The East Loop

​The Downtown Heritage Trail exists in three discrete sections: East, Center, and West Loops.  The East Loop begins along Pennsylvania Ave., by the Pennsylvania Ave. National Historic Site, and zigzags (extensively!) up through Judiciary Square and ultimately into Chinatown to the Gallery Place Metro.  It is a land of statuary: few businesses, lots of courts, all spare Washington grandeur.

The day was gray, but promises of spring lurked in the streets.

Though I'd planned to find someplace to sit and read, there was practically no place to buy coffee.  I got temporarily excited about going inside the cafe of the National Building Museum, but they turned out to be closed for a special event.

As I got close to the Chinatown neighborhood, I ran into a lot of construction.  One building was wearing a shroud:

And another was bravely holding its own against the onslaught... but how much longer?

DC's Chinatown is picturesque and full of restaurants, but tiny.  It's trendy and full of white people and African-Americans, fewer Asian people except for business proprietors.  Do Chinese people actually live here anymore?  Not too many, but some.

The Center Loop

The Center Loop starts at Pennsylvania Ave. again, this time at the intersection with 7th St.  There is a monument to Charity there, right in front of the National Bank of Washington.  I'm not sure what that means.

It was raining, and I didn't have an umbrella.  Everything looked a little blurred, like in this picture.

Here is where all the restaurants and retail establishments are located, adjacent to the stark courthouses and museums.  It's an unselfconsciously moneyed neighborhood: valet parking, expensive hotels and apartment buildings,  Anthropologie, Sephora, trendy restaurants festooned with strings of white lights, cupcake shops, J. Crew.  I ate my chicken salad sandwich at an Au Bon Pain, but I could also have chosen Starbucks, Pret a Manger, Cosi, or half a dozen other similar joints within a two-block radius.

There are some important tourist destinations here:

The West Loop

Foolishly, I decided to finish the West Loop of the trail on the same day Washington held its Capitals Stanley Cup victory parade.  The parade was over by the time I arrived downtown on the Metro, but thousands of people were still milling around wearing Caps attire, or at least whatever red clothing they could come up with.  The Subway restaurant where I stopped for a quick lunch after getting off the train was a surging sea of red.  

This loop, if I may be so bold as to say it, was incredibly boring.  It runs from the Metro Center station towards the White House, then back up New York Avenue, making a little loop on K Street, then back to Metro Center.  Besides the revelers, there was little to see.  There was a scourge of these kind of mirrored buildings:

Who doesn't hate those?  And it was hot and sunny, and crawling with sports fans (not shown).  There was still an overabundance of crappy fast-casual restaurants.  So close to the White House, and yet so dull and colorless.

Instead, I'll leave you with a photo of the Silver Spring Civic Center during early voting.  Now here's where the real action is!

Well, I finally found a DC neighborhood that hasn't gentrified yet-- although that doesn't mean it won't.  Getting to the beginning of the Greater Deanwood Heritage Trail meant taking the Metro to Union Station, then a long number 96 bus to 52nd St.  (The second half of the bus ride was the most alarming part of today's expedition: all signs pointed to the bus's having sustained a flat tire, but the driver appeared not to notice as we bumped and rattled and hurtled to and fro along the streets.  A man behind me said to his neighbor: "I'm just here visiting a friend, hope I make it out alive.")  From 52nd St., I walked north along Division Ave. until I reached the beginning of the trail at Foote St..

Division Ave. near E. Capitol St. had that poor-but-respectable look: small, drab houses with neat yards, quiet streets with trees.  As I approached Deanwood proper, though, the air of respectability diminished.  There was more trash along the street, everything looked grimier, and almost all visible people were male and appeared to be just hanging around.  Not that I felt directly threatened at any point; just out-of-place and highly self-conscious.  It didn't seem like a place where white people from outside the neighborhood go for exploratory walks.

