Brookland Avenue

Brookland-CUA Metro Station

Last night once again there was an incident that affected passengers using the Brookland-CUA Metro station. As reported on the Brookland Listserv and Twitter A suspect was subdued using pepper spray which created strong noxious fumes and made it very difficult to breath.

One Brookland Listserv member experienced the fun herself

There were flashing lights EVERYWHERE – police cars, emergency personnel, and an ambulance. There also was a young black man in handcuffs. I have no idea what he’d done, but another passenger told us that they’d had to pepper spray/mace him to subdue him…and that’s what we had inhaled in the station. All those fumes – mixed with bleach they’d used to clean the station floors – had created quite the ‘place to be’ for us. And, to boot, all below-ground METRO personnel at Brookland had left the station to come outdoors – leaving us unsuspecting passengers to fend for ourselves. When I approached a METRO employee outside and asked him why hadn’t there been some METRO employees in the station – and, why isn’t there someone down there now – to tell passengers coming off the train to not take the elevator, exit the station as quickly as possible, etc. he told us “…..I’m not going back down there!”.

She always asks the questions

Why wasn’t the station temporarily closed? Or, how about an announcement on the PA system to warn disembarking passengers what they were about to walk into? What about passengers with compromised health conditions?

Seems pretty ridiculous that riders where put in this type of danger without any warning , announcements, or direction on where to go and no metro personnel to be found inside.

This type of neglect isn’t new to the Brookland-CUA Metro station even recently a local Metro rider relates his experience of being chased and tackled by rowdy teenagers last Saturday. Over there years riders have been harassed and mugged going to and from the Brookland station with WMATA and Transit Police doing little to deal with it long term.

The Brookland side of the Metro station is also still without an escalator cover even though it is notorious for having problems with escalator not working for long durations of time. In fact it seems a visit from the Pope is the only time the escalator is fixed.

WMATA really needs to get on the ball and stop ignoring the Brookland-CUA Metro station, first by dealing with the security problems at the station, second by making sure the escalators is in working order, and third by installing a cover over on the Brookland side of the station.

Brookland residents deserve to have a safe working station especially with all the fare increases.

Tree Tagged

Another Brookland Avenue Reader sent in the following photograph for a tree that was tagged by “Rez” near the Franciscan Monastery by14th and Perry.

It’s bad enough when cars get hit by graffiti as they did on Taussig a few weeks ago. But when mature tree’s get hit it takes it to a new level.

The question is what will be tagged next?

Washington DC Flag

There will be a forum for Ward 5 Councilmember candidates today at 6:00pm at Turkey Thicket Rec Center.

Residents can submit a question for the candidates between 6:00pm and 6:45pm.

The forum will focus on how each candidate proposes to meet the needs of low-income Ward 5 residents.

Come and hear what the Ward 5 Councilmember candidates have to say.

The event is sponsored by American Federation of Government Employees District 14, DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, DC Jobs Council, DC Jobs with Justice, Defeat Poverty DC, District Alliance for Safe Housing, Empower DC, Fair Budget Coalition, Latino Economic Development Corporation, Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO, Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and Wider Opportunities for Women.

Where: Turkey Thicket Rec Center

When: Thursday September 2nd

Time: Doors open at 6:00. Forum starts at 6:30

Turkey Thicket Recreational Center

Washington DC Flag

The Ward 5 Democrats posted the unofficial results from the Straw Poll / Endorsement vote that was held last Tuesday at the Michigan Park Christian Church.

There wasn’t many surprises in the poll the biggest one being Michael Brown ( not the current At-Large member) beat out Phil Mendelson and Clark Way. Who says name recognition doesn’t matter?

August 23, 2010 Ward 5 Democrats Straw Poll Results

Taussig Tagged

Last week local Brookland resident and Twitter user Jonthan Smith tweated A bunch of cars were tagged during the night on Taussig and Six cars tagged with “Riggs Park Crew”, “Big 30″ and the like.

Riggs Park Crew

Jonathan was kind enough to snap a couple of photos to share of the August 17th graffiti spree of Taussig Street NE.

Tag 30

Tagging on cars is certainty annoying and bad enough but local resident Jess Hanff tweated they have tags on TREES. Seems like there is a tag REZ by the dogwood on 14th and Perry.

This begs the question is this new pattern something to be concerned about or is it just one of the things we have to deal with for living in the city limits?

Has anyone else seen the work of Riggs Park Crew, Big 30, or REZ?

ANC 5A07 Commissioner Carolyn Steptoe

After posting about the ANC 5A 2010 Candidates (So far) a reader informed me that current Brookland resident and ANC 5A07 Commissioner Carolyn Steptoe is circulating a petition for the November 2nd 2010 general election for At-Large member for the Council.

The DC Board of Elections and Ethics does indeed have Commissioner Steptoe in their List of Candidates Circulating Petitions for the November 2, 2010 General Election as of August 2, 2010 *.The DC Office of Campaign Financing have Commissioner Steptoe on their Candidate List 2010 as well.

