Washington City Paper (Aug. 7, 2020)

NEWS LOCAL TENANTS WANT RENT CANCELED 4 FOOD THE NEIGHBORHOOD RESTAURANTS WE CRAVE 12 ARTS A NEW NEWSLETTER IMAGINES D.C. IN 2120 14 THE DISTRICT'S FREE WEEKLY SINCE 1981 VOLUME 40, NO. 31 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM AUG. 7–13, 2020

Inflection Point Developers have envisioned a future for Buzzard Point’s industrial land for decades.

Will the current plans for its revitalization pan out? PAGE 8 By Neil Flanagan

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TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER STORY 8 Inflection Point: The decadeslong efforts to develop the former industrial neighborhood known as Buzzard Point

NEWS 4 Everything Is Rent: As local jurisdictions begin to hear eviction cases, tenants demand rent cancelation.

5 Green Acres: Why is D.C. considering buying a school property from a mysterious, unnamed party?

SPORTS 7 Tennis Bubble: After recovering from COVID-19, Frances Tiafoe is ready to prove himself at this year’s U.S. Open.

FOOD 12 Home Plates: The neighborhood restaurants and comforting dishes our writers have returned to during the pandemic

ARTS 14 Far Out: Josh Kramer discusses his latest project and what D.C. might look like in a century.

16 Film: Zilberman on She Dies Tomorrow 16 Books: Sarappo on Laura Lippman’s My Life as a Villainess

CITY LIGHTS 17 City Lights: Pick up some hip-hop moves in an online class and add more Black female artists to Wikipedia.

DIVERSIONS 13 Crossword 18 Savage Love 19 Classifieds Cover Photo: Darrow Montgomery

Darrow Montgomery | 1200 Block of Jackson Street NE, July 24 Editorial

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NEWS CITY DESK

As evictions begin in neighboring jurisdictions, tenants insist payments plans won’t cut it.

By Amanda Michelle Gomez @AmanduhGomez Sifu and M Lovell asked people who showed up at their brick house in Prince George’s County for an eviction blockade on the evening of July 31 to stay overnight if they could. Their landlord, Robert Miley, had threatened to come by and change the locks to their house, they said, but didn’t when he arrived and found dozens of people outside the house shouting things like, “Shame on who?

Shame on Bob.” Sifu and Lovell wanted reinforcement if Miley returned.

And reinforcement they got. More than 50 people from across the region traveled to Chillum after learning about the possible illegal eviction online or by word of mouth, and a handful of those people, who were trained in de-escalation tactics, camped out in the house’s front yard through the next morning.

A mix of people, diverse in age, gender, and race, occupied the dead-end street for hours.

In between chants, individuals took turns using a megaphone to lament not the coronavirus, but racism and capitalism, drivers of evictions and displacement before the global pandemic and now. A few shared their own experiences with eviction. One speaker, Roger Williams, is on the board of the DC Tenants Union and has been on a rent strike since May because many residents in his Columbia Heights apartment building have been laid off during the pandemic and cannot afford to pay rent.

“It’s not about one group of people feeling bad for another class of people. It’s solidarity,” said James McCormack, another board member of the DC Tenants Union, as he sat on the curb. McCormack, too, was laid off during the pandemic.

The DC Tenants Union and Stomp Out Slumlords, a campaign of the Metro D.C. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, organized the eviction blockade. Volunteers have been organizing protests like these throughout the public health emergency because so many tenants have fallen on hard times and are behind on rent.

Hundreds of thousands of people across the D.C. region have lost their jobs and filed for

Photos by Amanda Michelle Gomez

Everything Is Rent

Estela holds a sign with photos of her apartment at a rally on canceling rent on July 25.

Sifu and M Lovell thank everyone who showed up at their house for an eviction blockade on July 31. unemployment, and hundreds, if not thousands, cannot access those benefits because they do not qualify or get caught up in bureaucratic red tape. Meanwhile, rent has been due five times.

Sifu, who declined to give her last name, lost her job at an after-school program during the pandemic. When she and her two other roommates had trouble paying back four months worth of rent in full, along with late fees, Miley sent an email on July 19 and told them they had 10 days to vacate.

“I have scheduled a major remodeling project for the property which will begin on Saturday, August 1,” read screenshots of an email sent by the landlord and shared with City Paper. “I plan to meet you at the property to pick up keys at 5:00 pm on 7/31/20 and to ensure that all your personal property has been removed.”

Miley did not respond to City Paper’s request for comment.

Beyond standard tenant protections—

4 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Maryland law, for example, requires landlords to give tenants at least one month’s notice before repossessing the property—Governor Larry Hogan barred the eviction of those financially impacted by the pandemic until the state of emergency ends. However, the Maryland District Court did not extend its eviction ban, so hearings were technically able to resume as of July 25.

Eviction moratoriums have been lawmakers’ most effective way of providing tenants immediate relief. The relief is temporary, and the threat of displacement or homelessness looms. The federal moratorium on evictions expired July 24, and courts in several states, including Virginia, have already started hearing eviction cases. D.C.’s eviction moratorium is tethered to the public health emergency, and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson wants to re-examine COVID-19 legislation and possibly decouple provisions. (No decisions have been made yet, according to the chairman’s office.)

The inevitability of mass evictions once moratoriums end is why tenant organizers have

been calling for rent cancelation. As is clear with the Chillum house, some landlords are ready to evict.

“We wouldn’t have picked this if we thought something less would solve the problem,” says McCormack. “The problem is the scale of the crisis is so massive.”

The DC Tenants Union has been demanding the D.C. Council cancel rent citywide, and has organized in more than a dozen residential buildings to get individual landlords to agree to such relief. No landlord to date has agreed to fully forgive rent. The D.C. Council, along with Maryland and Virginia legislatures, has so far declined to seriously consider rent cancelation, arguing landlords need to pay their mortgages too.

Lawmakers have been more interested in giving people money to pay rent. “What’s really happening,” McCormack argues, “is people are having to go through an onerous application process that is time-consuming, complicated, and humiliating in order to serve as a middle man between the government and their landlord.”

The Council also passed legislation requiring landlords to offer a payment plan to any residential or commercial tenant who can’t pay all or a portion of rent due to the pandemic. It’s not clear how many tenants, if any, are entering into payment plan agreements.

City Paper’s attempts to find a residential tenant who has came up short.

“We are not hearing about people entering into or finalizing any payment plans at this point,” says Leigh Higgins, an attorney for the D.C. Tenants’ Rights Center, a private law firm that hears from tenants all across the income spectrum. Neither has Beth Mellen Harrison with Legal Aid of the District of Columbia.

Harrison has heard from tenants whose landlords got in touch with them about a payment plan and questioned whether they were ready to enter into an agreement. She’s also heard of some instances where landlords are creating agreements that she believes are inconsistent with the local law. For example, one landlord asked a tenant to submit proof of all assets, presumably to see if they have any money saved to pay rent.

“The idea of a payment plan is nice in theory, but they don’t have the money right now, or know when they will have the money, to pay back the rent. And so it’s not something that at this moment in time feels particularly useful to them,” says Harrison. “I don’t think that necessarily means this law will not be helpful at some point. But I don’t think we’re at the point yet where the free fall has ended and there’s stability.”

Luis Andrade is weighing whether to enter into a payment plan agreement with his landlord. His options are paying a portion of his rent or feeding his 3-year-old daughter.

Andrade has not paid rent since April, after losing his two sources of income as a restaurant worker and day laborer. He now owes $5,080 in rent. He does not qualify for unemployment benefits and was certain

NEWS NEWS LOOSE LIPS he wouldn’t qualify for the city’s de facto excluded workers’ fund, which provided a one-time donation of $1,000 to 5,000 families, or the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which 1,347 individuals have applied to during the pandemic, and so did not apply.

But Andrade was not the only one in his building without a job, or who did not qualify for virtually all local and federal cash assistance. With no government support, Andrade and dozens of others who lived at the New Hampshire & First Apartments near Fort Totten decided to help themselves and organized their complex. With support from the DC Tenants Union, the renters participated in various Zoom meetings to work out their demands. On April 28, they asked their landlord to cancel rent.

