persistence

Chinatown, 1978 and 2024

I voted this morning, a privilege literally billions around the people cannot exercise, regardless of what the legal systems under which they live ostensibly say. After all of these years, I still get goosebumps in this process.

How about you? Are you exercising your right to vote, if a registered voter of age?

As I have mentioned, I serve on the board of directors for a bicoastal 501 ©(3) with a focus on Asia. The National Bureau of Asian Research brings us research on topics across that vast region as well as specifically on bilateral U.S.-Asian affairs. I don’t always make meetings in the Pacific Northwest but try to attend everything in the D.C. area, if possible. One of the other board members who I had only met digitally was in town from Korea so dinner last night was an opportunity to see him in person in the District.

I noted the address of the restaurant before departing Annapolis but primarily because I rarely venture to that part of Washington. (Actually, prying me out of my seat admiring Spa Creek is quite a task, even if it’s to go “all the way across town” {~2 miles?} to Trader Joe’s.) I had a sense the address was close to where the Archives was housing some of its holdings in a decrepit former department store under questionable physical conditions, a topic I followed in my job before departing for graduate school.. But, I confess I didn’t pay that much attention to the destination.

When I turned off of New York Avenue, I navigated the usual torture of one way streets and pedestrians transiting crosswalks at whatever pace suited them while traffic amassed. It was raining, a rather infrequent occurrence this summer, to make everyone a bit sportier (in a town where drivers are incredibly impatient, anything increasing demands on attention makes the entire trip sportier).

I was intrigued to see a Tiffany’s, with their soft teal decoration and distinctive lettering. Hmmm. Tiffany’s surprised me as did Longchamp, Gucci, and Chanel. Wait. I thought this was near GAO. Seriously? As I neared my anticipated garage entrance, I also became aware of the density of high end hotel chains: Westin, the Grand Hyatt, and the Kimpton Monaco. Nice digs and plenty of upscale restaurants.

Upon reaching street level after I parked, I asked myself why I had a niggling feeling about this entire area because my mental map wasn’t working. Then the penny dropped as I walked by the Martin Luther King Memorial Library: this was the neighborhood where I worked forty-five years ago. The General Accounting Office, known now as the Government Accountability Office, was only four blocks—and decades away from where I was walking.

GAO sits in a standard, utilitarian (not Soviet ugly but still pretty boring) building at the east end of what was Washington’s five-by-five block Chinatown, while I was walking along the western boundary. I could not believe the transformation of one of the areas that seemed so utterly desolate in the 1970s.

When I was a young auditor, the area I visited last night was pretty blighted, a remnant of the 1968 riots that destroyed so much of the city’s center along and north of Pennsylvania Avenue. For what seemed ages, signs for the “Pennsylvania Avenue Redevelopment Corporation” greeted touristas venturing along that magnificent thoroughfare between the Capitol and the White House, hinting at a new version of a city still pock marked by a painful memory. Working at the Archives in 1978-79 on the audit, we always took lunch because no restaurants, no coffee shops, no welcoming neon signs indicated options we could exercise.

North of the GAO building itself were many large parking lots because many buildings were gone rather than sparkling new rentals beckoning to young hipsters now. Empty store fronts interspersed with heavily fortified liquor stores because one of the District’s most appealing aspects for many was its lower tax on a bottle of booze. Massachusetts Avenue to the north spelled a dividing line between what were definitely housing areas but not areas I frankly ever frequented as a single woman. I metroed into town, exiting the system at Judiciary Square where we hurried through the vacant National Building Museum, aware it really wasn’t a transit point but it offered a safe, quick, covered short cut to avoid abundant panhandlers. My childhood training in 1960s Colombia always kicked in where one never tarried on streets with too many unknown characters seeming too interested in sauntering pedestrians; it was an unfair characterization but our instincts drive us to certain behaviors.

I think the last time I went to Chinatown for Chinese food was probably in the mid- 2000s as the gradual eradication of that ethnic area had been occurring over the years. D.C.’s Chinatown was never as prominent a feature as is the comparably named portion of San Francisco or New York so I had forgotten it was in the process of changing.

Those few times I really went out I never experience any energy in the area as it marked the nadir in the capital’s fortunes. The late, infamous Marion Barry won his first election as a reform candidate at about the time I worked around F Street but the city’s future still looked pessimistic in so many ways.

