the window, but who knows.”

I don’t think this was a joke. Perhaps this bit of info from the Washington Post will bring her up to speed.

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Last week, I wrote a blog post about the removal of pairs of shoes from trees and street lights in Shaw, and the various ideas flying around about the symbolism of the shoes. One theory is that the shoes mark gang territory; Another is that they are used as memorials to lost friends; One more is that they identify drug houses. These conflicting ideas were often recorded with deep conviction (read: self-righteous dogmatism) on the Police Third District listserv. Example: after one poster wrote in support of the gang territory theory, another posted, “It’s very obvious that you are not an expert on this topic, sir.” Then, with great wisdom and compassion, the writer enlightened the listserv: “The kids I have tried to discourage from doing this were hanging shoes on telephone lines to honor the memory of a deceased friend who they held in high regard. Not every little neighborhood kid is in a gang or a crew.”

In the end, no one idea emerged as the absolute truth. But, I wanted to get to the bottom of this. I made some calls to the Ward 2 representatives in the Mayor’s Office of Community Relations and Services (MOCRS). They were working on the shoe removal. Unfortunately, the MOCRS guys didn’t call me back too quickly. But, somehow through the grapevine, two other men heard what I was doing and called me to set me straight.

ANC 2C01 Commissioner Alexander Padro rang first: “I grew up in the Bronx. I knew that shoes hanging from lampposts and trees [identified] where a drug house was, and that’s where you go for the action.” Padro says he’s called the Department of Public Works several times over the years to report hanging shoes. He’s noticed a lot of shoes on the 400 block of Q Street. “I’ve talked to people who walk on the block or live on the block, they think there’s a message: this place belongs to us.”

Then, Steven Cox from local anti-violence group Root Inc. called. “So, what do you think the shoes represent?” I asked. “Well, let’s get past the “think” part,” he responded, “I know exactly what’s going on here.” Or something to that effect. “You know how people say ‘he got smoked out of his shoes,’” continued Cox, well apparently, the shoes often belong to murdered victims of gang violence. The perp lobs the shoes up to show his gang is unafraid and willing to kill. Grim stuff–and utterly different from Padro’s claim.

So, who’s not down with the DC streets? “As far as theories, there’s not one specific theory [driving the removal],” says mayoral spokesperson Dena Iverson. Her office heard various complaints at community meetings and via e-mail, and decided the best thing to do was just take down the shoes. So, I guess there’s my answer, if I were to consider the Mayor’s Office of Communications the ultimate authority on gang activities. I still think the full truth has yet to emerge.

On the morning of Jan. 17, teachers and staff at Garnet-Patterson Middle School in Shaw thought their school remained safe from the dreaded D.C. public schools closure list. Hours later, their outlook changed.

Around 3 p.m., Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham placed a call to Garnet’s principal, Veda Usilton, letting her now that the plan to close Shaw Junior High School and ship its students and a gifted program over to Garnet could be in jeopardy. Schools Chancellor Michele Rhee, he said, was considering a swap: Shut down Garnet, keep Shaw open.

With a few hours to go before Rhee’s 23 simultaneous school-closure hearings—the public’s last chance to testify on the proposal—Graham wanted Garnet to stand up and show some muscle.

“I had advised her that I believed it was important that some support be established in the record,” he says.

That night, after Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans and a variety of other community figures testified on behalf of Shaw, a group of Garnet supporters spoke about how they were blindsided by their school’s potential closure.

“The good people of Shaw have had upwards of three months to gather support from the community. We had three hours. Here at Garnet-Patterson, we need the same time to gather our community members,” said one Garnet teacher.

Toward the end of the meeting, Rhee showed up and confirmed she was considering moving Garnet to the closure list. If the switch were to take place, she added, the Garnet community would get an opportunity for its own hearing.

Shaw’s Queen of Sheba restaurant has been attempting to secure a liquor license since April 2005. Yesterday, the license was finally granted. The resolution comes after over two years of feuding between Queen of Sheba and its chief opponent, Shiloh Baptist Church.

The Church, located opposite the Ethiopian joint on 9th St., resisted the restaurant’s license, citing the fact that the restaurant was within 400 feet from a school (Seaton Elementary) and right next door to the church’s own Child Development Center. Read up on the history of Shiloh and Sheba’s feud here.

ANC 2C01 Commissioner Alex Padro, a vocal supporter of Queen of Sheba in the battle for the license, had this to say:

“The church will say they opposed the license in the interest of community safety. But a lot of people think it’s just the church’s attempt to stay relevant in the neighborhood.”