At first, J. Alexander M a n a ge m e nt Company, the property manager, offered nothing. Eventually, the proper t y manager offered to forgive $200 in rent for every $100 a tenant pays during the first year of paying.

Andrade is unsure if he’ ll accept t he offer. Entering into the payment plan means he might still have to pay thousands of dollars for an apartment where he can’t have two air conditioners running while the lights are on without losing power. And since he’s still not working, he doesn’t think he can swing it anyway. Unlike Andrade, J. Alexander Management Company received government assistance, a $150,000 to $350,000 loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program. In an email, the company’s vice president said it’s not policy to make on-the-record comments with regard to residents.

That being said, organizers say the payment plan offered at New Hampshire & First Apartments is one of the better deals they know of. Most landlords are just agreeing to let tenants make up missed rent over a specified timeframe as they continue to pay current rent.

After he declined to enter into such a payment agreement, Sami Bourma’s landlord filed an eviction case against him. As soon as Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Lemons allowed courts across the state to resume eviction hearings in late June, Bourma’s landlord, by way of the property manager, Bell Partners, filed cases against tenants. The landlord sued more than 100 tenants at Southern Towers, Bourma’s apartment complex in Alexandria. Tenants had their first appearances at an Alexandria courthouse over the span of three days in mid-July, and a judge ordered Bourma to return on Sept. 16.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. We know that the landlord doesn’t have a heart,” Bourma tells City Paper. “All of us are in the

same situation: laid off, no income, and kids at home.”

Bourma has not been able to pay the $1,515 in rent for his one-bedroom apartment for a few months now. He lost his three sources of income when the pandemic hit—he was laid off from his job as a chef at the National Institutes of Health and his part-time job as an organizer at UNITE HERE Local 23, and he does not feel safe driving for Uber. He started receiving $758 a week in unemployment in late April, a full month after he applied. (As of this week, that $758 dropped to $158 after the federal government’s $600 benefit ended.) He also applied for a state rent relief program, but has not received an answer yet. He learned he was one of the luckier ones while watching eviction proceedings; many of his neighbors did not qualify for government assistance.

B ou r m a i s continuing to rally for rent cancelation and helped organize a rent strike at Sout her n Towers that is four mont hs strong. To him, the idea of putting the little money he is getting toward rent seems foolish.

What if he contracts C OV I D -19? How would his family pay his medical expenses?

“It’s not about keeping the money. It’s about surviving until the city comes back together. I have an 11-year-old daughter, 1-year-old son, my wife,” Bourma says.

He attended a rent cancelation rally in Columbia Heights on July 25, and made no mention of his eviction. In 99 degree heat, Bourma commanded a crowd of dozens, denouncing government bailouts to businesses but not the working-class people these businesses employ. A Spanish translator reiterated his remarks to the crowd in real time.

After Bourma, tenants of other buildings shared their own frustrations and struggles.

Estela, a tenant of the Meridian Heights Apartments in Columbia Heights, held a poster with photos of her own unit as she spoke about the rent strike there. The images show the ceiling caving in.

Many tenants of Meridian Heights have been laid off from their service industry jobs during the pandemic, and some are undocumented.

Even so, they’ve been facing ongoing pressure from the building manager to pay rent, including threats of calling the police, according to a tenant letter addressed to the property manager, NOVO Properties. NOVO Properties did not respond to questions about the letter.

Like hundreds of tenants in the region, Meridian Heights residents are months into their rent strike. They keep each other motivated, and as they learn of their neighbors’ situations, they feel compelled to act, according to one Meridian Heights tenant who asked not to be named. They do not intend to accept anything short of rent cancelation.

“It’s not about keeping the money. It’s about surviving until the city comes back together.

I have an 11-year-old daughter, 1-year-old son, my wife.”

Green Acres D.C.’s “once in a lifetime opportunity” to acquire Georgetown Day School’s former property involves bureaucratic buck-passing and a mysterious third party.

By Mitch Ryals @MitchRyals Obscured in the haze of what will henceforth be known as the FY 2021 Budget Shitshow is a $48 million allocation to purchase the Georgetown Day School’s former lower and middle school campus on MacArthur Boulevard NW. The item appeared in the budget after D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s lastminute budget scramble, to the pleasant surprise of most councilmembers. The chairman called the sale a “once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase an asset,” and a potential solution to overcrowding in the Woodrow Wilson High School feeder pattern. Only At-Large Councilmember David Grosso and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White objected in the form of an amendment that would have taken the $48 million and redirected it to modernize Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in Congress Heights. Grosso and White argued that it was unfair to use funds for another school in affluent Ward 3, where Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing building a new $56 million elementary school, and where most of the schools have been modernized, when there are needs in economically disadvantaged Ward 8.

The amendment failed, 10-2, after a snippy debate that marked another chapter in the Grosso v. Mendo saga. (Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie recused himself from the vote because his kids attend GDS and he sits on its board of trustees. In response to a request for comment, McDuffie referred LL to the board’s chief of staff, Lauren Dickert, who did not return an email or phone message.)

On the dais, Grosso accused Mendelson of prioritizing students in Northwest to the detriment of students living east of the Anacostia River. Mendelson accused Grosso of manufacturing an equity issue because DC Public Schools and the Department of General Services have not done the planning necessary to start MLK Jr.’s modernization.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh chimed in to point out a bit of hypocrisy in Grosso’s arguments, which Mendelson recalled fondly in a follow-up interview.

“Councilmember Grosso, later on in this meeting, at the behest of the mayor, but presumably with his own blessing, is asking the Council to reprogram money from a paid leave IT fund in order to purchase property on the Military Road School in Ward 4, to be used as a school

to deal with Ward 4 overcrowding,” Cheh said.

“A precisely analogous situation that he’s putting forth.”

What no one talked about was the disparity between the $48 million the Council put in the capital budget and the property’s assessed value of $20.5 million. Nor did anyone mention the fact that a mysterious third party already has an agreement to buy the property, and the District would essentially take over that agreement rather than negotiate directly with GDS. The question, therefore, is whether the District is getting the best deal.

Jeffrey M. Zelle, the president and CEO of JM Zelle, the commercial real estate firm that originally listed the old GDS campus in 2017, could not share the appraisal on the property or identify the third party that controls it due to a confidentiality agreement. He says the entity is a school that put down a “substantial deposit” in the original purchase agreement, and they must close the deal soon or risk losing the deposit.

“It’s probably the craziest confidentiality agreement I’ve ever seen,” Zelle tells LL. “That’s why no one is talking about it.”

At first, it might seem as though the $27.5 million gap between GDS’s assessed value and the price the D.C. government is willing to pay for the property is outrageous.

The disparity alarmed Jay Silberman and prompted him to email every councilmember, the mayor, the auditor, and Ward 3 State Board of Education Rep. Ruth Wattenberg.

Silberman, a former school board member, writes in the email that he supports the District’s efforts to acquire the property, but rather than pay the $48 million, he suggests the city flex its eminent domain muscle, an extreme move LL suspects officials might be reluctant to make.

The city has invoked that authority a few times in recent history: to acquire a trash transfer station in 2018, as well as the land for Audi Field in 2015 and for Nationals Park in 2005.

Silberman says he’s gotten no response to his email from councilmembers or the mayor.

In subsequent interviews, Mendelson says he was unaware of the difference between the amount the Council approved in the budget and the assessed value. He tells LL that Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn and City Administrator Rashad Young told him of their interest in buying the property, as well as the $48 million cost.

“So that’s what we put in the budget,” he says. “It doesn’t mean they have to spend that amount. We didn’t approve the price or look at the terms.”

washingtoncitypaper.com august 7, 2020 5

NEWS LOOSE LIPS

Darrow Montgomery

Georgetown Day School’s former lower and middle school campus

He adds that assessments for tax-exempt properties, such as the old GDS campus, may not reflect the property’s true market value because the assessments are mostly intended to help the government calculate property taxes. Real estate agents who spoke with LL on background generally confirmed Mendelson’s assertion.

To get a clear explanation on whether the District is about to overpay for the GDS property, Mendelson suggested LL check with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer or the city administrator.