Walking around the area last night utterly captivated me because it proved, yet again, how the mind locks into what we remember rather than what we are seeing or know intellectually to be the case. The vibe of this part of town is now young and excited. I saw dozens of groups of young people—of multiple ethnic backgrounds— not only entering bars and restaurants but standing, laughing, and savoring each other. The traffic was nil by the time I departed, a measure of embracing demand to live in this area while eschewing autos as a nuisance (I get this from my daughter in a similar urban neighborhood elsewhere). It was simply a completely different environment from forty-five years ago, including flowers along the street.

This is not to say that everything is perfect in Chinatown or the District overall. While young hipsters seek to live near to mass transit or within walking distance to their employment, this renewed area gradually drove away thousands of District citizens unable to meet the rising costs. Plus, D.C. saw depopulation for decades yet between 2010 and 2022 alone, the city’s population rose 11% (the national average was 7% for that time) so it now has roughly 672,000 residents.

Washington’s African American population remains the single highest percentage at a smidge over 291,000 yet hardly the 71% figure during the Nixon administration. Indeed, the Caucasian increase in population during the 2010-2022 period alone was 40,000 meaning that 252,000 Caucasians now live in a city known for decades as facing “white flight”. If Caucasians now constitute 37.5% of the city, Latinos also increased to 11.7% while the African American population declined by 6.6% to 43.4% as of two years ago. Politico referred to D.C. as a “chocolate” city.

The African American population often relocated, without option, to the suburbs immediately on the Maryland side, primarily in Prince George’s County.

Housing in this city is expensive with the median cost of a home at $618,000, second only to Hawai’i. Of course Washington is small with a somewhat odd financial structure but people still must find housing. Rents in Washington are certainly not Honolulu, San Francisco, or New York City but they are far from cheap. Some areas as prohibitively expensive, such as Georgetown or along the Potomac in Northwest, while others are more distant and a little cheaper but they are still well out of reach for most people with average incomes.

For too many long-term District families, particularly African Americans, we read repeatedly of their struggles to make ends meet. These challenges have increased substantially in all parts of the city as it went from a primarily African American population to a more mixed one, in terms of affluence and ethnicity. Washington as the nation’s capital has always been in transition yet one doesn’t always appreciate that because of the never ending focus on the hourly political battles rather than urban trends much of the time.

The dinner was a splendid one in a cafe now occupying one of the city’s most famous banking houses, Riggs. I expected primarily business types on a Wednesday evening but many obvious touristas joined those in Washington somber business attire. I confess it mattered to me that our South Korean guest, albeit one with extensive Washington experience, saw a positive side of the city, though he has to know as I do that our capital still struggles with crime, education, corruption, and housing issues.

My point is that actions do indeed create consequences, albeit occasinally requiring years to play out. The transformation of this section of the District accelerated with a new sporting venue in the 1990s, much as did the area around the Navy Yard where the Nationals built a baseball stadium a decade later. In moments of despair about the state of urban America, it’s cold comfort that sustained change does take time. Change is hardly irreversible but it occurs time after time. Even Detroit, with this painful de-urbanization, is seeing a revitalization that seemed impossible only a generation ago.

The actions themselves require deep commitment, investment, and a vision for the future. Hopefully that vision is as inclusive as possible to bring about an inclusive community as I believe we are better when we are broader. But, the actions also must have supporters with patience and persistence in the face of those inevitable setbacks that will arise.

Thank you for reading Actions today. I welcome your comments, thoughts, or suggestions. I appreciate your time today or any other day in reading this work. Please feel free to circulate it. Thank you to the subscribers.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Steven Overly, Delece Smith-Barrow, Katy O’Donnell, and Ming Li, “Washington Was an Icon of Black Political Power. Then Came Gentrification”, Politico.org, 15 April 2022, retrieved at https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/15/washington-dc-gentrification-black-political-power-00024515

“Our Changing Population: the District of Columbia, District of Columbia”, USAFacts.org, as of 2022, retrieved at https://usafacts.org/data/topics/people-society/population-and-demographics/our-changing-population/state/district-of-columbia/county/district-of-columbia/

“States with the Most Expensive Home Costs”, WorldPopulationReview.com, 2024, retrieved at https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/housing-costs-by-state