for shaw

HEADLINE: East of Easy Street;

After years of suburban living, his new downtown neighborhood felt edgy, even dangerous. Then it just began to feel like home

BYLINE: Frank Ahrens

One sunny Saturday afternoon in May 1999, I climbed up on my roof and looked around, holding a cordless power drill in one hand and a small satellite dish in the other.

I had just moved into a two--bedroom rental on the top floor of a two--story brick rowhouse on O Street NW, between Ninth and 10th streets. One of the obstacles that had prevented me from moving into the District from Bethesda, where I had passed the previous nine years, was the abominable cable system that served the city. You may laugh, but every man has his priorities.

So I opted for the cable alternative ---- a home satellite dish ---- and a neighborhood that was a real alternative to where I had been living. I moved to Shaw, an area of the city with a long history, some of it very bad.

From the roof, I had a good view of the neighborhood's past and present. In almost any direction I looked, I could see a street where Duke Ellington strolled when he was coming up in Shaw. The neighborhood is named for Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the first all--black Union regiment during the Civil War.

I looked two blocks east to the O Street Market, where, five years before I arrived, gang gunmen burst in on a spring evening and opened fire, killing one person and wounding nine in one of the city's most violent spasms. The drug dealers across the street still did business, even though the narcotics trade had slowed by the time I moved in.

If I looked west, I could see the corner of 11th and O, where the neighborhood prostitutes still stood at night and exposed their breasts as the johns drove slowly by. If a deal was struck, the cars often ended up idling below my apartment in the dimly lit alley, Naylor Court, where the transaction was concluded, often with embarrassing speed.

I worked on the dish, bolting it to the edge of the roof. I had a clear view down to Naylor Court where it hits O Street.

I was not the first to appreciate this view.

Shortly after my arrival, I was greeted by Lynda Wright, who owns a dog wash just around the corner of the alley.

Lynda lives across Naylor Court from me, and we met one day when she was in her back yard, cavorting with her beloved Dobermans. I was on my porch, a shouting distance of perhaps 20 yards.

Lynda is a friendly and voluble woman with colorful eyeglasses who moved into her house in 1977, when the street was a very different place. One of the first stories she told me involved my roof. Even before the District's crack epidemic in the '80s, my alley was one of the busiest drug markets in the area. Customers parked their cars three abreast in the alley, as dealers moved among them.

One highly enterprising dealer eventually claimed Naylor Court for himself, probably by eliminating his rivals, and I don't mean with his low prices and friendly service. He fished an old wooden desk out of a dumpster somewhere and set it up in the alley with extraordinary chutzpah. He sat behind the desk and sold his drugs ---- at the time, Lynda says, pills were the drugs of choice ---- as customers lined up before him. For security, he had stationed two gunmen to guard him ---- one standing on the roof across from my house, one on the roof on which I was now standing.

Only a few years earlier, my roof was a sniper's perch. Now, it offered a clear line of sight to an orbiting satellite so my dish could pull down HBO.

Do we change places or do they change us?

I moved to Shaw because I needed a slap in the face. For a decade, I had lived and worked in and around a city where, as a white man, I am a minority. Yet I had established a roaming range that insulated me from much of the city. I rarely ventured east of 14th Street because I had heard it was bad, mostly from my white friends. Much of D.C. that lives in the white wedge ---- the area of Northwest mainly west of Rock Creek Park with a narrow extension encompassing part of Capitol Hill ---- finds little reason to see the rest of the city, be it Brookland, Anacostia or even Shaw, a historically black section roughly bounded by Massachusetts Avenue, 14th Street, U Street and North Capitol Street.

I lived like a U.S. embassy official in a foreign country who never leaves the compound. I felt cowardly and not a little racist. If I was going to settle in this city, I needed to expand my view of it. I decided on immersion.

My first encounter with the neighborhood did not go so well.

In April '99, I ventured into Shaw for the first time, to look at an apartment on O Street between 10th and 11th streets. It was a terrific spring day, full of promise, but I felt nervous and penned in. I found the place, took a furtive look around and climbed back into the safety of my car, rationalizing that the apartment wasn't what I wanted. The truth was, the neighborhood ---- an innocuous--looking block of rowhouses ---- gave me the jitters. It was, after all, east of 14th.

I pulled out onto 11th Street and stopped at a light. A sedan roared up to my right and screeched to a halt. The passenger, a black man about my age, jumped out. He ran around the front of his car, stood in front of mine ---- poised to spring, it seemed ---- glared at me, got back in the sedan and peeled out. Shaking, I turned left and beat it back west of 14th.

