A morning roundup of news, opinion, and links from Washington City Paper and around the District. Send tips and ideas to citydesk@washingtoncitypaper.com.
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You asked, and we answered. Washington City Paper's Answers Issue hits the street today, with the [...]
Take a look at the redeveloped Union Market or the ever-expanding nightlife scene on H Street and you'll see: Washington businesses want that sweet gentrifier money. And who can blame them—apparently mostly rich, mostly white people have a lot of cash to spend.
But there has to be a better way to get paid than this [...]
Property crime is a fact of life in Washington, especially in neighborhoods with changing demographics. But it might not have to be. After one Southwest Waterfront resident's car was broken into Sunday night, he decided to rollerblade on a nearby basketball court, which lead to an idea.
He was concerned that area children would rob him [...]
The Thanksgiving holiday's only been over for a day, but maybe you're missing your crankier relatives already. If so, you'll love today's installment of top Washington grumpsletter themail.
Newsletter proprietor Gary Imhoff's ostensible jumping-off point is a Post story about increased visitor parking restrictions in Ward 1, which do sound like they'll be annoying. But he [...]
Most of the talk about being getting pushed out of the U Street area focuses on longtime residents who can no longer afford the area. But according to music writer John Murph, gentrifiers—or at least people who look like them—can be pushed out too.
Writing on the Root D.C. today, Murph says that he never thought [...]
This was not the Prince of Petworth's crowd. An hour into the "Humanitini" gentrification panel at U Street's Tabaq Bistro Thursday night, blogger Dan Silverman was having trouble even being accepted as a resident of his own neighborhood. “It's not your Petworth, Dan,” said one woman. “It's mine.”
Silverman corrected her: "It's really our Petworth."
The rest [...]
If you were disappointed that the man who brought the phrase "swagger-jacking" to talk of D.C. development skipped the Busboys & Poets discussion of the issue, then you're in luck.
Stephen A. Crockett Jr., who coined the term last month to describe U Street NW hang-outs like Busboys appropriating black culture, will talk gentrification Thursday at a [...]
Are establishments like The Brixton and Busboys & Poets guilty of "swagger-jacking?" That's what Stephen A. Crockett Jr. accuses them of today on The Root D.C.—and along the way connects their allegedly pilfered vibes to broader changes in the District:
It’s an inappropriate tradition of sorts that has rent increasing, black folks moving further out — sometimes [...]
If you're looking for white people, you should head to the D.C. ZIP code that includes Shaw, Bloomingdale, and LeDroit Park. It leads the city in new white residents from 2000 and 2010, according to a list of the nation's 25 fastest-whitening ZIP codes, via Mike DeBonis.
Non-Hispanic white people represented 5.6 of residents in the 20001 ZIP [...]
SmarTrip Getting Smarter: Some day soon, paper farecards may be a thing of the past. That's because Metro is planning to unveil new SmarTrip cards that cost less than the $5 the current cards run you—which, coupled with a $1 surcharge for paper cards that kicks in in July, means even tourists may well just [...]
The Ward 5 special election, in Tim Craig's telling in this morning's Post, is turning into the same thing virtually every recent D.C. election has become: a referendum on the city's changing demographics. And I'm sympathetic to most of the concerns longtime residents raise in Craig's story: development only arrives when wealthy, white residents do, [...]
There's been some touting of a recent Annie E. Casey Foundation report that the number of children in D.C. living in concentrated poverty—neighborhoods where 30 percent of residents live below the poverty line—has decreased to 33,000. The Examiner notes: "The number is an 11 percent drop from the 37,000 children counted in 2000, while the national [...]
Though I don't have an answer to the question Elahe Izadi poses in her DCentric post about whether gentrification by non-whites should have a different name, I do think it's worth connecting with a story the Post ran today about their black women in America poll. Elahe writes:
What’s your take: what does gentrification by non-whites [...]
Yesterday Salon ran the provocatively titled post, "Are urban cyclists just elite snobs?" (Read it.) In the wake of last week's discussion about cyclists running red lights (comments are also well worth reading), it was good to see a story that hit on a lot of the issues that our commenters on both sides brought [...]
TBD’s Ryan Kearney complains that Adam Serwer’s recent piece for The American Prospect is a “how-to” on writing a story about gentrification. Kearney takes issue with Serwer’s description of changes that have happened in Petworth, like organic groceries and farmer’s markets, calling it “a tiring litany of gentrification signifiers.”
To be sure, Serwer treads familiar ground, [...]