OCFO spokesperson David Umansky was unsure which government entity was in charge of negotiating the purchase and sent LL back to the Council or to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

John Falcicchio, fresh off his confirmation as Mayor Muriel Bowser’s top economic development official, said his office was not involved and sent LL to the Deputy Mayor for Education and DGS. Calls and emails with spokespeople for DGS and the Office of the City Administrator proved more fruitful, if equally frustrating. DGS and OCA referred LL to James Molloy, the real estate broker for Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., which is currently listing the property on behalf of the nameless third party.

Molloy tells LL he cannot comment on the sale. He declines to say whether his client’s contract is worth more or less than the $48 million the Council allocated and whether there is an appraisal of the property.

“I’m a real estate broker,” he says. “So we know how to ascertain value.”

Molloy points to the hundreds of millions of dollars the District spent to modernize Lafayette Elementary School, Duke

Ellington School of the Arts, and Ben Murch Elementary School as one metric by which to measure the property’s value to the District, which strikes LL as a good argument from Molloy’s perspective but perhaps a bad argument from the District of Columbia taxpayers’ perspective.

Lafayette’s modernization cost $78 million.

Duke Ellington’s upgrades were originally budgeted for $71 million, but, after finishing a year behind schedule, the final bill came to $178 million. And due to a math error, the $68.3 million originally budgeted for Murch’s modernization grew to $83 million by the time the project was complete in 2018.

“Replacement costs for an additional educational institution is considerably higher than what they’re paying for it,” Molloy says, adding that “we have other investors interested as well.”

An executive summary of the listing that DGS spokesperson Donna Harris provided identifies Molloy’s clients as the “Contract Purchaser,” and says they have an “exclusive purchase agreement to acquire the Property, and potential investors would become the owner of the Property through the assignment of that agreement.”

The original GDS structure was built in 1964, according to the document Harris provided.

An additional classroom building was added in 1968, and more classrooms, a gymnasium, and parking were added in 1998. All of it sits on about 250,000 square feet of land.

The listing also notes that the land is zoned for residential use, and “possesses appealing redevelopment potential.”

“The median home value in the 20007 zip code is $1.1 million, nearly twice as much as Washington, D.C., as a whole,” the listing says. “It is also possible to unlock significant

6 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

additional density and value through the rezoning process.”

Harris writes via email that DGS is working within the budget that the Council set and that the listing summary is the only information the agency can provide. She did not specify whether DGS was unable or unwilling to give the public more details about how it’s spending their money.

But forget, for a moment, about the shadowy third party, and look less than a half mile away to a property on Foxhall Road NW, where the Lab School of Washington, a private nonprofit school for kids with language-based learning disabilities, houses its lower school. It leases the building, the former Hardy Middle School, from the District.

The Lab School has tried multiple times to extend its lease, which expires in 2023, amid pushback from Ward 3 parents and officials who say the District should use the building to alleviate overcrowding in the Woodrow Wilson High School feeder system. Eight of those 15 schools were overenrolled according to numbers from the 2017-2018 school year, and four more were within 10 percent of maximum capacity. By 2025, all schools are expected to exceed their capacity, according to a February 2019 report from a working group that included parents, school leaders, and community members.

The group recommended in their report that the Council use the old Hardy building to address overcrowding.

“Not using it for a public school would mean the city would have [to] spend precious dollars to purchase and construct a school on land that is currently privately owned,” Brian Doyle and Melody Molinoff, co-chairs of the Ward 3 Wilson Feeder Education Network, wrote in a letter accompanying the report’s release.

In February 2019, Bowser introduced legislation to dispose of the property through a ground lease with the Lab School. Mendelson criticized Bowser for proposing legislation on an emergency basis, which would have excluded public testimony, but he remains reluctant to evict the Lab School. The chairman has yet to schedule a hearing on the bill.

In her FY 2021 budget, Bowser included $56 million to build a new elementary school on Foxhall Road NW right next to the old Hardy building to alleviate overcrowding in Ward 3.

Wattenberg, the Ward 3 SBOE rep, says it’s “utterly crazy” that D.C. hasn’t used the old Hardy building for public schools. She agrees that $48 million is a good price compared to the cost of building a new school, but LL wonders whether the building will require modernizations before it’s ready for students. Wattenberg says that DCPS officials have told her that they intend to negotiate a new contract.

Markus Batchelor, the Ward 8 SBOE rep and an alumnus of MLK Jr., wouldn’t say whether he would have voted in favor of Grosso’s amendment.

“I also don’t think it’s an either/or,” he says.

“Often we pick communities and different constituent groups and different marginalized or underserved students and pit them against each other … We’ve gotta get out of those conversations that it has to be about one urgent issue or the other.”

Grosso remains convinced that there is no merit to Mendelson’s argument against using the $48 million to modernize MLK Jr. “I already spoke to the mayor’s folks about this, and they said they would find a way to make it work,” Grosso says. “This is simply the privileged continuing to get their way in our city.”

To that, the chairman says, “B.S.”

SPORTS TENNIS

Tennis Bubble Despite health concerns cited by some pro players, Frances Tiafoe plans to play at the U.S. Open following his recovery from COVID-19.

Darrow Montgomery/File

Frances Tiafoe

By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong Frances Tiafoe has given up trying to figure out how he contracted the novel coronavirus that led to a positive COVID-19 test last month.

He could have gotten it at the airport in late June, when he flew from Florida, where he was training, to Georgia, to compete at the All-American Team Cup tennis tournament outside Atlanta.

Or he could’ve come in contact with someone while out getting food in the days prior to his match.

“It could’ve been anything,” Tiafoe says.

The positive COVID-19 test on July 3 limited Tiafoe’s return to competitive tennis. He’s only played one match since the professional tennis tour shut down in March due to the pandemic, and the unpredictable nature of the 2020 season comes at a pivotal point in his young career. Just last year, the 22-year-old from Hyattsville had a breakout season, reaching the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and a career-high ranking of No. 29 in the world.

He’s since struggled to capture the same success, but now, after quarantining at his mother’s house in Beltsville for more than two weeks with his twin brother, Franklin, and subsequently testing negative for COVID-19, Tiafoe is back on the court—again—and eager to test his fitness. Later this month, he will be playing at the Western & Southern Open, followed by the U.S. Open, both scheduled to be held at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City without fans.

“I’m locked in, so I’ll be out there,” Tiafoe says. “I’ve been hitting, sweating, just trying to get ready.”

Not all of his peers share his enthusiasm to resume playing this month. Even as the United States Tennis Association insists that it is taking the necessary steps to mitigate the risk of infection, some top players, including the women’s world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty of Australia, have withdrawn from the American tournaments, citing their discomfort with the risks of traveling during the pandemic. Rafael Nadal, the 19-time Grand Slam winner and defending U.S. Open champion, also decided to skip the tournaments. “The situation is very complicated worldwide, the COVID-19 cases are increasing, it looks like we still don’t have control of it,” Nadal wrote on Twitter.

In recent months, Nick Kyrgios, an outspoken and polarizing pro ranked 40th in the world, has criticized players, including Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked men’s player who tested positive for COVID-19 in June, for not taking the pandemic more seriously. In a video published by Uninterrupted, Kyrgios called out “selfish” players who haven’t been adhering to social distancing guidelines while adding that he has “no problem” with those who do choose to play at the U.S. Open, as long as they act “appropriately … and safely.”

“We can rebuild our sport and the economy, but we can never recover lives lost,” Kyrgios said.

“Tennis players, you have to act in the interest of each other and work together. You can’t be dancing on tables, money grabbing your way around

Europe, or trying to make a quick buck hosting an exhibition. That’s just so selfish. Think of the other people for once … To those players that have been observing the rules and acting selflessly, I say good luck to you.”

In June, Serena Williams committed to playing at the U.S. Open, becoming one of the highest profile players to give the tournament a vote of confidence. Djokovic is also set to play.

Tiafoe believes that players will take their roles seriously and points to other professional leagues that have been successful hosting events.

The U.S. Open, scheduled to run from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13, will operate in a “bubble” similar to what the NBA and NHL have done. Line calls will be made electronically on all courts except those at the two biggest arenas, and there will be a limited number of people allowed on-site. The New York Times reports that players who leave the tournament “bubble” without permission from Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director, or the tournament’s chief medical officer will be removed from the event and fined. Fans will not be in attendance.

