A Walk Down Q Street

I have done all the touristic sites of Washington, DC manny times over, and trod the river trails. For something new, I checked out DC’s Mid City. An encompassing term for row-house and apartment neighborhoods with shared history: Built up from the Civil War to the 1920’s. Condemned as obsolete housing in the 1950’s. Sent into a downward spiral by 1968 riots and crack-related drug violence of the 1980’s. Rediscovered by creative class yuppies who fixed up homes, before full-scale gentrification by developers.

They were “Urban pioneers” discovering new neighborhoods. Wait: proud, longtime residents have always walked among us. No neighborhood was discovered.
Institutions like the Chinese takeout, has station, and laundromat linger on, surrounded by kitschy cafes and Whole Foods. Real estate appreciation greatly outpaces crime. Urban crime, the depraved violence and grand larceny that Wholesome Americans watch on 10pm news, still occurs. Eventually the crime rate will drop, and pickpockets replace gang members with assaulting fists.
New residents’ children do attend the local public school today, although Old Washington still dominates here.

The further east I walk, the more moderate the houses are. Opulence gives way to working people’s homes. Or what was housing for working people: a duplex in need of repairs inside and out, a tree growing in the brick grout, had an asking price of $700,000.

That was one block from North Capitol Street. You see the US Capitol in full view. Here, very recently, was an open-air drug market. That I am walking through for leisure says how times have changed. There is the Wendy’s. It’s always been there, attracts the working-class crowd. A new elevated bike trail takes me several blocks to Union Station. Now a bustling hub for rail passengers to  New York and the Northeast, it was gutted and repurposed in the disco era, before being restored.

The Soviets made public planning decisions based on science instead of the human element. One example was staggered work schedules in Moscow to eliminate the capitalist plague of rush hour. In America, public policy can be described as carrots and sticks- rewards and punishments that appeal to individual choice. Having people in the city and working in the transit-accessible suburbs (large employers, public and private) makes more efficient use of subway lines, currently packed in the peak direction.

I fly over Washington, about 7 minutes from farmland to the Reagan airport outside of downtown DC. Flying is a rare treat to avoid metropolitan traffic jams. What would it be like to have a 12-minute commute everyday? From DC’s Union Station to New Carrollton, the first suburban commuter rail station on the line? It makes living on Q street appealing to square people.

Weekend Rates

It’s noon on a Friday. From my experience  in Washington, DC, tough time to catch a taxi. It’s mosque time. I hadn’t thought much  about the religion and nationality of cabbies in the Middle East. Indians must work alongside the Pakistanis? According to my Uber estimate, just about every driver is a devout Pakistani. I think about taking an establishment taxi. These cabbies are very creative with the established rates, though. Pick up at hotel? Add $3. Weekend rate? Yes. Drop off at a hotel? They’ll tack it on. They’ve gotten angry because of the two upstart cab companies that associate with Uber. They demand gratuities in advance.

So rather than test my luck, I throw a bone to old reliable Uber, take a ride in a new car, and thank the gent for the ride.

Flew the coop

With heat soaring across the Persian Gulf, tempers flaring at the “scheduled” end of a shipyard availability, it was good to fly home. My father warned me against working to the last minute; anyhow I had a hotel room and club dinner waiting for me in “real Dubai”. The shipyard and oilfield workers created Dubai’s wealth, but “real Dubai” is the shopping malls, hotels, and extravagant pastimes. How could I resist giving a last hour of wisdom as the engineering plant was being brought back to health? I made it to dinner. Mission complete.

My itinerary took me on Lufthansa via Germany. What appealed to me was the greenery that surrounded Europe after six months of seeing and breathing the desert. Whereas SAS (flown last year) was the youth hostel of transatlantic flights: cheap but with good people; Lufthansa is a good airline and the sum of parts added up to a great experience. Sooner than I anticipated, I was back in DC. Eight hours fly when watching movies and sipping tomato juice.

Judicial Activism not on Supreme Court Agenda

It’s Déjà vu; another Supreme Court Nominee battleWith the prospect of a conservative Supreme Court, you may wonder, How far can they go?

If you watch TV during campaign season, you should be familiar with liberal activist judges, who create rights (such as privacy and dignity) and supporting affirmative action; and interpret the Constitution. Looking at 20^th century history, conservatives can also be judicial activists:

Child Labor Shall Not Be Infringed

In the 1910’s, Congress passed Federal child labor laws applying to products and services sold across state lines (sounds constitutionally sound). But, according to the Lochner-era Supreme Court, those laws violated the due process rights of corporations.

Creating the Asian Race

Why were Asians not included in the 13-15^th amendments as suitable for citizenship? Three possible answers:

Willful action to let Africans become citizens, but keep out the Orientals?

An oversight or ignorance on the part of President Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists?

The Founding Fathers meant Free White Men as a contrast to the enslaved population of Sub-Saharan African-Americans?

Conservative activists of the day believed that the abolitionists really didn’t like Asians. The Supreme Court had to create the Asian race as a legal entity. Otherwise, those Asians would have the Right to attend white schools and live in white neighborhoods. A right, and not a privilege, at that. During the Jim Crow era, white privilege was worth suing for. In cases involving Indian, Japanese and Chinese plaintiffs, the Supreme Court conceded that, on a scientific basis, the fair-skinned Asians had claims to the White Race. Socially, they were distinct. The racist mob, not impartial intellectuals, gets final say in Whiteness. As European Ethnics established their whiteness, a boundary “had” to be drawn at the Caucasus Mountains, creating the Yellow Other.  