It also didn't feel like a place where it was appropriate to pull out my phone and take lots of photos of everything; there was little that was picturesque, so I would have been transparently documenting the exoticism of everyday (black) poverty.  One thing I did wish I got a photo of: the police station.  I was passing a series of houses with front porches on which groups of young men were hanging out.  Just past one of these there was a clearing in which a police station suddenly appeared: long and low and vaguely ominous, with an impressive number of police cars parked in rows along the street outside.  Maybe twenty or thirty of them.  In that location, with that degree of overwhelming police presence, they seemed to be overtly threatening their immediate neighbors.  I wish I could show you; I should have shown you.

​There was one truly beautiful spot on the trail: a low mosaic building just across from Marvin Gaye Park, of obvious historic value.  (I learned, upon later research, that this building was the club in which Marvin Gaye began his career.)  But the park was, again, full of men standing around, and there was an ancient, perhaps drunken homeless guy on the corner in front of the mosaic, and once again it did not seem appropriate to photograph the scene with all these unconsenting people in it.  (This park is apparently much nicer than it was a few years ago, as is detailed here.)

On Nannie Helen Boroughs Ave, a hopeful note: a line of greenhouses tended by community gardeners.  I like their sign.

On 49th St., a middle-aged man passing by wearing a "Black Lives Matter" tshirt hit on me.  I mention the tshirt because it prejudiced me in his favor.  Also, I have to respect the rare individual who is capable of hitting on a total stranger on the street without coming off as aggressive or mocking.  I'm not a fan of stranger ambush, and I would totally make the rule that no man shall accost a woman walking by whom he does not know.  But, if you're going to do it, do it like this man: get in with the compliment (and don't make it overtly sexual), be friendly and respectful, and get out again.  Telling the woman to "have a good day" and then MOVING ON wins you extra points.  No creepy following or pestering.  I actually felt more welcome in the neighborhood after this guy hit on me, and that is, believe me guys, highly unusual.

I'd meant to stop and have some coffee and lunch while I was in Deanwood, but there were no restaurants along my way, just a few tiny makeshift food stores.  (I did see a Wendy's and a McDonald's a bit off the path, but did not go there.)  Deanwood is kind of a food desert.  What there was, instead of restaurants, was churches.  Churches and churches and churches.  A couple of them were biggish and pretty, like this one:

But most of them were like the food shops: tiny, dingy, in mostly residential buildings, with names like "Macedonia Holy Church on the Rock" and "Divine Love Baptist."  I'm having trouble finding the names, actually, of the more obscure ones, and yet it was the profusion of obscure ones that struck me.  In one location there were three contiguous church properties.  What Deanwood lacks in business investment, it apparently makes up for in faith.

The Minnesota Ave. Metro station, where I ended my walk, was dimly lit and had large amounts of water dripping from the entrance onto the floors below.  Even Metro looks like it invests less in this neighborhood.

May Deanwood find a way to enjoy greater prosperity without its residents being wholly run out of town by rich white people.

Every day, two or three times a day, I get a text message from the county informing me that it is still cold.  Hypothermia alert.  Today, school was canceled due to a half-inch of snow on the ground, plus impending chill and wind.  Suburban Marylanders are not known for their cold-hardiness, alas.  I went back to Greenbelt Park.  This time I didn't even expect to see anyone else there.  I was right.

​The Azalea Trail is a short loop connecting three different picnic sites, all of which were today windswept and lonely.  The snow lined everything and made my footsteps nearly silent.  No other human tracks, only animal.  There was a dog without a master-- fox?  coyote?-- rabbits, birds.  I saw none of them, except a few juncos and crows.  It was cold but not intolerable.  The most significant sound was of trees creaking and sobbing in the wind.

​As usual, alone in the woods, I am a little scared-- maybe wary is a better word-- but once again I was able to find that place of being at peace with isolation. Even if I were to encounter danger, could there be a better time to go?-- almost charging through the snowy woods mouthing "I love this I love this I love this?"

I

People, Columbia Heights is so cool.  I had no idea.  They're so political down there, almost like Takoma Park where I live, except maybe a little less peace-signs-and-rainbows, a little more Workers-Unite!  Every street lamp is plastered with posters, the bars have signs in the windows for Democratic politicians, the businesses seem to represent every ethnicity under the sun, it feels safe, but not rich.