“These guys, they’re professionals, hopefully they can run it at a high level,” Tiafoe says of the U.S. Open. “Obviously the NBA is able to do it, obviously baseball is struggling. It’s tough ... but you hope everyone is [testing] negative going in and everybody quarantines and ... everyone does the right thing. I don’t see why this tournament can’t go [on]. I think guys want to compete, and a lot of people want to do what they love again.”

Just a week before the professional tennis tour shut down in March, Tiafoe hired former Top 10 pro Wayne Ferreira as a coach in addition to Zack Evenden, his close friend and coach since 2017. Ferreira, a South African who currently lives in South Carolina but is moving to the San Francisco Bay Area soon, joined Tiafoe’s team right before the ATP Challenger Tour tournament in Indian Wells, California, where Tiafoe reached the round of 16.

Tiafoe estimates that he’s missed about five weeks of tennis this year. Instead of playing on the court, he’s used the forced time away to work on his fitness.

“There was no tennis in the early days,” Evenden says. “During the lockdown … if he wanted to play pickleball or go and hit with his girlfriend or his brother, then he would do that, but there was no pressure on tennis in the early days during lockdown. It was all fitness based and all body maintenance just to keep him prepared for if things changed on a short notice.”

Now ranked No. 81 in the world, Tiafoe headed into Atlanta with confidence in the work he put in with his coaches. He met up with Ferreira about a week before the start of the tournament in Peachtree Corners, Georgia.

Both of them got tested the day before they arrived and received negative results, Ferreira says. Each time they entered the facility at Life Time Athletic and Tennis, they received temperature checks.

So when Tiafoe had a headache and suffered from diarrhea shortly before his first match against Sam Querrey, he didn’t think much of it.

“I didn’t know having diarrhea was one of the

symptoms,” he says.

Tiafoe would end up beating the 45th-ranked Querrey in the exhibition event, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5), under the scorching Georgia sun, but afterward, due to fatigue, he decided to take an instant COVID-19 test. It showed up positive. The result came on the heels of other pro tennis players, including Djokovic, contracting COVID-19 after playing in exhibition events in Croatia and Serbia that were attended by unmasked fans sitting in close proximity to each other.

Tiafoe took another test the following day, which eventually confirmed the initial positive test.

“I was like, you gotta be kidding me,” he says.

“A lot of things were going through my head. I was like ... obviously [the news is] going to blow up, how am I going to get out of Atlanta, my brother probably has it as well.”

Franklin also tested positive (which he says he found out 10 days later), and after quarantining in their hotel room that Saturday, Ferreira drove the two up to South Carolina on Sunday, where their mother, Alphina Kamara, met them and drove them the rest of the way to Beltsville. Like Tiafoe, Ferreira is unsure where and how the brothers contracted the virus.

“We didn’t go anywhere,” says Ferreira, who tested positive for COVID-19 himself in March after picking up his son from college. “We went to [the] court and practiced and ran to the house, and he stayed inside, so we don’t quite know how he got it, and possibly he got it when he flew up there, but it was kind of weird.”

According to the Associated Press, tournament officials said they deep cleaned and sanitized the event site and alerted people who may have been in contact with Tiafoe. The event concluded as scheduled on July 5, with no additional positive tests announced.

While at home, Tiafoe has limited himself to eating home-cooked meals and says they’ve taken precautions to keep Kamara, a licensed practical nurse, safe.

“If we were upstairs, she was downstairs,” he says. “If we were downstairs, she was upstairs.

We spent a lot of time in the basement. We wore a mask. She wiped down anywhere we sat. We didn’t really have any close contact during two weeks. We were just being smart.”

Eventually, Tiafoe made his way back to the tennis court after testing negative. He hit with his brother at the nearby neighborhood tennis courts secluded by trees, and occasionally Ferreira joined to guide practices.

“He’s been working so hard, he feels like things are improving so much, and he wants to start implementing them on matches,” Ferreira says. “I think … everyone’s excited to get going again.”

Only Ferreira will make the trip to New York with Tiafoe as of now. But those close to Tiafoe are eager to see him back on the court, even if it’s just on TV. Both Ferreira and Evenden are confident that Tiafoe will come back even stronger from his latest setback.

“He’s looking great,” Evenden says. “As you saw in Atlanta, he had COVID and he beat Querrey. That shows you right there where his level is at.”

washingtoncitypaper.com august 7, 2020 7

Inflection Point Buzzard Point’s development has been shaped by decades of abandoned plans, zoning adjustments, and land grabs.

By Neil Flanagan Photographs by Darrow Montgomery

F

or nearly 20 years, government agencies had been trying to redevelop Buzzard Point, but they always faced the same issue: Nobody with money seemed to know where it was. That was the point of the boat trip. The Mayor was new and young. After serving a term on the D.C. Council, he was wellliked by a biracial coalition of voters, particularly in Wards 3 and 8, but distrusted by the bigger businesses in town, whose leaders favored more established Black politicians. With initiatives like this, he was trying to prove he could unite a city riven by decades of disinvestment and budding gentrification. Getting big commercial development onto the Anacostia waterfront, he knew, was a way to shore up the District’s precarious tax base and fund, among other things, an ambitious overhaul of public housing.

The boat departed its dock on Maine Avenue SW and went around the National War College at Fort McNair. It passed two boxy buildings possessing the bare minimum of architecture to get GSA leases and the three drab stacks of Pepco’s power station. Just upstream, it passed the docks of the Steuart Petroleum Company and, even if nobody on board would admit to knowledge of it, one of the District’s hottest gay clubs, Pier 9.

The boat continued under the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, an aging structure the Dravo Corporation built when the production of naval guns and ammunition still dominated the waterfront, then slowly turned around to pause at the old docks of the Smoot Sand and Gravel Company. William Hannan, a representative of the area’s anchor project, the Capitol Gateway Corporation, explained the plan. With a waterfront marketplace and a large mixed-use development beyond, he said, it would be as exciting as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

“The Mayor wants something done about the situation,” declared D.C.’s director of economic development, Knox Banner. “And we plan to get things rolling by the middle of next summer.”

But the mayor, Marion Barry, would see the

summer of 1980 come and go without a shovel in the ground, and then four whole terms pass with nothing more than plans.

The boat trip, reported in the Washington Star on December 8, 1979, was squarely in the middle of a succession of plans that shook up the neighborhood before washing away when the economy turned. On the blocks of Buzzard Point, the residue of those plans persist in the zoning, in the names of the plans, and in the image of its derelict placelessness. For the people who lived and worked south of M Street SW, these schemes brought disruption and uncertainty when no new investment came in. For others, the cheap but doomed land was a margin where they could make their own space.

By February of 2020, it seemed like redevelopment would finally stick. But in the face of a global pandemic, an economic recession, and the strongest calls for racial justice in years, will it stall out and leave the adjacent communities with dusty lots again?

“I

f your business is objectionable, build it on Buzzard Point,” reads a 1911 ad for some of its saturated land. That was not how Peter Charles L’Enfant imagined it in

8 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

the 1790s. When he laid out D.C., the Frenchman envisioned the northern shore of the Anacostia as an oceangoing port, which is why the Washington Navy Yard has been there since 1799. But relatively few businesses joined it there, leaving the site for agriculture, smoky brickmaking, and dumping. Before the construction of the Douglass Bridge in 1947, the area was a deep dead end south of P Street SW. According to historian Hayden Wetzel, its few residents tended to be poor Black or White immigrants, often farmers.

Businesses did see value in the area bounded

by Canal Street SW to the west and New Jersey Avenue SE to the east. The land was cheap, and the residents had little clout and neither Council nor congressional representation. What is now the National Capital Planning Commission pursued a campaign to industrialize the area by rezoning it and building a railroad down Potomac Avenue, with little success. Industrial uses remained small scale and served local purposes. The waterfront fed the growth of the city as the New Deal and World War II swelled the white-collar workforce.

Before widespread trucking, the waterfront brought in heating oil at Steuart Petroleum’s dock, housed a power plant owned by PEPCO, and building materials from the barges that came to

Smoot’s dock at Potomac Avenue and First Street SE. The industrial activity made the area unrecognizable to old timers, but was hardly the success that NCPC imagined.

