Category Archives: Washington DC

Miles From Monday: Running the Capitol Hill Classic

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Capitol Hill Classic, Washington, DC, May 2013

“It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we’d like to be. That’s not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you’ve accomplished, rather than thinking of what’s left to be done.” — John Bingham

May 20, 2013, Washington, DC: We run together through a spitting rain. First as a tight pack and later as a long string of a neon sneakers stretched out over the entire neighborhood. We check the landmarks off the list first, tagging the back of the Supreme Court and the Shakespeare Library before beelining it away from the city in a straight shot out toward its edge. Familiar faces and strangers reach into the street offering paper cups and high fives. Clutching coffee mugs, wearing baseball caps, there’s the shopkeeper from around the corner, the family who lives down the block…

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Ode to The Corner Store

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Corner stores, Washington, DC May 2013

Congress Market, 5th and East Capitol SE

“Why go far afield when within three or four blocks there at the heart of Capitol Hill we had the Capitol of the United States, the Library of Congress, Mr. Johnnie’s Ice Cream and Candy Store, Grubb’s Pharmacy, Sherrill’s Bakery and Restaurant, McPhee’s Men’s Haberdashery, at least four churches, one school, four doctors, a barbershop, two corner grocery stores, two delicatessens, a dentist, a milliner, a leaky movie theater, Providence Hospital, four undertakers and Santa Claus?”

-Mary Z. Gray

May 11, 2013, Washington, DC: I recently read “301 East Capitol: Tales from the Heart of the Hill.” It’s a great neighborhood history by Mary Z. Gray, and I told her how much I liked it last weekend when I met the 94-year old at Literary Hill BookFest at Eastern Market. I told Ms. Gray that now when I walk by her old house and the former homes of her friends and family, I suddenly feel like I know who lives there, even though the characters in her stories moved out decades ago.

Although much of the neighborhood has changed since Ms. Gray explored it as a child in the 1920s (don’t I wish we still had a candy shop and a leaky movie theater and a haberdashery if only for its name), it’s uplifting to see many remnants of the neighborhood she enjoyed still standing. Churches are still tightly concentrated in the blocks behind the Capitol, Grubb’s Pharmacy is still open, and so are the corner stores.

I took a walk recently to photograph the corner stores, recognizing them as an integral element of the neighborhood. As an adult, I’ve gravitated towards neighborhoods where I can walk down the block to pick up a carton of milk or some laundry detergent, places where running errands rarely involves getting in the car. In her book, Ms. Gray credits DC’s original city planner Pierre L’Enfant with envisioning mixed-use neighborhoods where that’s possible. ”L’Enfant’s idea for filling this diamond was to begin with squares and circles forming small town centers that would gradually grow into larger towns until they melded, and, eventually, filled out into a city,” she wrote. “Each population center had its own necessities and conveniences, hence the corner grocery stores and other amenities that remain.”

A few of the corner stores in southeast and northeast DC are pictured here, as is Grubb’s Pharmacy:

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Gaia’s New Mural on Barracks Row

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Gaia mural, Barracks Row, Washington, DC, May 2013

This is one in a series featuring our city neighborhoods and the people who love them. Would you like to participate? Click here for more information about contributing to Neighborhood Nomads.

May 7, 2013, Washington, DC: Talented street artists Gaia and Nanook recently completed this massive mural on the side of a building in my neighborhood on Barracks Row. The newly opened Persian restaurant Tash and Asian restaurant Nooshi now feature this image of a woman with fish and fishing boats flowing into her hair, a piece as vibrant as city life itself on this DC main street. Because not many people experience their surroundings like this — from atop a ladder, creating large-scale art that the neighbors will see everyday, I suspected 24-year old Gaia might have a unique perspective to share with Neighborhood Nomads. When he replied that, “The fish were a delight to massage into the wall,” those suspicions were confirmed.

Read on for more from this artistic neighborhood nomad…

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Cranes, Change and Buried Treasure

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Construction at The Maples, Washington, DC, May 2013

Construction at the Maples/Friendship House on Capitol Hill, May 2013. 

May 3, 2013, Washington, DC: The cranes went up about a week ago, and as far as I can tell the heavy lifting began yesterday morning, 5 a.m. We awoke to powerful construction noise that lasted just 10 minutes or so, and this morning at precisely 7 a.m., it began again. A changing streetscape is something we’ve grown accustomed to seeing, but this time we’ll also hear it. We’ll listen to the transformation of the historic property known as the Maples and later the Friendship House as it morphs into condominiums throughout the seasons ahead.