Commissioner Steptoe ran for council previously in 2006 as a green candidate for Ward 5 winning 7.91% of the vote. In 2008 Commissioner Steptoe won election as ANC Commissioner of SMD 5A07 with 59.95% of the vote (530 votes). She is registered this year as an independent candidate for At-Large.

Carolyn Steptoe has been involved in local activism over the years including the opposition of Brookland as a Historic District, the closing of Ward 5 schools, opposition of marriage equality, among others.

What do Brookland and Ward 5 folks think about Commissioner Steptoe running for an At-Large seat?

Related Links:

• Mike DeBonis on Local Politics
• Washington Post 2006 Profile
• Elect Steptoe 2006

This coming Monday August 23rd from 6pm to 830pm the Ward 5 Democrats will be conducting a Straw Poll & Endorsement for the 2010 primary.

The Straw Poll and Endorsement will include votes on:

• Delegate to the U.S. House of Representative
• U.S. Representative
• Mayor of the District of Columbia
• Chairman of the Council
• At-Large Member of the Council
• Ward 5 Member of the Council

When: Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Where: Michigan Park Christian Church
1600 Taylor Street NE, Washington DC 20017

Time: 6:00pm-8:30pm

Michigan Park Christian Church

Woke up this morning to a crazy storm rolling through Brookland DC The DMV.

It seemed to pass through the area pretty quickly after leaving a trail of lightning and destruction. Twitter is abuzz with reports of metro outages including:

• Silver Spring single tracking it because of a tree on one of the tracks
• Foggy Bottom has flooding
• Forest Glen is closed with no power
• Cleveland Park is closed because of flooding

Pepco is reporting 76,398 power outages so far.

Lots of trees down, and localized flooding throughout the area including on Rhode Island Avenue which is closed between 5th Street and 9th Street NE with cars stranded.

Follow DC Fire and EMS on Twitter and your local news for more info.

Be careful out there.

Washington DC Flag

DC Board of Elections and Ethics tweeted this afternoon that List of 156 candidates for ANC updated at dcboee.org. 19 contested so far, including two 3-way contests (5B07 & 6B09).

This announcement and recent ANC shenanigans have lit the fire under folks who want a change in ANC leadership.

Many local blogs have been posting since the ANC petitions starting rollin in earlier this month including Congress Heights on the Rise, Life on the Edgewood. and DCist.

What is very interesting as stated by DCBOEE’s tweet is that most of these are not contested including most of the SIngle Member Districts (SMD) in 5A which includes Brookland and surrounding neighborhoods.

After reviewing the DCBOEE’s list of registered candidates in detail it became quite apparent that only a few of the current ANC 5A incumbents have completed their nomination petitions and are registered candidates.

Current Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners

What is also interesting is that there is only one non-incumbent currently included on the list so far. This person is current Brookland Neighborhood Civic Association Vice President John Daggett.

As of today incumbent 5A07 SMD commissioner Carolyn Steptoe is not included in the list of candidates. It will be interesting to see if 5A07 SMD is contested again this year.

Advisory Neighborhood Commission Candidates November 2, 2010 General Election

As you can see 5A at the moment is currently wide open in terms of candidates and it is certainly not too late to get involved and become an ANC commissioner yourself. If interested all you need is to go to DC Board and Elections and Ethics to pick up your nominating petition for an ANC seat and get at least 25 signatures from registered voters in your SMD. The ANC nomination petition and signatures need to be submitted by Septemeber 3rd

It would be ideal for ALL of the 5A ANC seats to be contested, its good way to keep our ANC representatives in check.

Brookland’s street names have changed over the 123 years since the neighborhood was founded. Many of the names were never really used, but survive on subdivision maps from the early years. Developers named the streets, so they could vary from subdivision to subdivision.

The original 1887 plat map of the first subdivision, called simply “Brookland” contained street names based on trees – Elm St., Pine St., Walnut St., etc. Those were soon changed. The street names were altered at least twice before the city officially changed them in 1901 to their present incarnations.

There are discrepancies on different early maps, but the following chart seems to give the best indication of the original names and how they changed. The name of the street that became Lawrence is unreadable on the original plat map:

Linden St. –> Newark –> Fort –> Otis
Laurel St. –> Milwaukee –> Providence –> Newton
Elm St. –> Lowell –> Lansing –> Monroe
Unreadable – Keokuk –> Hartford –> Lawrence
Pine St. –> Joliet –> Frankfort –> Kearny
Walnut St. –> Indianapolis –> Dover –> Jackson
Cedar St. –> Hartford –> Concord –> Irving

The numbered cross streets also changed around this time. According to a 1901 story in the Washington Post, 9th St. was originally Queen St., 10th St. was Wallace St., 12th St. was Duncan St., 13th was Burns St. and 14th was Argyle St.

Also at this time Bunker Hill Rd. was changing to Michigan Ave. as it was widened and paved.

So clearly, even though the city had approved the final name changes in 1901, they weren’t in effect yet as of April, 1902. The 1901 story said the names would go into effect when they were formally recorded in the office of the surveyor, so I guess that took a while. It must have been awfully confusing during those first fifteen years of Brookland.