This One Is Personal: #DontMuteDC

This one is personal.

A resident at one of the new upscale residential buildings that have cropped up in DC, and squeezed out the old, has threatened to sue a landmark institution for existing in its space and doing what it has always done for decades: blast Go-Go music, a sound indigenous to The District.

The MetroPCS record and mobile store located on the corner of 7th and Florida Avenue streets NW has taken indoors the speakers that once serenaded passerbys.

I lived in Dc years earlier when that store was a Popeyes restaurant.

More recently, and since 1995, the MetroPCS blasted music.

It was always been loud and blaring but definitely part of the habitat of a big active city of moving parts, bikes, buses, automobiles and bodies.

It appears, as many predicted when the City underwent a season of revitalization and development, that the newbies are almost done declaring their take over.

It’s a commandeering, some will say, of all the previously authentic and familiar things to old and true native DCtonians to make room for quiet, beer gardens, endless furniture stores, sidewalk cafes, bike lanes and dog parks. Lots and lots of dog parks.

This type of seige does not happen overnight but it is predictable:

1 Gentrifiers enter an urban community with “potential”, on the rise and get in on the bottom level. Invest.

2. They Cause housing prices to skyrocket.

3 The increases in property value contribute to the surge in home prices and rents to spike, and eventually the natives are pushed out of their homes.

4. The newcomers Complain…about all the people, music and culture that existed before they arrived.

5. Many Fear the previous residents who they see chilling on the corner and take steps to have the police enforce anti loitering laws on the books.

They call the cops when they see one try to move in their building or use their own key to enter their building.

6. Attend council meetings and get new ones out in place, then get the politicians and police on their side.

7. They Call cops on regulars doing what they’ve done for decades like hang out on the stoop or play their music and chill.

They Don’t care that families have had charcoal grilled in the park for decades before you got there.

8 Then comes the pricing out mom and pop stores.

9. They get Replaced them with 45 furniture stores, corner cafes, and beer gardens.

10. The entire complexion of the neighborhood is changed.

11. Call it positive “development!”

12. Win!

This one is personal.

When I first immigrated to Washington, DC, in the late 1970s, I lived in the Shaw neighborhood where this particular MetroPCS in question is located.

I have fond memories of living in Shaw, playing outdoors in the Summer until the street lights came on, unafraid, exploring different parts of the city with my sister and my cousins who lived in the upstairs in our high rise apartment building.

When I got older, my parents let me walk home from our Shaw community DCPS elementary school, Scott Montgomery, where I was in the talented and gifted magnet program,where I got THE BEST quality education.

Each day, I would stop by the corner store for my daily $.35 bar of Babe Ruth candy bar (my fave) and hang on the corner with friends shooting the breeze for a while before going home and starting my homework.

It was a daily habit.

Sometimes, our crew would venture up the street to Kennedy Playground (now a community center) or stop at O Street Market for a Steak and Cheese.

You could smell the scent of grilled onions a block away.

O Street market is now a fancy Lifestyle Giant that sells wine and has shopping carts to hold your Pinot Grio as you shop.

The neighborhood had culture, community and distinct charisma and charm, then too.

Everyone was friendly and I felt safe.

These days, I pass by regularly on my way into downtown, to catch a show at Capitol One arena or to the museums or on my way home and It has changed a lot but there is still a healthy mix of old and new.

A lot of new.

Development is good.

The streets are cleaner but they were clean then.

Community policing is present but it was then as we had then.

Shaw was never ever a place than needed complete displacement of its old residents, culture and ways. (Not that any place need be, necessarily)

I’m grateful that Log Cabin Liquor is still on the corner of 7th and S Street as is the apartment building I grew up in and the preschool center that sat at the bottom where and I and my sister “graduated” from before we each headed off to Kindergarten.

I do hope there could be a resolution where the sounds of a neighborhood staple, a source of feeling of nostalgia, a welcoming symbol that you’re almost home could remain.

Perhaps the #DontMuteDc Change.org petition will help get us there or at least a meeting in the middle.

It demands city leaders, T-Mobile (the new owners) and the new residents or “gentrifiers” not malign, disrespect or attempt to erase the culture of the city

Consider signing or donating to the advertisement or advertising it yourself to raise awareness.