DC By the Book

Excerpt: As I walk through the circle I decide to stop and take a seat on one of the new benches across from General Logan to listen to the birds chattering away loudly in the trees. There's an arc of benches on either side of the statue. The benches have new black lacquer paint, and behind the benches are thick layers of startlingly fresh green sod where only dust and scattered clumps of crabgrass and weeds used to grow. When I opened my store ten years ago, Logan Circle was still predominantly poor, black, cheap, and sunk in a depression that had struck the city twenty years earlier and never left. Most of the streetlights that surrounded the circle were burned out, leaving the neighborhood perpetually pitched into a strange half-darkness more frightening than pure black. Before the newly formed General Logan Circle Statue Association restored the statue last month it was chipped, defaced, and smeared with human, dog, and bird shit. Drunk old men, their foreheads wrinkled, their pants barely buckled around their waists, rambled around the statue's benches in the afternoon and evening, muttering to themselves and one another. ---------- Long before Logan Circle’s decline and revival, the circle itself was developed as the centerpiece of this glorious Victorian neighborhood. A small fountain bubbled up where the statue of General John Alexander now stands, and the sidewalk surrounding the park was much wider, making it among the most popular places in the city for bicycling. Military bands gave concerts here on summer nights. During the Civil War, before the circle was a park and this area was still rural, a thousand spectators are said to have gathered here to witness the execution of a Union private hanged for murdering his sergeant.

Excerpt: Of all the streets that meet the circle, P is by far my favorite. As it heads west toward Dupont and Georgetown, it only grows prettier and wider, with the houses increasingly grand and luxurious, as if each step forward were a step toward paradise. Men with matching dogs walk along P street. Half a mile away are sidewalk cafes and restaurants, three used-book stores, wine shops, flower shops, and cheese shops. And the farther up P you move, the better life gets. ---------- This stretch of P Street hasn’t always been so well-manicured. Many people left this area in the 1950s as suburban development surged and urban neighborhoods became associated with crime and poverty. The burning and looting that followed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1968 assassination – largely a response to urban neglect – drove even more residents and businesses away. But plenty of people remained here. In 1968, Logan Circle business owner Richard Lamb Peters, with the help of basketball coach John Thompson (who had returned from his career with the Boston Celtics to coach a hometown Catholic high school) opened the Kingman Boys & Girls Club here on Kingman Place. For many children who grew up in turbulent times, the club was a second home.

Excerpt: At 14th Street the narrow seclusion of P intersects with the wide-open thoroughfare that runs almost the entire length of the city. Just a few months ago there was a liquor store and a Chinese carryout restaurant on the corner, Yum's Chinese and Chicken. It was the first place I ate at alone in D.C. I walked in early in the evening and ordered a beef and broccoli that I ate while standing on the corner. I was nineteen, and had been in America for less than forty-eight hours. I remember being asked for spare change every few minutes by the same man, the red neon glare from the 7-eleven across the street, and the roaming bands of kids who swaggered by. The food tasted like a sweet soy sauce that, whenever I've come across it again, instantly brings me back to that corner and night.

Excerpt: After we finished our shifts at the Capitol Hotel, the three of us often spent the rest of our evenings perched on one of the benches across from the White House, or on the tree-lined paths leading up to the Lincoln Memorial. "Look at those buildings," Joseph said once. "I would have..." He stopped there, stuck in midsentence. It was one of the few times in all the years I have known him that he has ever been speechless. We rarely talked about the buildings explicitly, but I know that Joseph and Kenneth both spent hours standing in front of Lincoln's massive, imposing figure, seated on his throne with an indifferent gaze cast toward the city. During his first few months in America, Joseph had memorized the Gettysburg Address off the memorial's walls, and spent several nights watching the sun rise from its steps. It's been years since either of them has gone near those buildings, and how could you blame them? Reality has settled in, and they're both still waiting to recover.

