The Frostburg New Day: From a Neighborhood to a Neighborhood: An Area to be great

From a Neighborhood to a Neighborhood: An Area to be great

By: Reginald Simon

Helene Matthews, who has lived in the neighborhood for over 50 years stated “twenty-five years ago the neighborhood was 90 percent Black, now it is 90 percent white.” Helene Matthews added that “It has always been a community based location with recreation centers, playgrounds, daycare centers, and shopping areas.” The one big difference in this community between the 70’s and the 90’s is that neighborhoods and houses were replaced with either public housing complexes (which greatly increased the crime rates) or torn down to build the Metro System.

Capitol Hill is an area in Washington D.C which expands from Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast to as far as Massachusetts Avenue Northeast. It is a wide spread community with beautiful landmarks such as the U.S Capitol, Marine Barracks, The Old Soldiers Home, Eastern Market and other shopping places that include delicious foods. Focusing on a section of Capitol Hill, a section that has changed dramatically over the years.

Walking around Capitol Hill in Southeast, Washington D.C you will find children playing, fathers and mother raking the leaves off of the sidewalk, people walking dogs, cats sometimes walking themselves, and families bringing in groceries home from the neighborhood Safeway.

Finding the biggest difference from the Capitol Hill streets now and how it was about ten to fifteen years ago, I caught up with Sharon White a resident of 14^th Street on Capitol Hill. Sharon has no children of her own but loves, cares for, and owns dogs as if they were her own children. I asked her, what is the biggest difference she has seen when walking her dogs on Capitol Hill now compared to 10 years ago?

She stated, “more families with children and dogs in the neighborhood, more dog parks and qualified veterinarians in the area.”

It is an area where you see kids playing on playgrounds, daily soccer games and football games on the field of Watkins Elementary School, basketball games taking place on the courts, and beautiful trees lining the sidewalks. I observed even saw an angered crossing guard yelling to a driver.

“Your ass will be stuck right here with me”

This is area where you see young African American men and women standing on corners conversing, smoking, shooting dice, laughing and having a good time is in the Potomac Garden area. Where it can be witnessed, police officers are on every corner trying to prevent an almost unpreventable crime from taking place or police officers harassing young men because of where they live at or what they have on, or maybe because they just feel like it.

Catching up with Dion Brown, SR. A resident of Capitol Hill for about thirty-five years, who moved from Washington D.C to Mississippi and then to Atlanta. I asked him what was it like growing up on Capitol Hill and why did he move?

“We use to sit on the front porch when I was your age, me and my friends and smoke, drink, yell at the girls walking down the street coming from Potomac Avenue Metro Station, and having a good time. You rarely see that anymore around here because the young folks these days are so worried about robbing each other or doing harm to one another. Plus, you have the police around here who at every moment they get try to harass these kids even if they just having fun not doing anything wrong at all. It’s hard between the wanna be gangsters robbing and the police officers harassing to have fun in some areas, like Potomac Gardens.”

Potomac Gardens is one of the areas on Capitol Hill where Mrs. Matthews explained to me that had been a neighborhood of row housing that was torn down to build public housing for the area.

“Potomac Gardens is public housing, the good in Potomac Gardens is that it is low income, so it provides low income families a place to live. The bad is that it attracts an element that preys on a low income resident. You know selling drugs to make money, this is how you get out of the projects, and it breeds crime.” –Mrs. Matthews

Dion Brown Sr. who in 2014 moved back to live in Capitol Hill said that he moved back because,

“Well after losing almost everything in Hurricane Katrina and moving to Atlanta and experiencing that life, I missed my home. I missed all my friends and all my family, I know that might sound weird because I am a grown ass man but it’s the truth,” he said, he added that “I have two children now and I want them to grow and experience the life lessons that living on Capitol Hill offered, and of course employment opportunity was much greater here then there. I now work as a project manager on base at Fort Belvoir, and I started my own business called Lucas Floor Maintenance. We strip floors, wax floors, get up stains, almost anything that has to do with floors we do.”

As Dion Sr. mentioned he has children and I had the chance to speak with Dion’s oldest child Dion Brown Jr. Who is eleven years old. I asked him how he enjoys growing up in the Capitol Hill area of Washington D.C.

“Ummmm…. Its fine I guess. All of my friends are here. I went to elementary school with the same friends I go to middle school with, I kind of like that part. Everything is close to my house, the store, my school. I only have one friend that lives kind of far from me but not that far. Overall I like it.”

Capitol Hill is an area where you can get some of the best food, right there on 8^th Street Southeast. From “Ted’s Bulletin” to the “Banana Café” the food is amazing. You walk down 8^th street and you can smell the mixture of the different restaurants. Popeyes Chicken mixed the smell from the tortillas at Chipotle at the beginning of the street, the carry-outs French fries and the grease from their chicken mixed with the smell of pizza from Pizza Bolis at the end of the first block. The smell and smoke of cigarettes and bad marijuana fills the entire street. Homeless men and women standing in front of the 7/11 convenient store talking, smoking and drinking, as I walked pass you can hear one saying to a group of people in front of me,

“You all have any cigarettes I can have.”

I also saw a homeless man laying on the ground wrapped up in a U.S flag.

Across the street you have a fire station, Subway, along with other businesses. As you exit off of the first block and cross to the next you see a noticeable difference. A majority African Americans are on the first part of 8^th street, as you head toward the second block you start to see majority of whites. Ted’s Bulletin an old fashion dinner set-up with a bar, as I walked in I quickly noticed the place was packed from the front door to the back entrance to the dining hall. You hear chatter everywhere, you can barely hear what anyone is saying unless you are directly next to them, ear to mouth. You hear babies crying, parents attempting to hush the children, waiters and waitresses greeting people. Since I did decide to eat there I put my name on the waiting list and walked outside, the air smelled so much different. The cigarette and bad weed smell was gone, and you could smell nothing but good ole Ted’s Bulletin food.

Observing the diner, it was set up with a projector in the dining area, the first movie played was the “Three Stooges” which had to be the very first one made because it was in black and white and the quality wasn’t so good. The second movie was “The Wizard of Oz,” an old school classic. The food was delicious which was obvious due to the crowd inside and outside the restaurant. Continuing to walk down the street you saw Marine Barracks on your left hand side with Marines posted inside and outside of the gated area.

An area where people move away once they get older and some stay for the duration of their entire lives. Catching up with Ms. Mary Carter an 89-year-old women who has lived in the same house on Capitol Hill for her entire life, asking her throughout her entire life what are some differences you see in Capitol Hill?

“The street cars are gone, that is now replaced by metro, a lot of two way streets that are now one way, a lot more diversity in the area, age, race, everything. Even on this block where I have been my entire life there are only a handful of people who have been here for over 10 years. Everything is new, new, new. Young couples and new families, and the crime rate up because there are more break in’s, in cars in housing then we have ever had.”

Granted the opportunity to speak with a women named Michelle Brown who left the area, asking her why did she leave a place where she grew up at? A place with so many memories. A historic place.

“I left because I wanted to start something on my own.”