According to Padro, Shiloh Baptist poses more of a threat to Shaw than does Queen of Sheba’s ability to serve up a few drinks. “They’ve been a bad neighbor,” he says of the church. “They have over a dozen vacant and abandoned properties that have been boarded up for a very long time. They haven’t maintained them properly. They haven’t properly boarded them up to make sure vagrants and children don’t get in. They promised they would renovate the properties and never did a thing. It’s a decade-long pattern of broken promises.”

Shiloh Baptist Church declined to comment.

We recently reported on Shaw’s Asbury Dwelling’s dilemma of what to do about the homeless people who camp out in the building’s spacious window ledges. It seems they have found a decorative yet uncomfortable solution.

Last week, at an October 23rd ANC2C meeting, local developer Debbie Smith trotted out some architectural plans for a new day spa to be located at the corner of 7th and P Streets NW in Shaw. This wasn’t the first time the ANC heard of Smith’s proposal.

She casually announced her intentions at a June meeting, to a not-so-glowing reaction. One commenter suggested this “very crucial parcel” be developed as affordable housing or space for restaurants or some “really good coffee shops,” according to clips posted online.

Commissioner Kevin Chapple says the ANC did not take a position on Smith’s plans. At this point, he’s heard of one other developer interested in the space: Banneker Ventures is considering plans for a block-long development in the area with commercial and residential properties.

Other notes from last week’s meeting: According to Smith and the representative from her architectural firm, the proposed “home-grown” day spa (Smith’s words) would have three levels of commercial units, which would include a first-level barber shop/hair salon, a lower-level dermatologist office with some yoga space, a relaxation room, with amenities for users, manicures, make-up studios, and massages areas. The top floors of the building would have several residential units.

At 11:30 a.m. today, a gunman fired at least 10 shots from the sidewalk at the corner of 5th and P Streets NW in Shaw. By 12:30 p.m., police had no evidence he hit anything.

As officers counted shell casings behind the tape, a group of neighbor told the story of the shooting. Rumor has it the shooter, a man described only by his long dreads, went gunning for a second man for snitching on him to police.

The sources, not surprisingly, refused to give their names. But one did offer an explanation as to how the gunner could fire 10 shots with no apparent victim. The target, said the woman, thumbing a Bible while sitting in her wheelchair, was protected by Jesus.

Further, Jesus, she believes, protected her when a car ran her down a month or so ago. The crash destroyed her wheelchair, but she escaped with only a few scratches.

“Me and my family pray,” she said, pulling up her sleeve to show a pair of praying hands tattooed on her arm, complete with red nail polish.

But Jesus, apparently, does not control this woman’s wrath. When her former sister-in-law arrived and tried to wheel her away from the group, the woman lost her cool. “If you don’t get away from me, I’m gonna drop this Bible and kick your ass,” she said.

This morning’s Examiner reports that the city failed to give fair warning to 20,000 motorists fined $100 each for mashing cell phones to their ears while driving.

The city did a poor job informing the drivers (many who come from the suburbs where the action is only bad form) that it’s banned in the District, the paper learned from a Police Complaints Board report released Thursday.

Well “boo f’in hoo,” as my colleague might put it.

Ignorance of a law is generally not a valid excuse for breaking it, the Examiner reporter writes in the second paragraph, and he is correct.

And law aside, only a driver from some Virginia dark holler (where even Verizon reception is spotty) could have missed the notion that driving one handed with a phone in your ear is felony bad judgment.

Perhaps at District borders we should install signs as Virginia does to advertise its radar detector law.

“Welcome to the District of Columbia,” the signs would read. “Leave your guns at home. If you’re going to smoke, step outside the bar. If you chat while driving, buy the dorky earpiece. Consider yourself warned.”

Shaw resident and provocateur Ray Milefsky is proposing a solution for how citizens can band together to clean up accumulated trash on city streets. On the Third District community Listserv, he writes: “I am thinking a trip to deliver it to Jack Evans’ and Mayor Fenty’s homes à la Michael Moore would be effective with cameras rolling and posting it on YouTube. The Washington Post seems to like these kinds of stories nowadays.”

Don’t forget TV news, Ray. At least one local news crew seems ready to pick up the trash delivery story. On Thursday, Channel 7 reporter Kris Van Cleave (above) e-mailed Milefsky: “If you go ahead with this plan to ‘relocate’ the debris, I’m pretty sure I can get a camera there. Would you please keep me posted?”

