DC Chinatown is Fine

I was sitting on the corner of H Street and 7th NW waiting for a bus to take me back to work and I looked up and saw the old and the new buildings and the marvelous painted archway in Chinatown. Although it was cold, I enjoyed the view of the new buildings and the fresh paint which is a big change from how it looked about ten years ago. All of a sudden this intersection and the area around it look like New York city. It's all because they built the MCI center, whoops, now called Verizon center and that became a magnet for a lot of great development in what was becoming a decaying section of the city. My bus finally came and I found myself glad for the resurrection of this part of the city.  

Car for Wheelchair Users

You just never know what you will see on H Street NW if you are just walking along but on one particular day VPGAutos had their model car parked outside the Grand Hyatt hotel. They are a new AMERICAN car company that builds a vehicle
that is wheelchair usable, that is, it's so roomy even a large wheelchair can roll right in and be in the front passenger seat. Not only is the floor lower than most cars but the ceiling is higher. I asked the driver if I could step inside and sit down and I did. The experience was a little like sitting in a London taxi and the design of the vehicle, the MV-1, quite reminds me of one of these, although it was perhaps a lot airier and more open in feel than a typical Cockney cab. I  haven't yet figured out how the ramp works or what the price of this car is, but I would hope it comes in colors other than white! What a fantastic surprise!

A Lovely July 4th

July 4th this year was a Sunday so it was a double delight day, not only the best day of the week but also a holiday. So everyone on the street put out their flags and you could smell barbecues going and hear party music. We had dinner of sausages and kasha salad and lime jello with raspberries on the front porch and then about 9 pm we all went out on the front steps and set off some fireworks. We had a few rockets and roman candles and showering banging snapping flashing things and it was a good time. The kids next door watched and dared themselves to hold a few of the sparklers we had. Not only could we hear the thundering boom of the national fireworks display on the Mall but also all around were the rockets red and green and white glare as the neighbors on adjacent streets set off their fireworks. After cake and ice cream we went to bed very satisfied with an excellent celebration day, thanks be to God!

Those Mighty Megabuses

As the light turned green, two of these big blue and yellow behemoth megabuses went whizzing through the 7th and H street intersection in Chinatown when I was there tonight. Where were they off to at 11 pm at night I wondered or had they done their runs for the day and were going to whatever warehouse they are kept in at night? I've never ridden on one but the more I see of them, the more I get the urge just to hop on a bus, Gus, see New York city again, Jane, or maybe never come back, Jack. Something about how easy these buses seem to make it appeals to me. They stop right in the middle of Chinatown, you see the long line of YOUNG PEOPLE with backpacks waiting on the sidewalk climbing in and off they go, hardly stopping anywhere along the way, so I hear. Not like Greyhound or Trailways where you have to go to their station and put up with whatever route they go. But that's a bit like how life is, isn't it? Some buses just pass you by since the big conductor in the sky just didn't want you on that one today for some mysterious reason.

Park Not Lest Ye Be Towed

As the Route 80 bus wends its way from the corner of the street where I live through downtown it passes the corner near St. Mary's Mother of God church on the corner of 5th & H street. This church has the blessing of a parking lot on H street but since nearby is the Verizon Center they have to be sure no one parks there without permission. Hence the sign "park not lest ye be towed away." But since it's a church parking lot it's easier to lapse into a theological view of this fence. Okay, fine, "park not" means don't leave your car there. Or leave anything where it shouldn't be. Especially valuable things like cars. Or other valuable things, like your heart, or soul. But "lest ye be towed away" is definitely a warning of some consequence if you "park" that valuable thing. And it's definitely about taking away your car if you dare to park it. Like, park it and lose it. But what if you saw this positively, about taking a risk. Drive in, leave your car where you don't have permission to leave it. And it gets towed, taken away somewhere. Like, give your heart up, to something, and it gets towed away. By God. To somewhere you don't know where it will go, unless you risk it.

Not Your Typical Watergate

It took me 45 minutes on the bus this morning to get to work because of some tie-up along H Street NW just before Chinatown, but it did give me time to look out the window and notice how the building height limitation in D.C. (less than 10-21 storeys?) means that the streets haven't become canyons and you don't get the sense of being in a "downtown" area. That is, since all the buildings for the several square miles of DC are about the same height, there is no concentration of sky-scrapers. By the way I love the french word for skyscrapers (les gratte-ciels). All the streets have the about the same height and the a rchitecture is quite varied. The Kennedy Center and the Watergate apartment buildings are examples of older styles of "modern" architecture subject to the same limitation and I snapped them together recently using the miracle of a cell phone camera.. However, now there's a lot more glass and modern buildings than when I first came to DC 25 years ago. There's still  lots of older brick and stone buildings and quite a few churches scattered about downtown but it's changing. Apparently, at one time, the churches were the tallest buildings in town! Chinatown is always interesting as that corner is looking more and more like New York City with the live video screens and huge crowds crossing the road and the general hurly-burly there. I do remember when that section of the city was quite run-down and bedraggled, that is, before they built Verizon (used to be MCI) Center and restored some of the buildings on 7th street. Growth and change is not so strange when its incremental!