As I related the story to friends, one said, "Well, at least he had the courtesy to look before shooting you." If my friends were being racist, they didn't think they were. In their view, they were simply being suitably cautious about where they lived and drove.

This should help you make up your mind about being an urban pioneer, another friend sniffed.

It did. I could either keep driving away or confront what I was afraid of, head on. A month later, I moved into my new apartment, a block east.

At the time, two--story rowhouses on my street were selling in the low $200s. The expensive rowhouse condos on the southeast corner of Logan Circle, a few blocks west, had not been built yet, nor had the loft apartments at 13th and N or the sprawling new Washington Convention Center between Seventh and Ninth streets.

I suppose I thought that my presence in the neighborhood would help improve it. After all, I was the sort of wage-- earning, non--drug--selling, watchful neighbor that city mayors try to lure in from the suburbs. I figured me and the neighborhood could do a deal ---- it could wise me up, and, in return, I could add something to the neighborhood; what, I wasn't sure yet.

The neighborhood got the better of me, at least at first.

Across from the O Street Market, there was a cracked--blacktop basketball court, the kind with rims but no nets. One summer Sunday afternoon shortly after I moved in, I walked over to shoot some hoops. There were a few kids playing, some teenagers describing lazy arcs on their BMX bikes, adults chatting. Just a normal, hot summer city day. I was the only white person around. As I set foot onto the court ---- literally crossed from the sidewalk and landed my right Nike on the blacktop ---- a little black kid, a boy about 11, looked up at me and asked, "You a cop?"

Great. Five minutes in this neighborhood and everyone thinks I'm a narc.

My love of Super Big Gulps drew me to the 7--Eleven at the corner of Rhode Island Avenue and Seventh Street. It became my 7--Eleven. For the first several weeks I walked into the store, I was acutely aware of my color. Almost always, except for the police officers who hung out there, I was the only white person in the store. Aside from black folks, the store featured a mix of Spanish speakers and the occasional Asian. I was so conscious of my whiteness, I felt like I was glowing.

I was quickly befriended by Calvin, the guy behind the checkout counter. Tall, slender and dark--skinned, he wore his hair either in tight braids or a modest 'fro, depending on the mood of his children, who liked to play beauty shop on their imperturbable dad's head. Calvin worked the night shift and got all the crazies. We found out we were the same age, born only days apart. "Scorpio?" he asked me. We never got beyond first names.

Calvin was the unfortunate but patient recipient of my often mortifying attempts to assimilate. During assimilation, the minority in a group ---- be it a racial, economic or cultural group ---- often adopts the traits of the majority, or what it perceives to be the traits of the majority, which typically turn out to be crude stereotypes.

I went through a regrettable and unintentionally humorous but blessedly brief period during which I tried to "act black." No greater injustice has been done in that vein since Richard Pryor attempted to teach a terminally white Gene Wilder to walk and talk black in the '70s buddy comedy "Silver Streak." I realized what I was doing, yet could not stop myself.

The nadir of my ill--advised endeavor undoubtedly came one night at the 7--Eleven, when I addressed Calvin as "dawg." He appeared unfazed, but I internally winced as soon as I said it and vowed never to do it or anything like it again. I decided that henceforth, I'd just act like myself, instead. Calvin and I talked about our raising, the jobs we'd had, the Redskins.

As the months passed, assimilation came, but on its own. Eventually, I stopped noticing the color of the people in line ahead of me and instead began counting how many bodies stood between me and the checkout counter to gauge how long my wait would be. One summer night, there was a commotion in front of me. I leaned around the people in line and saw a young woman at the counter wearing only a terry cloth bathrobe and house slippers. She evidently had padded over from the apartments across Seventh Street. As the men in line laughed and joshed her with suggestive comments, she exclaimed in delight, "I got out the shower and just had to get me a Slurpee!" Now, really: Who hasn't felt like that?

On another night, a year or so after I'd moved into my neighborhood, I walked into the 7--Eleven. Without warning and as easy as could be, it came. Calvin bestowed on me a simple act of kindness and completed my assimilation, long after I had stopped trying. He saw me in line, nodded casually and said, " 'S up, playa?"

Had I changed the neighborhood, or had it changed me? In the bargain I had struck with my neighborhood, I now owed it one.

I can leave Shaw anytime I want. I'm a renter, a transient. A parasite of sorts. I can give one month's notice, pull up stakes and hie myself back to the 'burbs, if I want.

People like Randy Kuczor and his buddies and Greg Melcher and his family have done the heavy lifting in the neighborhood, clearing a way for the likes of interlopers like me.

