Slum Historique

On a weekend night a couple of months ago, an SUV passed me on 9th Street as I walked home from DC-9. A black woman leaned out of her window and screamed at me, “Be careful, this is a dangerous neighborhood!” I yelled back, “I know, I live here.” Momentarily stunned, she still managed a good natured “I live here too,” before riding off into the night. While it’s now common for gay boys to walk this stretch of road between Bebar and Nellie's, the area of Rhode Island and 9th is anchored by a large housing project that keeps the neighborhood hot. That very night there was a shooting a block from where I had the SUV conversation, and a block from where I live.

It’s not the first time shots have been fired in this project. I’ve written about life in Shaw previously, and not much has changed except that there is a police vehicle parked near my house on a semi-permanent basis. On the weekends they sometimes park a giant strobe light machine near the Metro station, the idea being that drug dealers, psychopaths, and general miscreants scatter like roaches at the first sign of light. How’s that for 21st century policing.

If you’ve ever walked up 9th Street you’ve seen the “Bienvenue a Shaw; Slum Historique” text that is painted on the side of a vacant commercial property at the corner of 9th and Rhode Island. Around the time of my conversation with said SUV, someone painted over the “Slum Historique” part, apparently asserting that Shaw was no longer a slum.

More than a year of living here provides me with many words to describe my area of Shaw, but “slum” is the most efficient and honest. I can respect the optimism and desire for increased property values that would inspire a person to slather white paint over those black words, but I respect truth and its searing judgment even more, and that’s why I painted them back. For every optimistic intention, I can show you a decaying and neglected building with a homeless man sleeping in its doorway, a bush festooned with the ornamentation of condoms and syringes, a constant call for my dollar by vagrant parades running past my stoop, and the kaleidiscope of police lights spinning across my living room ceiling, a gift from the patrol car parked across the street in a state of perpetual alert.

I'm not complaining, because these conditions keep my rent cheap. It’s unfortunate that my life expectancy drops a couple of percentage points by living here, but I can accept that. I can even find benefit in that. What I can’t accept is pretending my neighborhood is something it’s not. To me, that’s a more dangerous proposition than eating taquitos at the 7-11 on 7th Street, because it tells the rest of the world that rolls through Shaw that everything is OK here, and it lulls the gentrifiers into a false sense of security.

I don’t know how long “Slum Historique” will stay up this time. I’ve already decided that I won’t put it back if it goes away again, but if it does get white washed, it will be a shame. This weekend I repainted the “s” in slum (long story) about an hour before a hard rain fell consistently across Shaw. It wasn’t enough time for the oil-based paint to dry, yet not a sliver of paint smeared from the letter. I take this as a sign that Shaw is not yet ready for the ideals of those bearing white paint.