Excerpt: The escalators that lead down to the metro are vast and cavernous, and enormous yawning mouth that swallows and spits out thousands of people each day... The red-line train bound for the suburbs of Maryland is delayed. The trains of this city continue to amaze me, regardless of how long I live here. It's not just their size, but their order, the sense you get when riding them that a higher, regulatory power is in firm control, even if you yourself are not. All around me people check their watches, shake their heads, and stamp their feet. The platform begins to fill up as people instinctively begin to cluster around the gleaming fluorescent-lit billboards. Behind me is an ad for the Virginia community college I briefly attended... By the time the train pulls into the station, the platform is thick with people pressed tightly together. We all squeeze our way into the train, avoiding eye contact even though we can feel the breath of the person next to us blowing on our neck. Standing next to me is an exceptionally tan young blond woman with a ponytail sticking out of her baseball cap. She's wearing a blue Georgetown tank top, gray Georgetown shorts, and a black backpack with the Georgetown insignia stitched into the center. I always note the fresh, scrubbed faces of the city's collegiate crowd with a smatter of envy and wonder.

Excerpt: The house Judith was moving into was a beautiful, tragic wreck of a building and had been for years. A four-story brick mansion, it could have played the role of a haunted house in any one of a hundred movies or books. Its elaborately tiled roof, flaking like dried skin, was echoed in the shutters that still clung out of stubbornness to the delicately molded windows arched like a pair of cartoon eyes on both sides of the house. The brick was almost obnoxious in its bright shade of red, redeemed at the last minute by the house's stature as the only one with color left on Logan Circle. There was a sad patch of grass in the front, and a rusted metal fence with a gate just barely hanging on to its hinges. The house had been abandoned for more than a decade, occupied briefly over the years by homeless men, crack addicts, and a small band of anarchists from Portland. There were at least two dozen other houses like Judith's and mine surrounding Logan Circle. Four- and five-story mansions that had once belonged to someone of great import -- a president's cousin, or aunt, or maybe nephew -- but that over the years had been neglected, burned out, or in my case, divided into cheap, sometimes cockroach-infested, apartments. The houses cast long shadows over the circle and street, their rooftop shadows converging on the statue of General Logan, perched high on his horse in the center of the circle. When I moved into the neighborhood I did so because it was all I could afford, and because secretly I loved the circle for what it had become: proof that wealth and power were not immutable, and America was not always so great after all. The neighborhood, and by extension the city, had fallen, and every night I could see and hear that out of my living-room window.

Excerpt: We cross 14th and watch as the neighborhood grows nicer. Skinny new trees have been planted along the sidewalk. Yum's, or "Yu s," as the sign now reads, is gone, and so is the liquor store. They have obediently made way for newer and better things, whatever they may eventually be. I can't say that I particularly liked either of them, but that's beside the point. Now that they are gone I can begin to miss them with a sentimental fondness I could have never mustered otherwise. Newspapers cover the windows of both storefronts, along with a sing that vaguely reads, "Coming soon." There are town homes being built on the left and a two-story organic grocery store being built on the right. Before all of this there was an abandoned lot with an eight-foot barbed-wire fence and a three-foot hole in the center, a grocery store that sold wilted vegetables and grade-D mean, an auto repair shop, and a black-owned bookstore called Madame X. On a warm night, you could buy a blowjob or any number of drugs there, depending on your mood. You could walk by and catch the disinterested stare of a woman leaning against the fence out of the corner of your eye and see men slumped on the ground, their heads lolling obliviously to the side. In the morning and after school, children scoured the weed-filled grounds looking for money that might have fallen out of someone's pocket. What they found they used to buy candy and chips from my store. At Madame X, the black empowerment books gathered dust, the occasional weed wafted out the door, and on Thursday nights you could sit in on an open-mike reading and share in the plate of yam patties passed around the room. The rotting meat at the grocery store next door was discounted further at the end of the very week and sold with new expiration dates. Occasionally someone complained and threatened a boycott, and for a week or month the aisles were marginally but noticeably cleaner, the meat a little fresher. Stolen cars were driven into the auto repair shop at night and came out in the morning with new coats of paint and fresh license plates. Had you known this stretch of P Street back then, you would have agreed that it was a hell of a block. ---------- Now known for its bustling restaurant scene, for decades this area was the center of DC’s prostitution trade. Largely abandoned after 1968, the commercial corridor along 14th Street featured empty storefronts and trash-strewn sidewalks. Illegal commerce in drugs and sex flourished for decades. Neighborhood churches, social service agencies, and dedicated residents worked for years to clean up Logan Circle, and with 14th Street’s growing reputation for its theater scene, other businesses eventually returned. The 2000 opening of Whole Foods Market accelerated the revival of this once neglected neighborhood, now unrecognizable to many who used to live or work here.