In June '99, a month after I moved in, Randy and two friends ---- Ron Wilkerson and the late Jerome Samuels ---- were looking for a house to buy. They saw a place on T Street between 13th and 14th but then spotted an ad in the back of the Washington Blade for an 8,000--plus--square--foot Victorian. The building looks like it could house a bowling alley. It's three stories tall and fronts 10th Street. Its back door opens on Naylor Court, across from me. It is a full one--third the length of the block.

"Now, remember, at this time people would not even stop their cars in Shaw, much less walk or live here," Randy says. "People were doing midnight 'car repairs' and dealing drugs right in front of our house. But we saw the potential not only in our house but in the neighborhood."

Randy and his buddies paid $392,000 for the place, which was built right after the Civil War and was a funeral home from the late 19th century until the 1940s. The men saw no obstacle they could not turn into an opportunity. Their small front yard was concrete. They smashed it to bits and made a broken--concrete garden, after which, Kuczor says, gardening become a "competitive sport" along 10th Street. (Relentless horticulturalists, they set upon their next--door neighbor's small grass--patch front yard a couple of years later and metamorphosed it into a multilevel show garden with broken pottery, flora of many varieties and a concrete sculpture of the owner's greyhound, Shadow.)

Four years and $500,000 later, their house is DC GuestHouse, a bed--and--breakfast with 27 rooms, including seven bathrooms, a wine cellar, a two--story great room and a chef's kitchen. The guys rent five bedrooms for $100 to $150 per night and are adding another bath and bedroom. Last October, the joint was appraised for $2 million.

"With a house this old," Randy says, "it will never be perfect, but it will always be pretty."

When I moved in, a B&B on my block would have been unthinkable. The only businesses were a Chinese takeout at the corner of Seventh and O that closed shortly after I arrived and mercifully never reopened and an auto mechanic's shop on my alley. As mixed--used neighborhoods gentrify, upper--scale businesses replace lower--scale ones. The folks who live on the alley eventually tired of all the cars in various states of disrepair and pushed out the mechanic's shop, which I lament, because it was handy having a guy nearby who could look at your brakes if they squeaked.

Greg goes farther back in Shaw. He and his brother bought a rowhouse a little to the north on Westminster Street, between Ninth and 10th, in 1985. Across the street was not just an ordinary crack house, but a crack factory once raided by federal agents. "I saw two people shot and killed and stepped over two or three more," he says of his time on the street.

When he started dating his wife, Merle, they would walk south on 10th Street to the Shops at National Place. At the time, easily three--quarters of the massive Victorians on their walk were shells, he says. They liked one on 10th between O and P streets and bought it for $60,000 in 1987. Two years later, they bought the much smaller carriage house behind it for $70,000 and moved in.

Time passed as they lived in the carriage house, renovating the Victorian bit by bit. They bought period fixtures from architectural salvage stores ---- the cypress front doors came from a shop on Magazine Street in New Orleans ---- and from eBay, where they found the Victorian fireplace adornment that's fixed above the modern six--burner stove in the basement kitchen.

Their daughter, Arielle, came in 1998; their son, Rhys, in 2000. Last year, after $500,000 worth of construction, the family deemed the Victorian finally ready for occupation, packed up and moved across the yard from the carriage house to their new 4,200--square--foot home, with its four bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths. Callie, their blue tick hound, still keeps an eye on the alley, barking in the back yard.

"We never ever could have possibly conceived it," Greg says, of the surge in development and property values in the neighborhood. Their main house was recently appraised for more than $900,000, the carriage house for $410,000. They're settled in for good.

Each day, it seems, something amazing happens in the neighborhood.

A three--story building at the corner of Ninth and O, empty and graffiti--covered since I moved in, was renovated late last year and promises condos upstairs and a corner business downstairs. One early February morning, as workmen were painting the outside of the store, I asked them what was going in there. The owners haven't leased it yet, one said. Probably a Starbucks, I said, joking. They laughed, but then one said, "The owners are talking to them."

And with that, nothing became impossible in Shaw anymore.

Radio One Inc., the nation's largest black--owned radio chain, is eyeing a move from its Lanham headquarters to a big chunk of land at Seventh and S streets, not far from where company founder Catherine Hughes started the company in 1980 with tiny WOL--AM. New development is popping up around the convention center; more is spring--loaded, just waiting for the price to get right. On the site of the cracked--blacktop playground at Seventh and O now stands a shiny new community center. Some of the publicly subsidized housing across the street is going market--rate. Where will the poor people go? Farther east, I suppose, but options are becoming more limited with each person like me who moves into the transitional neighborhoods.