If you think the blogosphere is insulated from the media’s trends toward consolidation, think again. Earlier this summer, Shawington, a collection of Shaw-specific blogs, burst into cyberspace.

Shaw residents Ben Welsh and Martin Moulton created Shawington to make life easier for residents overwhelmed by the proliferation of blogs offering news about their neighborhood. (In April, the Web site outside.in named Shaw the second “bloggiest” neighborhood in the country, trailing Clinton Hill in Brooklyn and beating out downtown L.A.)

“There’s a lot of blogs in the neighborhood,” Welsh says. “The goal is just to simplify the reading process.”

Shawington currently aggregates 34 blogs, a group that includes A Shaw Thing, Fifth and Oh, and Treebox Vodka. The Web site also offers a photographic tour of Shaw’s vacant properties.

In the last six months, the residents of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Shaw have put up with a sudden change in management, threats of eviction, and 54 lawsuits—most eventually dropped—for nonpayment of rent . Now the residents of the single-room-occupancy facility—mostly older disabled and mentally ill women—are getting eaten alive by bedbugs.

“The whole building is infested,” says Sharon Rhoner, president of the newly formed Phyllis Wheatley Cares Tenants Association and a four-month tenant of the building. Rhoner says tenants have complained about the infestation to city agencies to no avail. Resident Vera Arrington says her bedbugs got so bad, she started treating them with a heavy-duty spray she got from the fire department.

Antonia Mathos, 53, who has lived at Wheatley since 2000, has had frequent complaints about the upkeep of the building. “These people refuse to do needed repairs,” Mathos says, referring to Vision Realty Management, the company that recently took over responsibility for the building.

“Landlords are legally required to keep the building in compliance with the housing code, and it’s not,” says Rebecca Lindhurst, an attorney for nearby non-profit Bread for the City who has represented several tenants.

Sam Lowery, a Vision Realty partner, says his company is aware of the bedbug problem and has hired a pest-control company, but he says it takes everyone’s involvement to kill the bugs. “This is an ongoing problem,” he says. “We’ve asked that the treatment in place be buttressed by the residents with cleanliness and housekeeping.”

Lowery says a list of recommendations was sent out in April that included notes on laundry, vacuuming, and keeping rooms sanitary.

Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Alex Padro says he used to refer women who had no other place to go to the YWCA for temporary housing. Now, he says, he’ll think twice about making any referrals. “The board has abdicated its responsibility,” he says.

In mid-March, residents of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Shaw, a refuge for abused and mentally ill women, got a rude surprise. Vision Realty Management, which recently started managing the building, filed suit against 54 residents of the 116-room facility, claiming they owed thousands of dollars in back rent. Most of the women protested, saying they were paid up.

Now, months later, it seems they were right. The overwhelming majority of the suits, says Rebecca Lindhurst, an attorney with nonprofit Bread for the City, have not held up in court. “We have done an exhaustive search of all the cases that came out of that initial wave of suits, and according to my findings, it looks like everything except maybe five cases were dismissed,” she says.

Sam Lowery, a Vision Realty partner, admits there were some recordkeeping issues on his company’s end.

“When [tenants] produced the evidence that they’d paid based on evidence that we didn’t have in our possession,” Lowery says, “we asked that those cases be dismissed, and rightfully so.”

“A few residents” still owe money, he says, “but we’re working with them.”

Alex Padro, a Shaw advisory neighborhood commissioner who’s been involved in the dispute since March, claims Vision took advantage of the fragile state of some of its tenants by suing without proper cause.

“The fact that you had a new management company…come in, and records that were in disarray, prompted them to overreact,” he says. “It was very cavalier, very unprofessional, and demeaning [to the YWCA residents].”

From today’s Washington Examiner:

Four vacant homes in the heart of Shaw, all owned by a controversial Baptist church, have been condemned by the D.C. government as a possible danger to the community. The D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which posted the condemnation notices Wednesday, gave Shiloh Baptist Church 15 days to repair its properties at 1528, 1532, 1534 and 1536 Ninth St. NW.

If you saw our groundbreaking coverage of the matter a year and a half ago, you’ll know that Shiloh Baptist Church has taken a lot of heat from Shaw residents for refusing to fix up its numerous properties around the church building at 9th and P Streets NW. Finally, the city’s stepped in to force the issue.

Great story, Michael Neibauer—until the last graf. Are you seriously going to let Leroy Thorpe blame others for “dividing the community along racial lines in an effort to push people out”?

Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans might be returning to his roots as an advisory neighborhood commissioner.

For the past two months, the rancor that’s come to characterize the Shaw ANC since the beginning of the year has paralyzed the group’s operations. Scheduled public meetings in March and April were cancelled by Chair Doris Brooks—the first for no stated reason, the second because a community member started taping the proceedings—leaving ANC business, such as event permits and liquor-license applications, to Evans’ office.

On April 30, Evans finally had enough, calling an emergency meeting to broker peace between the four commissioners. At the meeting, according to Commissioner Kevin Chapple (pictured), Evans promised to run the ANC meetings himself if things didn’t improve. Chapple says his main complaint was Brooks’ refusal to make important documents—agendas and quarterly reports, for instance—available for review before meetings. With Evans present, he says Brooks agreed to make the reports available and to even hold a special officers’ election to make Chapple secretary at the May ANC meeting.

But at the meeting a few days later, Brooks declined to hold the election, saying there wasn’t enough time on the agenda. Says Brooks: “That’s gone and past, and I don’t want to deal with it, really.”

Evans says he’s not concerned with how the ANC members treat each other, just that they take care of business. “The commissioners are working better together,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The fact that they don’t agree is not my issue. My concern was that they weren’t meeting at all.”

“I don’t know what he means by that,” says Chapple, who describes the May ANC meeting as anything but civil. “If he means that we had a meeting and it wasn’t cancelled then that’s one assessment. But I can’t imagine that he…would think the ANC is working well. It was melee; it was a meltdown….I thought people might come to blows at one point. This is not a functional ANC.”

Photo by Charles Steck

The Warehouse considers itself a home for Washington’s artists. When Metro Cafe on 14th Street closed its doors in 2002, Warehouse created a space for live music. When Visions Cinema Bistro Lounge in Dupont Circle folded in 2004, the Warehouse opened a screening room. And just yesterday, when artist J.T. Kirkland thought he was going to have to cancel Supple, a show featuring 11 visual artists, due to conflicts with the owners of The Space at 903 N St. NW, the Warehouse offered him two galleries for his show. “This will be more than enough to hang Supple and I am excited about the opportunity,” Kirkland wrote in an e-mail release.

“A lot of it is being connected to the Washington art scene and finding out what the need is,” says co-owner Paul Ruppert. But like so many of the artists it has hosted over the years, the Warehouse itself might soon be hunting for a home.

In an e-mail distributed to “friends and supporters” yesterday, Ruppert and his mother Molly, who co-owns the 7th Street arts complex, wrote:

Bad news in the mail last month - Warehouse property taxes for next year are increasing over 500%.

Needless to say, this is a huge blow to our precarious business model.

What does this mean for the Warehouse? We’re not sure.
- We have begun the appeal process.
- We are committed to maintaining our current operations through the Fringe Festival in July.
- It is possible that we will be able to operate into the fall and beyond.
- We are considering a move of all or part of the Warehouse to another location.

According to Ruppert, the property tax hike has to with “a number of high-priced sales in the neighborhood,” which is wedged between Gallery Place and Shaw. He says “the taxes are just part of all the pressures we face.” For a while now, mother and son have been wondering whether the Mount Vernon Square location, nestled in the shadow of the “shiny” Convention Center, is the best place for the arts complex, which includes two black box theaters, a gallery devoted to presenting emerging artists, a music venue, a screening room, and a cafe. The neighborhood may not be “ideal for the edgy art we specialize in,” Ruppert says, adding that “all options are open.”

One option is to relocate the complex, Ruppert says, either as a whole or in pieces, and rent out the space on 7th Street. For example, it might make more sense for the Warehouse’s music venue to move to 14th or U streets, which already host a vibrant live music scene, he says. Or they might leave the area altogether. “The sale of the building is a real possibility,” Ruppert says.

But leaving the stretch of 7th Street would be a significant shift for the family, who has owned the property since the 1880s. Ruppert Hardware operated there until 1987, Ruppert says, when Metro construction and competition diminished foot traffic in the area and slashed profits. In 1992, the mother-son duo opened Rupperts Restaurant. In 1994, they started hosting art shows. Plays premiered in a small black box theater 11 years ago, and the cafe opened four years ago. And yet, despite all the artsy activity, or perhaps because of it, Ruppert says, the Warehouse loses money every year. For that reason, he says, the tax increase isn’t “a sudden blow. It’s been this gradual challenge since we started the Warehouse,” adding that the taxes might just be a “tipping point to move on to whatever is next.”