Excerpt: By 15th Street the trees are fully grown. Massive elms and oaks shade the gray-and-white four-story row houses. On opposite sides of the corner sit two hulking gray temples. The wife stops at the corner and pulls out her guidebook. She shakes her head and points north.

Excerpt: You can see the White House from here. The street unfurls from its gate like a massive concrete carpet rolling straight for several blocks before dipping into a tunnel and rising up once again. I used to think that there was some great metaphor in this. I used to walk to this very corner after I closed the store so I could watch the cars, buses, and people head toward the White House as if that alone was their final destination. ---------- As the thoroughfare leading to the White House, 16th Street has long been considered a symbolic location. In addition to the many embassies that line 16th, the national headquarters of churches are here, and are joined by organizations like the Carnegie Institution for Science at this corner. Endowed by steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, it was dedicated in 1909. Across the street, the 200-year-old Foundry United Methodist Church moved here in 1904, and counted President Bill Clinton and his family among its regular attenders in the 1990s. The church and the building across 16th on this side of P, which became the Founding Church of Scientology in 2009, were designed by DC native Appleton P. Clark. A four-room/one bath apartment rented for $75/month when the building opened in 1917.

Excerpt: Spring is riding high on 17th. The sidewalks are crowded with outdoor seating. The men are holding hands and kissing each other gently on the lips. The bolder ones are already wearing tank tops and black spandex shorts. There's a scent to the air here that you can't find anywhere else in the city. A mixture of fresh sweat, blooming flowers, and coffee. I want to take the couple by the hand and lead them down the street to Samuel's café, where we could sit under the green awning on a busy corner and watch the crowd. This, I would tell them, is all I want out of life, to sit here on these plastic lawn chairs and watch the parade of skinny and muscular men, old and young, as they flirt and fight with each other. Joseph loves it here as well. He says it reminds him of France, with the cafes, the air, and the pretty boys with nothing to do. According to him, "It's the only civilized place in the city."

Excerpt: Dupont Circle is only a few blocks ahead. I can see from here that they white marble fountain in the center has been turned on. A fine mist spread by the breeze is spraying the people sitting on its edge. Admiral du Pont would have been very proud to have this scene named in his honor. The office buildings are clearing out for lunch. People are taking their food outside, picnicking on the fresh grass that surrounds the outer perimeter of the circle. Almost everyone is dressed casually. Some people are lying on the grass with a book suspended in front of them. No harm can happen here. ---------- Like Logan Circle, Dupont Circle’s park and neighborhood were developed in the early 1870s. Originally called Pacific Circle, it was later named for Rear Admiral Samuel Francis du Pont, who served with the Union Navy in the Civil War. A statue of duPont stood at the park’s center until 1921, when it was replaced by a fountain honoring his service at sea. The fountain was designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Henry Bacon, who together designed the Lincoln Memorial.

Excerpt: Despite my recent efforts, there is nothing special to my store. It's narrow, shabby, and brightly lit, with a ceiling of fluorescent bulbs that hum for over an hour every morning after being turned on. I sell 25 cent bags of potato chips, two-liter bottles of Pepsi, boxes of macaroni and cheese, diapers, soap, detergent, condensed milk in barrow aisles haphazardly arranged... On a good day I have forty or maybe fifty customers. Most of them are stay-at-home moms or dads who've moved into one of the newly refurbished homes surrounding Logan Circle. They stop in during an afternoon stroll with their children dangling around their necks like amulets to ward off age, sickness, unemployment, rain, death. They buy bottled water, toothpaste, cleaning supplies, and, if their kids are old enough, one of the small five-cent pieces of candy I've learned to keep next to the register for just this purpose, On those good days, which come once or twice a week, I make just over $400. I walk home at the end of the night feeling better, not only about my store, but about this country. I think to myself, American is beautiful after all.

Excerpt: When the train rushes above ground, we've already crossed into the outskirts of the city. The buildings, old brick factories and warehouses, are all marked with the familiar bright red and yellow bubble letters of Disco Dan. The name is everywhere, tagged onto the the side of the tracks, buildings, and rusted water towers. A running billboard completing with the ads for Schlitz malt liquor and used-car lots. Disco Dan--offering nothing but himself and his vanity--has them all beat. For as long as I've lived in the city, he has been with me.