"When any kid comes, we don't make any cuts. We don't turn anybody away," said Ellis, who explained that the coaches sometimes dig in their own pockets for equipment for the players.

The program's guiding force since 1960 has been Mason Clark. He oversees more than a dozen teams of Warriors drawn from neighborhoods across the city.

"The main thing is to have the kids involved in something positive. If you have them doing something positive, they're not doing something negative," said Clark. "It's nothing earth-shaking. It's nothing 'exciting.' No one's getting murdered. No house is burning down. You're just seeing kids developing."

"The main thing is to have the kids involved in something positive," said Mason Clark, who leads an athletic program in Ward 5. (Tom Allen / The Washington Post)

Clark made plans one recent evening to appeal for help to all candidates for citywide office this election year.

A diagramed political play.

Despite the relative affluence of its upper reaches, the ward is one of the city's poorest, with a median household income last year of about $35,000, higher only than Wards 7 and 8. It has more than 1,000 units of public housing scattered among 33 sites, including 334 units at Edgewood Terrace and 308 at Langston Terrace.

Crime is considerable and guns are many, although the numbers of cases are dropping in Ward 5 as they are throughout the city. Residents credit police efforts, particularly local beat cops.

As Dorthia Austin said of Ivy City, "It's a lot better. A lot of the open-air drug markets are gone, thanks to Sgt. [Ronald] Netter."

A trial this month in D.C. Superior court showcased what still goes too often wrong. A jury convicted William "Sleepy" Clark of killing two men standing near a stoop at the Brentwood Manor Apartments in September. A neighbor testified that she heard a voice say, "If I can't sell my drugs here, then nobody's going to sell their drugs."

Then she heard gunfire.

Dramatic change is underway in public housing, however, starting with Montana Terrace, once as violent as any corner of the city. The project will be reborn as housing for rent and for sale, with the unsalvageable parts torn down. Another low-income site, Western Mews, was recently leveled after soaking up nothing but trouble for years.

New York Avenue, grim gateway to the Nation's Capital from the east, pierces the heart of Ward 5 and stands as a symbol of much that is wrong and just as much that is possible, in ward and city alike.

Every day, 135,000 vehicles travel across the city line in each direction on the broad roadway. Trucks, tour buses, passenger cars and vans are mostly just passing through, since there is little on New York Avenue, apart from the stoplights, to hold their attention or slow them down.

Something, as they say, ought to be done.

"One, it's a tremendously traffic-congested artery that ties up the city. Two, it's just plain ugly. Third, it's a lost economic opportunity, with all that unused and misused land. And fourth, it negatively impacts the neighborhoods along the corridor," said Ron Linton, chairman of the New York Avenue Development Task Force.

Linton is pushing a vision that -- as visions do -- take time and money.

The future landscape in his mind's eye includes smoother traffic along the 3.5-mile corridor from Seventh Street NW to the District line, a mass transit hub and a functional business district that could provide decent jobs for nearby workers. He calls it "a crucial thing for the city."

Seeking relief, one can drive in two directions from New York Avenue, find great beauty and still be in Ward 5. The first is north, to Brookland, Catholic University, Trinity College and the shady streets of North Michigan Park. The second is south to the Arboretum, which borders the highway but stands utterly, peacefully apart.

"This is where you go if you want to think. I've been coming here for 30 years," said Joan Black, who teaches at Howard University and lives in a nearby neighborhood also called Arboretum. "I used to come here and write poetry. When I was younger, when I was romantic, before I became a grandparent."

Irritated by truck traffic and the odor, ANC member John Frye recently protested against the trash transfer stations in Ward 5. (Larry Morris / The Washington Post)

Two or three times a year, Black takes a passel of children to the park, past Fern Valley and the dogwoods, past the Asian Garden, past the rhododendrons and the dwarf conifers, to the top of a hill.

There, she urges them to yell at the top of their lungs.

"I teach them scream therapy," Black said as she meandered through the place she adores. "They let it out. Then they roll in the grass and talk."

There is all too much squabbling and quarreling in city affairs, said Black, who believes, "If we're going to have some strength, we've got to work together."

Black, along with Frye and Hood, are among a number of energetic Ward 5 activists trying to stitch their disparate neighborhoods into a sturdier unit, the better to succeed against force and inertia alike.

"Anything that no one wants in this city is being dumped here," said Black. "Our council people are not listening. Our mayor is not listening, either."

Next: Ward 6 in profile.