The brief period of waterfront activity eroded when the Department of Defense shuttered the massive Naval Gun Factory in 1962, outsourcing the tools of modern air power to the defense industry. This move left about half of what is now Navy Yard and all of The Yards development vacant.

Worse, lunch counters, supporting industries, and employees in the neighborhood closed or relocated. To planners, the vacancy presented the possibility of urban blight very close to the area in Southwest they had just cleared and redeveloped in the name of urban renewal.

Beginning with their 1965 comprehensive plan, NCPC began to reimagine Buzzard Point. In one broadbrush plan after another, they envisioned the conversion of the weapons plant into a large complex of federal buildings, a shoreline park, and a vast marina surrounding the Douglass Bridge, with various mixes of commercial and residential buildings in between. By 1975, NCPC’s plan was less visionary but more concrete. After turbulent years that brought wins for civil rights, environmentalism, D.C. Home Rule, and historic

preservation, “urban renewal” had come to be reviled as wanton, inefficient, and racist.

The new plans then were more like a framework for growth and government investment. They proposed to remove almost all industrial uses north of Potomac Avenue SW, and rezone most of the area for moderate-income residential uses. Running down South Capitol Street SW from M Street SW would be blocks of taller, mixed-use buildings.

The new public marina would not be under the bridge, but slightly to the south. NCPC took its time rezoning the area, not anticipating development activity before it acted. In 1976, however, the plan was already in jeopardy, as the block fittingly designated Square 666 in land records slipped out of NCPC’s hands. NCPC’s report from that year laments, “This marina proposal has been jeopardized because construction of an office building has begun … however, it is not too late.” Behind the planner’s frustration was one of the biggest landlords to the federal government, an enigmatic doctor named Laszlo Tauber.

L

aszlo Tauber was a Hungarian Jew with survival instincts gleaned from decades of persecution. His father served and died in the Imperial-Royal Army in World War

I. When fascist collaborators came to power in Hungary, Tauber helped set up a Red Cross hospital, where the international clout was enough to keep him out of a concentration camp. After postwar medical training in Stockholm, he came to the U.S., arriving in D.C. in 1949. Unable to get practice privileges at any hospital, he worked as an orderly until he could become certified as a doctor again. He opened a general practice at 1503 Good Hope Road SE, in a historic Anacostia that then was still strictly white.

As that whiteness fled to the suburbs, he saw opportunities. He began developing small garden apartments, the kind of nonspecific projects scattered across suburban Maryland. He joined forces with a more successful developer named Milton Ritzenberg, investing the savings of other doctors, including classmates from Europe. His son Alfred, a retired professor of immunology and bioethics at Boston University, says that Tauber began developing as a way to make money that didn’t depend on patients’ ability to pay. Alfred says his father found the profit-driven medical system cruel, and saw his multimillion-dollar development empire as his “side business.”

Tauber found a niche when he erected the Westwood Shopping Center in Bethesda. He was able to lease a tower there to the General Services Administration, which handles property management for the federal government.

Tauber saw how fast the government was growing in the 1960s and 1970s, and understood the unique market conditions for its office space. The GSA looked for a low price per square foot above all else. Location, which most people in the real estate business find important, was not of particular concern. D.C.’s industrial zoning had permissive density limits that were virtually unchanged since 1920. Tauber perceived that local industry was shrinking, meaning land where industry was retreating but not extinct could be optioned cheaply, allowing him to underbid conventional developers. If he got the lease, he would develop the property according to the lease cost, leading to a number of buildings that look like they were designed on a spreadsheet, often by the architect John d’Epagnier. Internally, the structures, like the Presidential Building, which housed D.C.’s Board of Education for decades, had low ceilings, narrow corridors, and no amenities.

Tauber first ventured onto Buzzard Point with rounded-up financing from his network, and for $2.8 million acquired the site of Hall’s Restaurant, a popular spot for boaters at the far tip. He developed a 480,000-square-foot building, eventually named Transpoint, for the Department of Transportation. Then he turned to Square 666. In June 1975, Tauber used his option on the property to win a GSA bid for the new headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Offering $2.5 million per year, he narrowly underbid in last minute negotiations. NCPC’s planners rushed to protest the project while SEC employees lamented their relocation to what they saw as a remote and dangerous area. “It’s the only thing people are talking about,” an anonymous employee told the Star at the time. “It’s the remoteness and desolation of Buzzard Point.” A younger employee said, “I hear it’s a crime area.”

In July, the SEC’s social organization joined with community and environmental groups and sued the GSA, arguing that an environmental impact statement had never been prepared.

The situation took a turn for the worse later that month, when the SEC itself appealed the lease on

procedural grounds. In January 1976, the Office of Management and Budget allowed the SEC to back out of the lease. Over the next three years, the GSA sought to fill the building with other federal offices, including USAID and parts of the Departments of the Treasury and Agriculture.

The GSA eventually began taking a hard line, refusing to lease space for any federal office in D.C. until they filled the Square 666 building.

As the project wandered through litigation, the FBI’s Washington Field Office moved in, followed by a Department of Defense office. All the controversy invited other nosy factfinders: Congress and the press. Articles delving into Tauber’s business practices revealed procurement irregularities, unsafe conditions at his other buildings, and suspicious transactions with a lobbyist named Arthur Lowell. In July 1979, Lowell was arrested in an unrelated bribery scheme, while the GSA official who awarded the lease had found a job working for Tauber. The doctor, for his part, would never get a GSA lease again. Nevertheless, the GSA kept the leases into the 2000s, and Tauber came to amass a fortune of close to $1 billion before he died in 2002.

I

f the GSA struggled to draw tenants to the buildings, private investors needed even more convincing. Sure, Buzzard Point had loose industrial zoning and waterfront property, but so did an area closer to the bosses’ houses: Georgetown. Georgetown north of M Street NW had been gentrified, and development was tightly restricted for 20 years, but the historically industrial areas south of M Street NW had the potential for the same land use libertinism Tauber sought.

Developers found willing sellers along the waterfront, particularly a parcel long held by a construction materials subsidiary of the Pittsburgh conglomerate Dravo Corporation.

Formerly known as Smoot Sand and Gravel, its

business had been dredging the wetlands of the Potomac River for aggregates, the sand and gravel that make up the difference between cement and concrete. While Smoot had been comfortably siphoning the bottom of the Potomac onto barges for more than a half century in 1969, the practice had become unpopular. The dredging issue came to a head when Dravo applied to mine marshes at Mason Neck and Mattawoman Creek that year.

Wetland defenders had good reason for concern.

Across the river, at what is now National Harbor, Smoot, and later Potomac Sand and Gravel Company, changed the shape of the river, creating a massive, ecologically dead cove between National Harbor and the Beltway from property that once belonged to Smoot as well.

By 1974, William Hannan would later write in a memo, Dravo found its three riverfront properties in Georgetown, National Harbor, and on the Anacostia “useless by reason of an order of the [United States Army] Corps of Engineers.”

With the Georgetown property sold, the company examined their land just south of what is now Nationals Park and “urged the renewal of the whole area into a mixed-use community providing much-needed housing, shops, recreation, hotels, and office buildings—in short, a neighborhood.” However pure the mining conglomerate’s intentions, they understood they had something of a gem. Only 6 percent of D.C.’s waterfront was in private hands. Of that, even less was uncontaminated by serious pollution. Sand and gravel are just rocks, after all, and their shoreline parcel was the closest to both the Capitol and a proposed Navy Yard Metro station.

Dravo wanted to redevelop the adjacent properties for more prosaic reasons. Between their 6 acres and the Capitol were blocks of industrial buildings, a Metrobus garage, vacant lots, and the Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg public housing project, some of which was itself vacant, after a

washingtoncitypaper.com august 7, 2020 9

modernization project stalled out in 1973. The developers needed a critical mass of desirable services and qualities to draw businesses and residents to the area. Tauber’s buildings, after all, hadn’t really drawn any respectable vitality to that area. Dravo proposed to redevelop the entire area west of First Street SE, south of M Street SE, and east of South Capitol Street SE. It’s not entirely clear how the lobbying was done, but by 1976, Mayor Walter Washington had budgeted to solicit proposals from developers in March 1977.

