A Move Into Anacostia Came With a Chance to Help It Move Forward
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 31, 2007
When my doorbell rang in mid-December a year ago, boxes were everywhere. The kitchen still was under renovation. I had just moved into a 100-year-old rowhouse and wasn't expecting company. My only unexpected visitors were the police, who had recently come by looking for a parole violator who'd given my address as his own.
So I was surprised when I opened the door and found a sidewalk full of Christmas carolers, right here in Anacostia.
I had lived in the Washington region on and off for 15 years, and never once had I seen a caroler in my neighborhood. Not in Greenbelt. Not in Capitol Hill, Bloomingdale or Logan Circle.
But in the middle of Ward 8, supposedly the city's meanest streets, there they were, prancing around at night, singing sappy Christmas songs. I can't remember what they sang but, as they bounced merrily down the street, I stood on the porch smiling. This was the sense of community I'd hope to find, hoped to help build. The Historic Anacostia Block Association, formed a year earlier by recent arrivals like myself, organized the carolers.
When I tell people in Washington I live in historic Anacostia, their eyebrows rise and they nervously ask: How is it? I can see the visions of mayhem -- shootings, police tape and crackheads -- dancing in their heads. As with other neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, people reflexively think danger. I thought it, too.
Back in the mid-1990s when I was a police reporter, I regularly rode along with undercover vice officers from the 7th Police District. We always ventured out at night, when the streetscape was shadowy, sometimes mysterious.
One night, not far from where I live now, the officers suspected a teen was driving a stolen car. When they made eye contact with him, the teen slowed the car and dove out. One officer ran after the still-moving vehicle, jumping into the driver's seat before it crashed.
Three others, as I recall, chased the teen on foot. The lanky youth, not wearing a belt, kept tugging at his waist. Their weapons drawn, the police yelled at the teen to show his hands, to stop running. He didn't. When they tackled him, his beltless jeans were at his knees and he was unarmed. The episode could easily have ended in tragedy but for the police and their restraint.
This is the Anacostia most people know, or hear about. It's not inaccurate. It's just not complete. There is character, history and community here, a discovery made daily by the mostly black professionals who have flocked here in recent years.
I wanted a place with a yard large enough to tinker in the garden and host barbecues where children could "go long" for the football as I did when I was a kid. I got what I wanted for less than $300,000, across the street from Cedar Hill, the former home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, now a national historic site attracting visitors daily.
But I got so much more. In southern Louisiana, we call it lagniappe (lan-yap), a little something extra that's thrown in for good measure by the local grocer or the roadside vendors selling fresh shrimp, sweet potatoes or mustard greens.
For me, the extra was the carolers, the small church around the corner that sells "scratch-and-dent" furniture from national retailers and, of course, my newly adopted neighborhood hangout, Players Lounge in Congress Heights. It has reasonably priced drinks, good people and good music. On Wednesdays, Zeke, the DJ, plays Johnnie Taylor, Z.Z. Hill and Mel Waiters. He even throws in some southwest Louisiana zydeco -- just like at home.
When friends come over, they say: I didn't know this was here. They don't expect the Anacostia they find.
Catherine Buell, 28, gets the same reaction from friends. She moved to Anacostia two years ago after realizing she had been priced out of places like Mount Rainier in Prince George's and LeDroit Park in the District. Her real estate agent and friends were skeptical about Southeast, but she was drawn to the 100-year-old architecture, the proximity to downtown and the tranquillity of Anacostia Park.
"Anacostia was my little utopia," says Buell, a native of Silver Spring.
Then she was robbed. She began to rethink her move.
I write about crime and punishment and its impact on families. Through these stories, I often meet youth recently released from Oak Hill, the city's juvenile detention facility in Laurel, where the most dangerous offenders are held.
In the crowds of young men on the corner, I now recognize some of the faces. I stop to chat, or just blow my horn in recognition. I hope none of them were among the group that accosted Buell, a slight woman, as she walked to her car that Friday night in October. The one with the gun, Buell says, seemed afraid as she "screamed bloody murder." She was, too.
Buell considered leaving but is staying put. She's been asked to join the board of the Anacostia Economic Development Corp. and the Historic Preservation Review Board.
She wants to be a part of what Anacostia is going to be. Like the rest of us, she runs into skepticism. It's different than gentrification elsewhere in the city, because most newcomers here are black, like the longtime residents.
But we're not from here. We are outsiders. And people are afraid they are being pushed out. That the newcomers -- doctors, lawyers, accountants -- are black, doesn't matter that much.
"They're suspicious," Buell says. "They don't know why we're so excited to be here."
That, too, is understandable.
Change is already underway. There's a new office building at the intersection of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. Just up the road, near the Anacostia Metro station, stands a new Salvation Army headquarters.
But it's Poplar Point, the 110-acre waterfront park, that is creating the most angst. D.C. Council member Marion Barry, a constant champion of "the new Ward 8," has been at odds with Mayor Adrian Fenty for not backing the proposal to put a soccer stadium on the site.
Whatever is built there, residents ask: What's in it for us? Will I still be here?
The new block association is involved in these questions and is fast becoming a player in Ward 8 politics.
Members like Buell say they are careful not to appear as know-it-alls or saviors.
There was certainly plenty here to be proud of before we showed up. One of them is my neighbor. She's about my mother's age but insists that I call her Jo. I see her mornings and afternoons sprinkling bread crusts and peanuts to attract pigeons and squirrels, who wait expectantly to feast.
A resident of more than three decades, she's also a neighborhood historian. She told me that the alley next to my house on W Street SE, and behind hers on 14th, was once used to deliver coal. One of the previous owners of my house ran a car repair business in my yard. I still find the old parts. The roses blooming in my back yard, she told me, hadn't been so plentiful in years. I was happy to do my part.
She also alerted me to the neighborhood hawk. The pigeons, scores of which come to feast, get quiet or try to get out of the way when the hawk comes calling. At least once a week, one of the pigeons doesn't make it. The hawk's attacks are swift and vicious.
It's a harsh reminder of the cycle of life, but it seems so natural to my southern Louisiana roots where hunting, fishing and raising hogs for food remain facts of life.
This is my neighborhood now and I love it, but I am under no illusions.
The streets have more litter than they should because too many people continue to throw their empty beer and soda cans and chip bags on the ground. People still sneak into alleys to relieve themselves. Crime is a persistent concern.
But unlike a decade ago when the streets were scary, they just seem normal now. There's one neighbor who talks to himself and asks everyone for two-dollars-or-a-quarter-or-a-drink-of-water in quick succession. Mothers and daughters wait for the bus stop across the street, some wearing Foot Locker, Georgetown and security guard uniforms. People say good morning when they pass. Kids stop to trick or treat. Good, for me, outweighs the bad.
The pigeons are a constant. And when one of them succumbs to the hawk, the flock is silent for a while. But the life and frolicking returns, kinda like the life of a neighborhood.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.