In the few years we’ve lived nearby, the place has been vacant, a spooky old home that makes kids cross to the other side of the street on Halloween. But the old mansion has a long and incredible history on Capitol Hill, recorded by groups like the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, the city’s Historic Preservation Review Board and the Library of Congress. In the 1790s, its original owner, Captain William Duncanson, was one of the first landowners in the nation’s capital; others who lived there include Francis Scott Key, Senator John Clayton, and my personal favorite, Emily Edson Briggs, the first female newspaper correspondent to cover the White House — Lincoln’s White House, that is. Rumor also has it there’s a hidden wine cellar deep underground there, and the moment I hear anything about it from the construction crews or anyone else, I’ll be sure to let you know. DC tour guide Canden Schwantes told me about it a few weeks back and thus far I’ve just found this newspaper article from 1970 to fuel my fascination with the possibility of nearby buried treasure.

Cranes on the horizon. There’s not much room left for them in dense places like Manhattan, but here in D.C., they still stop traffic on Massachusetts Ave. near Chinatown and dominate the O Street Market project, and serve to mark the spot in places like this one, where land is full of history and treasures, and transformation is underway.

Do cranes often appear on the landscape where you live? And have those of you in Washington heard stories about the hidden wine cellar?

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Miles From Monday: Beach Camping

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camping4

“Find yourself a place you belong in the universe,” she said, “a place where the dirt feels like goodness under your feet.”       -Pam Houston

Miles from Monday is a travel series focused on venturing out of the spaces we inhabit during our work week and retreating to landscapes that feel far from routine.

April 29, 2013, Washington, DC: We went camping this weekend on Assateague Island, 140 miles from our neighborhood in the city and even more distant than that from our weekend routine. It’d been way too long since we spent a Saturday night unplugged at a campsite with just the necessities — things like kitchen utensils and board games and a few close friends. It’d been way too long since we’d pitched a tent on a beach.

We’d nearly forgotten the allure of someplace where dinner cooks on the fire and the East is all ocean and the smell of morning coffee floats onto clean salty air. We’d nearly forgotten how good it feels to shuffle around in ski socks with the sand beneath our feet.  We’d nearly forgotten there are many places we belong, and that a campsite on the beach is most certainly one of them.

When is the last time you went camping? Do you find that phases of your life can be demarcated in part by the way you travel? What type of travel do you associate with each? 

beach camping, assateague island, april 2013

beach camping, assateague island, april 2013

beach camping, assateague island, april 2013

Assateague Island camping

beach camping, assateague island, april 2013

beach camping, assateague island, april 2013

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At Day’s End: A Tour Guide’s True DC

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impromptu block party, northeast dc

Photo Credit: Canden Schwantes 

This is one in a series featuring our city neighborhoods and the people who love them. Would you like to participate? Click here for more information about contributing to Neighborhood Nomads.

April 24, 2013, Washington, DC: Washington tour guide Canden Schwantes is living proof that Capitol Hill is not all senators, congressman and politicos. She may spend her days telling stories of great American history on the National Mall, but at the end of the day, she returns home to a neighborhood on the northeast side of the city where the narrative is very much happening in the present day. It’s a place where grills and guitars are dragged out onto the sidewalk for impromptu block parties, where children publish their poetry and adults make music.

Canden is at home among many creative types who live just off the H Street corridor of Capitol Hill; in addition to being a tour guide, she’s also a writer whose first book, “Wicked Georgetown: Scoundrels, Sinner and Spies” is due out next month. I first heard about her when I learned of Literary Hill BookFest, a neighborhood festival coming up May 5th at Eastern Market, where Canden will be debuting her work. Right away, I thought the local authors featured at the festival might make for good additions to Neighborhood Nomads — not only because they’re my neighbors, but because they’re people who know a thing or two about the role a strong setting can play in telling a good story.

Read on for an interview with Canden Schwantes about the neighborhoods of Washington, both past and present.

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Miles from Monday, And Still Running

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“Every mile out there is a gift.”

-Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon

April 22, 2013, Washington, DC: Amby Burfoot was less than a mile from the finish line last Monday, ready to celebrate the 45th anniversary of his marathon win, when the bombs went off on Boylston Street. I heard him recount his story a few days later on NPR’s Fresh Air as I drove home up Independence Ave. and past the U.S. Capitol where flags flew at half staff to commemorate the victims of the Boston Marathon. When I got home, like so many others, I went for a run. Past the Capitol Police on the corner of Independence and 3rd, behind the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court, out East Capitol and around Lincoln Park. The usual route, spiked this time with an unusual sense of patriotism.

I ran a lot last week, in fact. Undoubtedly inspired by those who ran the marathon and those who cheered them on, undoubtedly motivated by the neighborhood 10K coming up next month. On Thursday, I ran my occasional six mile route home from work, through Dupont Circle into downtown and east along Pennsylvania Ave towards Capitol Hill. The pedestrian plaza in front of the White House, a highlight on the route, remained closed due to increased security, but the crowds of runners and visitors out that day detoured around it and carried on.

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