The request for proposals, preserved in the records of the Friendship House Association, was something completely new for D.C. A decade before, on the other side of South Capitol Street, an unelected redevelopment agency would simply have used eminent domain, funded by the federal government, to seize the land and then resell it under planning conditions. Hannan, in fact, had been a strident critic of the practice, arguing that it favored out of town developers instead of the local landowners who were his clients. Now, under Home Rule and a 1974 community development law, the Council would instead invite private businesses to bid on the opportunity to redevelop land. The RFP also stated that the agency “will give considerable weight in selecting a Contractor whose organization includes one or more land owners in the Development Area,” ostensibly to address the major land acquisition costs. The Washington Post couldn’t help but observe that it tipped the competition towards Dravo. Sure enough, in October of that year, the Capitol Gateway Corporation, its newly created subsidiary, won the job.

Residents in the area reacted with interest but unease. Beginning in January 1977, Friendship House, a social services nonprofit that used to be located in Capitol Hill, began discussing the project. In meetings, residents of the redevelopment area like Vivian Williams expressed eagerness to fix up the dilapidated conditions. At the same time, they were haunted by what a disaster urban renewal had been in Southwest. Displacement was at the top of their list of concerns, even if it was simply because of long-delayed construction. Likewise, they wanted to make sure the project provided for low-income housing. These concerns would be repeated at a string of meetings throughout the life of the project.

Capitol Gateway submitted a feasibility study in July 1978. The development’s planned density was lower than NCPC had imagined, with 1,842 rowhouses and apartments, 1.2 million square feet of offices, a festival marketplace along the river, community facilities, playgrounds, parks, a riverside promenade, a marina, and 750 rooms of lodging. 20 percent of the housing units would be set aside for low and moderate income families. The report called for $42 million of public investment, and in return promised as much as $182 million in tax revenue by the year 2000 for the city’s ailing treasury. Capitol Gateway’s consultants estimated it would produce 2,300 jobs for D.C. residents, including a large number of blue-collar jobs.

The schematic design, by a Black, Howardeducated architect named Charles Bryant, included a high number of rowhouses, based on a strong demand for attached single family dwellings as gentrification began to pick up in Dupont Circle and Capitol Hill. It was assumed that office rents would subsidize not just the lowincome housing, but also the market rate houses.

The 52-acre site was further divided into five parcels, each of which would be a joint venture with another developer. This would allow phased development, beginning in 1982 and lasting five to eight years. The project, the report touted, would increase housing stock, and together with the Southeast Federal Center, a nearby plot of federally owned land the GSA planned to develop, be “a catalyst for regeneration” all over Buzzard Point.

As soon as the Capitol Gateway project was announced, residents reported a wave of real estate speculation. Slumlords had been milking old properties in the area for years, but the threat of “becoming Georgetown” had a different bent.

As early as 1975, the Star reported the sale of more than 30 rowhouses on 2nd Street SW to Gerard Dunphy. Dunphy was an early member of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, a preservationist group, and might be understood today as a flip-

onto the board of Capitol Gateway.

Community groups continued to pressure Dravo, as illustrated at three community meetings held between December 1979 and February 1980, in order to qualify the site for eminent domain under D.C.’s community development law. Businesses were mostly concerned with getting money for the land and for relocation. A printer named Arthur Moore emphasized that he did not want to face the same delays his company had when it was relocated from Southwest in the 1950s. A landowner named Pat Ingram sounded a more modern note when she lamented that “the rapid influx of people does not appear to blend in smoothly,” leading to a lack of “community spirit,” and argued that the existing building should remain to provide the “true nostalgic feeling” that Southwest lacked. Of course, people also complained about traffic.

1980. They were concerned ostensibly about land prices, which Simon reported as nearly four times what Dravo had estimated in their feasibility study. Dravo then brought on Orlando Darden, a Black banker, to manage the increasing responsibilities of the company.

In 1982, they started to waver on whether they would construct affordable housing as discussed.

That summer, in a series of letters, Darden suggested that a public-private partnership buy out Dravo’s stake in Capitol Gateway, including its land. Unimpressed, the Council did not renew the building permit freeze that fall. In March 1983, Councilmember Wilson learned from District officials that Dravo was backing out, and in 1984, Dravo sold their property and equipment to Florida Rock Industries, Inc., a materials company that just wanted to make concrete.

The project also hastened the end of investment within the area, which opened doors for a different kind of business owner. In 1969, Bill Bickford and Donald Culver had opened a gay nightclub called Pier 9 in an old industrial building at 1824 Half St. SW. They then opened Lost and Found across South Capitol Street in Southeast, with other gay-oriented establishments filtering in around them. As Capitol Gateway started to fail, the clubs gained access to larger spaces. Tracks, at 80 M St. SE, opened in 1984 at the north end of the Capitol Gateway site. Bathhouses like Glorious Health Club and Amusements found real estate that was both central and almost invisible to the rest of the city.

E

per. In the article, community groups expressed concerns about displacement, but a representative for Dunphy assured the Star no evictions would take place—units would just be resold at unaffordable prices when tenants left. Within the Capitol Gateway area, a 1978 housing survey preserved in Councilmember John A. Wilson’s papers recorded eight evictions since the project started, with 17 of the 54 on-site units vacant. The main owner of rowhouses in the area, the Floyd E. Davis Companies, evicted Williams and was preparing to demolish her house to ensure the land was unencumbered by D.C.’s new tenants’ rights and historic preservation laws.

Dravo’s spokesman told the Star they were “appalled” at the speculators and began working with a community development corporation named Ministers United To Support Community Life Endeavors and Friendship House. Dravo brought Williams and prominent Black real estate investor Flaxie Pinkett

10 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Other attendees had more economic concerns, such as guaranteeing the affordable units, irrespective of whether Capitol Gateway got federal subsidies. MUSCLE’s director, Rev. Robert Troutman of Riverside Baptist Church, pushed for family-sized affordable units and more recreation space. ANC 2D’s executive director, Gottlieb Simon, asked Dravo to issue stock shares at affordable prices to give residents equity in the project and also asked whether government ownership of land would return income to the city.

The meetings allowed the Council to advance the community development program in November 1980, through more detailed study by Dravo. D.C. appropriated $11.9 million for land acquisitions, but things were unraveling already.

The Washington Post reported that Hannan aggravated D.C. officials by lobbying for his client’s project in Congress, as he would have pre-Home Rule.

The Council nevertheless voted to block all building permits issued in the project area in December

ven as the idea of Capitol Gateway faded, waterfront fever washed over the quietly influential Federal City Council. The FCC, which still exists, served to connect local business interests with national ones and then link both to politicians, in the common cause of preserving investment in Washington’s downtown. By 1981, the FCC’s records at the long-neglected D.C. Archives show that the organization had become very interested in bringing investment back to D.C. through large economic development projects like a convention center and an “international village” commercial center. Also on their radar were recent waterfront redevelopment projects anchored by markets, such as Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

In January 1981, James Lynn, the then-president of the FCC, invited the organization’s members to take part in a task force. The task force promoted investment in D.C.’s waterfronts to local and federal officials “as a catalyst to develop consensus on what is reasonable and possible,” as a bullet point memo from 1982 put it. They recruited the Urban Land Institute and the architectural firm Keyes Condon Florance to advise them, launching the report at an exhibit in January 1982. The report offered opinions on all of D.C.’s waterfronts, including what is now The Wharf and Poplar Point. The report anticipated that construction on the Southeast Federal Center would begin within a few years, leading to “massive spillover effects on adjacent properties” where businesses might want to locate. Still, it did acknowledge that this “stimulus” could be hampered by less desirable neighbors that weren’t going away, including the large amount of public housing in the area.

Nevertheless, it concluded, “the opportunity exists to create one of Washington’s more desirable neighborhoods.”