Isn’t it better that modern-day conservative judiciaries are constitutionalists rather than activists?

Eid Mubarak (Happy Eid in Dubai)

When working in an Islamic country, Ramadan means shorter hours in many occupations. At my work, dayshift runs from 7am to 3pm, which is pretty common across Dubai for the season. Even in the modern mechanized and computerized economy, it isn’t productive to work hungry and thirsty through the late afternoon. But for those straddling cultures, Ramadan might mean longer hours: Evening shift at the shipyard starts at 9pm, after breaking the fast with Iftar meal. As far as hunger and thirst and sweat, I observe that many of our workers are Hindu and Indian, as thus are not obliged to fast. (I have also worked with both Christian and Muslim Indians, too) 

 Five-day workweeks are lush; our workers get either Friday or Saturday off. When does the work stop? 12pm-4pm on Fridays. It’s mosque time. And a perfect time for independent contractors from France and England to get their work done without interference.

In the shipyard as with any big project, hemmed in by schedule demands, the objective is to hit to dock running like a rabbit. Essentially, start the big tasks and keep up the pace. When unforeseen circumstances arise: missing parts, extensive corrosion, it can be squeezed into the schedule. And when the project finishes on time, praise is heaped. Still have a month to go, though. 

As an expat during Ramadan, I go and come from work on dusty, empty streets with closed shops.  Which makes the “holiest month” appear drab in sunlight. One who eats or drinks during the day must do so behind a curtain. Social pressure- not co-workers, but the cultural norm- makes me lose appetite for lunch. After dinner, and a little recreation in the hotel, I tucker out in my room as the city wakes up. Ramadan means nocturnal. Sunset to sunrise, Dubai comes to life. I don’t like to work while tired, so I let the city go on without me. 

Two hours to Ramadan

“Welcome to the parallel universe” they told me as I took the ship into Bayonne, New Jersey.
What was once a bustling terminal in New York Harbor for Uncle Sam’s cargo was now a small suburban outfit. Most everything went in and out of Norfolk, Virginia; jet fuel and Navy beans. In Nee Jersey, you did things differently. “Going downtown” meant a fast ferry ride to Manhattan, instead of a 15 minute drive south on Hampton Boulevard. Your Uber driver knows where “Naval Station Norfolk” is, but would be hard-pressed to find the government pier in New Jersey.

Such is the feeling that I approach my first Ramadan in the Middle East. We’ve made some accommodations to cultural necessities: When preparing lunch, we settled for chicken, since there were both Hindus and Muslims working on the team (no beef, no pork). Muslims traditionally abstain from food,beverage, and water during Ramadan’s sunlight hours. The temperature is 100 degrees, Fahrenheit. Abstaining from water flies in the face of every health lesson in hydration. Then I thought about it more:  before the days of desalination, water was a rare commodity in the Gulf States. Abstaining from water trains they body to do with less, a survival skill in harsh climates. I’m hesitant about it occurring in my workplace, though. Will see how it goes.

Can't You Hear a Poor Man's Cry?

Ever since Newt Gingrich bailed out Washington, DC in the mid 1990's, it is par for course for city councilmembers to place blame on congressional Republicans for the city’s woes. The optics of southern white congressmen deciding city matters harkened back to the pre-1973 era in the minds of older Washingtonians, when an unelected Board of Commissioners ruled the city with Dixiecrat fists. This sentiment covers all parts of the city, black, white and wonderfully integrated.

But the true red meat comes from Ward 8, commonly known as “Anacostia”. This district was once a proud, southern-tinged white working class community. Since the 1980’s, though, it’s been the dangerous neighborhood President Trump warned you about. In councilman Trayon White's words, he described the drugs and violence that surrounded his childhood. You haven’t heard this story in the national news. These are Forgotten Americans; predominately African-Americans. The average income in Ward 8 is half the city’s average. Unemployment and absentee fathers, early death and the other symptoms of poverty lurk in Anacostia.

"Improvement is around the corner": Home prices are buoyed by hopes of a turnaround. Houses sell for $250,000; technically unaffordable for the average neighborhood resident. In essence, prospect of gentrification adds insult to the decades-long injury in Anacostia for those residents who don't own their home.

Desperation breeds anger. Recently, Councilman White insisted that the Rothschilds control the weather, and are coming to gentrify. Taken by many as an anti-Semitic remark, Mr. White atoned for this statement at the city’s Holocaust Museum. As shocking as these comments are to the average person, Mr. White is well-regarded in his community for being upfront.

I am a fan of Greater Greater Washington, a civic blog that appeals to the "SWPL" demographic, named for the yuppie website. Commentators, many progressives among them,  make important talk of food deserts and educational equality. Yet they are grasping at straws on other topics, such as gentrification. Some unintentionally suggested denying community improvements, in an attempt to “keep neighborhoods affordable”. So as a fact, Mr. White is more of an authority on urban poverty than yuppie bloggers, even if his speech is not polished, eloquent, and politically correct.

Mr. White’s predecessor, former mayor Marion Barry, happened to quipped about Asian-American shopkeepers peddling unhealthy food while draining the community of its money. The sitting Mayor naturally condemned the statement, but the rhetoric coming from Ward 8 lends a cue to residents' frustration. Small-town and rural whites may be concerned about jobs and gun rights, but low-income African-Americans fear for their homes and their communities too. Anxiety sounds the same in any community.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/19/politics/dc-council-member-apology-anti-semitic-comment/index.html