Except for the new stuff they're building-- that looks rich.  How long will Columbia Heights stay cool in the way that it is cool right now?  Maybe just a couple of years before it is totally overcome by gentrification.  Hopefully I am wrong about this.

So, my Metro station has been closed for maintenance for nearly two weeks, and to get to Columbia Heights I had to take a bus shuttle to Fort Totten, then grab a train for the rest of the way.  It went quite smoothly (and on the way back as well); I was surprised.  Good on Metro.  

When I arrived at the Columbia Heights station, I was hungry and had to pee, so I stopped for a "Little" fries at the Five Guys.  A "Little" fries involves a very small cup full of fries, which is placed inside a paper bag, and then approximately 4-5 additional cups worth of fries are tossed on top.  I am not sure of the logic behind this.  I could not eat all of the fries in one sitting, but tucked half of them away in a greasy paper bag in my purse.  Here is a view from the window of the Five Guys:

As soon as I started really walking, I realized I'd been to this exact spot before.  There was a ring of benches around a fountain (though, at this time of year, there was a Christmas tree at that spot); I'd waited there last spring to meet a group of strangers from Sanctuary DMV.  We were there for an "accompaniment"-- a young, undocumented man had skipped work the day before in order to take part in a pro-immigrants-rights protest, and wanted a couple of witnesses when he returned to his job, to reduce the chances that he would be fired.  As it happened, an excessive 20 or 30 people gamely showed up, his boss was completely supportive of his choice to make a political statement anyway, and the young man was embarrassed to have made such a big deal about nothing.  We didn't mind.

Columbia Heights is full of the kind of row houses I think are so pretty.

There were swanky new coffee bars across from rinky-dink Salvoradan coffee-and-bakery places.  How long will this delicate balance exist, co-exist?  

A couple of the political posters:

I did walk down one street whose houses looked extremely wealthy.  These people had already decorated extensively (yet most tastefully of course) for Christmas.

Meanwhile, old things were still being torn down to make room for new things.  I don't know why I find it so beautiful when a single wall is still standing during a demolition, with sky showing through the windows.

I walked about half the trail, down to 14th and Florida, and then scooted over a couple of blocks to the U St. station and home.
​

II

19 degrees, in the District, is what passes for Arctic chill.  Women shuffle by in their fake fur-lined hoods, looking wounded.  A spirit of camaraderie prevails, though, a sense of shared adversity: people give a few bucks to the homeless guy to get coffee and warm up, exhort one another to put on some gloves, wish strangers "Happy New Year!"  We smile a bit more under our tightly wrapped mufflers.

This was the context of my second trip to the Columbia Heights Heritage Trail.    Pretty quickly I ran into a guy who was waiting outside a neighborhood soup kitchen.  Apparently it did not open till noon, but he and his suitcase had arrived at 10 am.  He still had another hour to wait when I walked by.  Cold enough walking; much too cold to stand still.  We chatted and I gave him some money so he could wait inside a business instead of out.  In this weather, a miscalculation of timing could turn into a real disaster.  I was seriously considering stopping someplace for a cup of tea myself.

In the end, I didn't; the walk wasn't very long, and with my face turned into the sun, the cold was bearable.  I was back in the land of aggressive cultural fusion: Korean tacos, kung fu and capoeira, monuments to African-American literati. 

​This latter part of the trail took me by Meridian Hill Park, an attractive walled green space which, due to the cold and an overdeveloped tendency to follow paths exactly, I did not enter.  After reading about it afterwards, I regret the oversight.  I did see this imposing statue (from behind), which is apparently of Dante for some reason.

​At the opposite corner of the park, I ended up back on 16th St., on Embassy Row, in a spot I suddenly recognized from the Adams Morgan Trail.  I stopped to take another picture of the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, to illustrate this returning full-circle, but at that moment my camera battery went dead.  Curious.

​By this time I was glad I knew the way back to the Columbia Heights station, and glad to get in from the cold.  I am learning my way around.