The FCC was busy in the 1980s, so the campaign lacked follow-through until the District issued its first Comprehensive Plan in 1985. The land use document designated large areas around the Anacostia River, including Buzzard Point, as “development opportunity areas,” and developers were glad to take the opportunity. In preparation for further planning, the FCC arranged a meeting in March 1987 between Mayor Barry, federal officials within agencies responsible for shoreline land like the Navy and the National Park Service, and private landowners. Barry and his staffers voiced concern over the lack of planning in that area and arranged for the FCC to reimagine the area, since it was less of a priority for his administration than it was for commercial developers. Georgetown and K Street NW were running out of space for office buildings, cheaper land beckoned from Virginia, and Barry’s administration had downzoned building sites on Wisconsin Avenue NW. At the meeting with Barry, Pepco’s president brought up that the electrical utility had hired the developer JBG Properties (now known as JBG Smith) to plan out the long-term possibilities for their 25 acres of land on Buzzard Point. In fact, the long-term landowners in the area, like Pepco, the Steuart family, the Washington Real Estate Investment Trust, the Donohoe Companies, the Pedas family, and the Carr Companies, had formed a 501(c)(3) organization called the Buzzard Point Planning Association to develop a more concrete plan. Ever the outsider, Tauber declined to join, but kept in touch. Benjamin Jacobs, a partner at JBG, appears to have largely led the effort. (City Paper reached out to JBG Smith for comment but did not hear back.)

According to a planner who worked on the project but requested not to be named, the large institutional landowners had concluded that redevelopment of Buzzard Point was inevitable as government consulting boomed, but the area wasn’t ready for it. While the 1985 Comprehensive Plan envisioned a mixed-use area there, the Office of Planning passed on updating the area’s zoning. The BPPA understood that maximizing their returns would require a coordinated phaseout of industrial uses and heavy infrastructural investment by the District. To allow for this changeover, the group conceived of an entirely new kind of zoning district that would ensure design quality, increase density, incentivize open space, and allow a very broad mix of uses. They even imagined that the right design might lure investment to their second Georgetown, rather than Gallery Place, which was still disinvested outside of Chinatown.

Aware of the BPPA’s work, the FCC turned its attention back to the Anacostia with an economic study and then an urban design and transportation plan. The two groups’ plans did not always concur. For example, both believed that residential buildings would not pay for themselves, but added to street life. The BPPA’s landowners wanted them scattered between sites to equalize revenues. The FCC, which wanted to increase D.C.’s tax base by drawing high-income residents into D.C., wanted more residential buildings and to give them the best waterfront property.

When the BPPA submitted their plans to NCPC in January 1989, the commission rejected it on the advice of OP, which held that the BPPA’s private process was not legitimate, preferring the FCC’s vision. The FCC proceeded to a second phase, published in 1992 and also never legally adopted.

In early 1992, Mayor Sharon Pratt’s

administration began to formally plan the future for the entire area. OP integrated ideas from both the FCC and BPPA, including the special zoning.

In October 1992, they released a draft of their plan, called the Buzzard Point / Near Southeast Vision 2020 plan. The name, the report says, “indicates that a long term vision is needed and that it will take 20-30 years (to the year 2020 or longer) to complete the rebuilding of this area.”

T

he “or longer” has to do some work to make the report’s authors prophets. And the lineage in this article is definitely not the full story of why the area has transformed. But these forgotten visions deposited themselves on the Anacostia waterfront like sediment, forming the perceptions and regulations that are the foundations of the area’s new growth.

Before Capitol Gateway, Buzzard Point was thought of as the area south of M Street in near Southeast. Now, with the Ballpark located where Dravo envisioned Capitol Gateway, it’s seen as a different part of town. The idea of a unique zone took a torturous route through the 1990s, until it was dusted off in 2001 to direct investment to the area. Originally called “Buzzard Point-Capitol Gateway,” they ditched the bird moniker in an April 2002 hearing. The area is now regulated by the Capitol Gateway zone district, although few planners even know its source.

Names aren’t the only shifts in the area, of course. The speculation that began in the 1970s set the stage for the area’s transformation as land became expensive and industrial tenants became “cover” that paid the expenses of holding the land. Most developers who are currently building in the area had staked out claims to a patch of the waterfront-to-be by the end of the 1980s. Everyone agreed it would happen, they were just waiting for the market to get there, and if that took too long, they’d need some kind of home run public investment. The Council did eventually use eminent domain on Capitol Gateway’s site to build Nationals Park. They cleared out four spotty blocks, including many of the gay clubs that had tucked themselves into the once-secluded area.

Florida Rock, the firm that bought Dravo’s land, spun off its real estate assets into a holding company in 1986. After a decade of attempts to build a massive office complex at the old barge dock, they realized that the market had shifted.

Unimaginable in 1975, demand for office space had shrunk, and high-end apartments offered better profits down there. Tauber died in 2002 and was remembered as a philanthropist; his buildings on Buzzard Point were purchased by separate developers. They gutted the massive structures and reshaped them into residential buildings, once again the first private buildings to lead a trend.

The future is not all clear along the Anacostia, though. In July 2020, the joint venture for the old Transpoint building received approval to use 150 units in the new apartment building as an interim hotel to maintain revenue while its looks to lease its 481 units, perhaps suggesting that, for Buzzard Point, the tide still hasn’t come in. If all the grand plans for adjacent parcels stall out, the neighborhoods just to the north might face the same disruption of unfulfilled promises as seen during the earlier waves of development.

Each of these waves moved some people in and others out, and left traces in the shape of what we have now. washingtoncitypaper.com august 7, 2020 11

FOOD YOUNG & HUNGRY

Home Plates These eight neighborhood bars and restaurants have been reliable bright spots for diners during the pandemic.

only delicious, but the family special feeds our family of three for a few days. It includes two charbroiled chickens, four large sides, two large sauces, and four Inca Kolas, and costs $41.50.

The sides are as much of a draw as the chicken. We usually choose arroz chaufa (Peruvian-style Chinese fried rice), fried yucca, sweet fried yellow plantains, and french fries for the little one. If you’re not interested in fried food, lighter options like green beans, quinoa salad, and stewed black beans are available. The sides come in generous portions that you can save for lunch the next day.

The rotisserie chicken is versatile. We’ve made sandwiches, salads, and even more fried rice with the leftovers. The restaurant would only share that garlic and onion are key ingredients in the seasoning—the rest is a proprietary secret. Save the extra Huacatay sauce and serve it with roasted potatoes and vegetables. It’s the takeout order that keeps on giving!

Huacatay, owned by Byron Maldonado and Edgar Diaz, is open for pickup (calling directly to place orders helps them avoid fees) and delivery.

—Jessica van Dop DeJesus

Anela Malik

Comedor y Pupuseria San Alejo 1819 East-West Highway, Hyattsville; (240) 714-3342; sanalejomd.com

Spread from The Shell Shack Seafood

By City Paper staff and contributors Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the world was our oyster. It was possible to move from place to place and cross oceans to soak in the sights, smells, and sounds of other cultures. But stopping the spread of the virus necessitates shrinking our circle. During the past five months, we’ve stayed closer to home and turned to our immediate neighborhoods with fresh eyes and renewed appreciation.

We’ve explored the bars and restaurants down the block, eager to see them survive.

City Paper staff and contributors shared the restaurants and bars that have been there for them throughout the pandemic, the places we support weekly. And thanks to the D.C. region’s multicultural population and immigrant owners, there’s still a way to taste the world from home.

—Laura Hayes The Shell Shack Seafood 3809 Rhode Island Ave., Brentwood; (240) 772-1185; theshellshackseafood.com The Shell Shack Seafood opened in April, in the midst of the COVID-19 public health emergency. Located inside the Black and womanowned Savor Food Hall in Brentwood, the Shell Shack quickly became my favorite takeout spot. As Nicole Watson, the restaurant’s director of operations, says, “pandemic or not,

people want good food.”

Good food is exactly what they serve. Chef and owner Winthorpe “Skee” Spence creates Caribbean-infused seafood dishes that stand out for their creativity and execution.

The portions are generous, the food is packed to travel, and the staff is friendly. Chef Spence was born in Jamaica and grew up in Queens, New York. His professional experience ranges from fine dining to food trucks, and he’s also served as the private chef for BET’s Sheila Johnson and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

First-timers must try the plantain fried rice.

It’s hearty and rich, with perfectly caramelized plantains and the slightest hint of heat. In addition to being my favorite side, it makes a great meal on its own and reheats well the next day.

Try adding a fried egg to make your leftovers more decadent. The lobster sliders and crab and corn fritters both make great appetizers to round out a seafood-centric meal.