The two--story rowhouses on my street that once sold for $200,000 all now fetch in the $400s and higher. The house next to mine, a fine three--story Victorian with a lot attached, just sold for more than $1 million, as did a renovated two-- story garage on Naylor Court. Read that number again. Longtime Washingtonians will be as skeptical of that sentence as if they'd just read the following one: The Senators are coming back. But it's true. Houses in Shaw are selling for more than a million bucks.

As the gutted 123--year--old O Street Market undergoes renovations to become an upscale shopping center, one of the merchants temporarily has relocated to the corner of 11th and O streets. My neighbors circulated a petition to prevent the store owner from selling liquor, fearing that the booze trade could take the corner back several years. On the one hand, I felt the shopkeeper had a right to sell whatever the city zoning laws permit. And a man (or woman) has a right to buy a drink, especially in a poorer, underserved neighborhood like mine where a lot of folks don't know from city government petitions. It felt a little too much like social engineering for my taste, but my neighbors own their property and feared a liquor store would hurt the value of the neighborhood. In the end, I couldn't help siding with them.

In the nearly five years I have lived in my neighborhood, I have never again felt threatened as I did on that April day when my friends still think I ducked a drive--by shooting. Which is not to say I haven't watched some dramatic "Cops" moments play out in the alley from my second--story porch. One Saturday night, I called the police after I watched a john parked in my alley pull a handgun out of his pocket and thunk it down on the roof of his car, where two chatty hookers waited inside. Two minutes later, the alley was swarming with cops and the john was sprawled half on the ground, his feet still on the back seat of his car. A cop straddled the john's back, service weapon pressed to the nape of his neck, screaming, "Don't move or I'll blow your [expletive] head off!" Great theater.

My girlfriends generally have fared poorly in my neighborhood. One had her SUV broken into in my alley. Another had her car stolen outright from the same spot. When some ruckus in the alley disrupted sleep another night, a third girlfriend wearily said, "Another restful night at Frank's house." I could hear the blueblood disapproval in her voice. I should have known then that it was over. Date me, date my 'hood.

I, on the other hand, have been the beneficiary of some unconventional watchfulness.

One Sunday morning, around 2 o'clock, the cops caught a guy breaking into my car. He had yanked the radio out of the dash and was sitting in the back seat, drawing on a Kool. "He thought he was the man," one cop said.

Pleased but perplexed, I asked the cop, "How did you catch him? Nobody ever catches guys who break into cars."

"I got a tip from one of my snitches on the block," the cop said.

I went into my apartment to get some plastic and duct tape to repair the window the jerk had smashed in. As I came back outside, I saw a tall, thin woman in a dress walking by. As she turned to me, she turned out to be a he.

"I'm so sorry this happened to you," he said. "I don't want to live in a world like this. I saw him breaking into cars two weeks ago. When I saw him tonight, I put in a phony cop call." The perp hadn't broken into anything at that point, but by the time the cops arrived, he was in my car. My good Samaritan continued: "I'm a federal government employee. I just come out here at night and do my thing." A moment later, the cops addressed him as "Hollywood."

So, in my neighborhood, Hollywood ---- the transvestite prostitute GS--whatever ---- is the neighborhood watch. Hey, whatever works. From time to time, I'll nod at Hollywood as I drive home. He did me a favor. I owed the neighborhood another one.

As I'm writing this, an e--mail arrives from my landlord: "I want to advise you that we are considering options for selling the house."

I am caught flat--footed. I'm not sure I want this close a link between my life and my art. Worse, I'm just not ready to go.

How will this change me? Well, it may push me finally to buy, rather than rent. It's time. I've propagated this failed adulthood (no wife, no kids, no real estate) long enough. Pretty soon, it'll get embarrassing, if it hasn't already.

How will the sale of my house change the neighborhood? It'll bring in people richer than me, that's for certain. My landlord is asking $925,000 for the three--unit building, which means the rent will have to go up. I'd like to buy on my street, but I fear the neighborhood has priced itself out of my reach. It's a situation for which I and gentrifiers like me are at least partly to blame. I guess that's irony.

On the upside, I no longer fear anything east of 14th. Since I've moved in, 14th itself has gone tony, a strip of chic furniture stores, expensive apartments, specialty boutiques and trendy restaurants. But I don't fear east of Seventh, east of Fifth or east of Anything anymore.With some notable exceptions (Beirut in the '80s, Baghdad these days), neighborhoods are pretty much neighborhoods. Most folks are just trying to get by, regardless of color.

In the bargain I struck with my neighborhood nearly five years ago, it has given me much. I'm not sure what I've returned, or will leave behind. Except for that satellite dish on my roof.