Pickup and delivery are available through DoorDash and Grubhub.

—Anela Malik Huacatay 2314 4th St. NE; (202) 795-9940; facebook.com/HuacatayPolloALaBrasa We started ordering from Huacatay when the stay-at-home order began. Pollo a la brasa (Peruvian-style roasted chicken) is my perfect mid-week treat. This virtual trip to Peru is not

12 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

I can’t go a week without gorging at this stripmall Salvadoran restaurant that’s managed to stay open throughout the pandemic, save for a two-week closure. Siblings Carlos Alvarado and Mirna Alvarado-Montero run the business, which is named after the small town in El Salvador where they grew up.

Alvarado, who spent a decade with José Andrés’ ThinkFoodGroup, tells me my regular order—carne deshilada—is a very traditional dish in San Alejo. He says it’s only eaten for dinner, despite the fact that it contains eggs mixed in with shredded beef, onions, and peppers. The savory mixture is served with sides and thick corn tortillas.

The restaurant also makes first-rate pupusas. Just enough salty cheese squirts out of the masa pocket and gets crispy. My favorite is the one filled with loroco flowers. “There is only one secret—passion,” Alvarado says. “You have to get a good product first, and then you have to like and love what you are doing.” Making the filling for the bean-filled pupusa is a five-hour process.

San Alejo also explores other cuisines.

“When we decided to open, we decided to be a little open-minded,” Alvarado says. One of their most popular dishes is a Honduran baleada featuring a housemade flour tortilla stuffed with refried beans, egg, avocado, and an aged cheese that lends some funk. Adding steak turns the starter into a filling $7.50 meal.

San Alejo is currently open for dine-in, pickup, and delivery on Grubhub. —Laura Hayes Manna Dosirak 409 15th St. NE; (202) 921-9456; mannadosirak.com In pre-pandemic days, if I wanted to chow down on traditional Korean fare, it typically

meant a drive to Annandale, where the eateries stay open into the early hours of the morning. While I certainly miss mainstays like Tosokchon and To Sok Jip in these socially distanced days, I was pleasantly surprised to find a new Korean takeout spot tucked next to a liquor shop on Capitol Hill.

Manna Dosirak is a mom-and-pop restaurant owned by Pil Cho. He previously ran a burger joint called K Burger at the same address before revamping the menu in February. Now, the business reflects his Korean roots. “It’s traditional Korean—the food we love,” Cho says.

I’ve quickly fallen in love with Manna, too.

It’s reliable, quick, and affordable. Most bibimbap bowls cost $10. Sides, which range from $3.50 to $5, include dumplings, crispy prawns, and japchae—cold stir-fried glass noodles with peppers, onions, and mushrooms. And don’t skip dessert. Hotteok, a golden fried rice pancake stuffed with brown sugar syrup, is a satisfying finish.

Another way to order is by selecting the restaurant’s namesake, a dosirak. It’s a packaged meal often with different compartments for rice, sides, and a main dish. At Manna, those main dishes span from a pork cutlet with cabbage to spicy tofu.

Order Manna for pickup by calling or going online. They’re on most delivery apps. —Tim Ebner Silver Spring Wings 2341 Distribution Circle, Silver Spring; (202) 876-8000; silverspringwings.com Much of my dining out activity prior to the COVID-19 pandemic involved trendy restaurants. Being homebound during the pandemic due to a respiratory condition, and a special delivery of wings, forced me to stop and remember the joys of comfort food. The wings come from a caterer who pivoted during the pandemic.

Evan Walton, who owns and operates Recess Catering and Events, had a steady stream of business cooking for corporate parties and social events. He even opened a second kitchen in Silver Spring to handle the demand. But when the pandemic hit in March, business came to a halt.

Harnessing his entrepreneurial spirit, Walton found a way to safely transform his business into a temporary restaurant that keeps things simple and gives people what we love: wings, chicken tenders, seasoned potato wedges, and coleslaw. You can taste the love that goes into Walton’s food.

Classic coatings for his boneless wings, like honey barbecue and Buffalo, are my go-to flavors, but some of his saucier creations—like parmesan peppercorn and sweet chili Thai— are addictive, too. I’m not normally a fan of seasoned, sauceless wings, but Walton’s Cajun spice wings have me reconsidering my prior stance.

Last time we got Silver Spring Wings, my husband and I feasted on leftovers for two days with unwavering enthusiasm. We’ve since recommended these wings to everyone we know.

FOOD DIVERSIONS CROSSWORD Next time you’re worrying about what to cook, pay Walton a visit in Silver Spring. He also does limited deliveries in the area. Don’t skip the coleslaw. —Sabrina Medora Pitmasters Back Alley BBQ 4818 Yuma St. NW; (202) 350-9791; pitmastersbackalleybbq.com Needing to sink my teeth into a tender and flavorful beef brisket at the start of the pandemic led me down a narrow path near 95-yearold Wagshal’s Delicatessen in Spring Valley.

That’s where you’ll find the intentionally unassuming Pitmasters Back Alley BBQ. A sign adorned with a pig and the D.C. flag announces the takeout restaurant’s existence. Twenty weeks into the public health emergency, their beef brisket provides the simplest pleasure at a challenging time.

My go-to order is the Austin brisket sandwich. Manager Warren Alonge says the brisket gets trimmed inside Wagshal’s before it’s injected with its juices. Then it gets a beef rub, marinates, and enters the smoker for about eight hours.

The sandwich comes with crispy fried onions and barbecue sauce on the side, but I haven’t needed to try them because the brisket on bread is a wor thy enough meal on its own. The glistening pink meat is caramelized in all the right places. Make the trip, because good Austin brisket stands alone. Salt, pepper, char, smoke. The rest is magic.

If you’re not feeling like something between a bun, Pitmasters sells a la carte meat ranging from St. Louis cut pork ribs and half smokes to Carolina chopped pork and smoked chicken wings. Sides include cheesy grits, fried okra, cheddar biscuits, and baked beans.

Orders can be placed online for pickup and delivery is available through delivery apps. —Marcus K. Dowling

and cheese sandwich on an everything bagel with an iced coffee. Be sure to douse whatever you eat with their jalapeĂąo and garlic “secret sauce.â€?

The hospitality at the family-owned restaurant, even during a pandemic, is exceptional. The staff regularly treats customers like friends. Adding to the charm is eccentric decor like souvenir mugs, colorful clipboard menus that display far more dishes than are listed online, comfy seating arrangements of regal cushioned chairs mixed with sofas, and amusing signs that instruct patrons not to rush the chef, because each dish is made with love.

Many times when calling in an order, I’ve been greeted by, “Hey Sweetie, what can I get for you?� Heat Da Spot has been open throughout the pandemic. They currently welcome customers for outside dining in addition to pickup and delivery through Uber Eats and Grubhub. —Julia Terbrock Lyman’s Tavern 3720 14th St. NW; (202) 723-0502; facebook.com/lymanstaverndc A handful of weeks after D.C.’s stay-athome order began, I came across a tweet. “I would pay one million dollars for the cheapest beer at the shittiest dive bar in America,� it said. From my apartment in Mount Pleasant, I stared longingly at the Raven Grill.

I thought often of my favorite things at my regular haunts: the spiced Old Fashioneds and trivia nights at Jackie Lee’s, under the metallic tinsel where my friends threw their wedding party; the sloppy pineapple burgers and punk shows at Slash Run; the fried chicken at Service Bar. Most of all, I missed Lyman’s Tavern, owned

by Jess Kleinmann and Kevin Perone. I missed dropping into a patio seat after a long workday and nursing a sweaty highball, losing horribly at pinball, and having a place to bring first dates and friends I hadn’t seen in a while.

When Lyman’s finally reopened for takeout in May, I rejoiced. Once a week or more–– usually more– –I’d walk up 1 4th Street NW to its outdoor area to pick up a freshly squeezed orange crush and an order of vegetarian sliders. Impossible meat, ketchup, pickles, American cheese, chips: the stuff of childhood, the stuff of normalcy. I’d house those sliders like they were the last taste of bar food I’d ever get. I hope I was just being dramatic.

Call ahead for takeout or just order at its outdoor bar. Patio seating, with great dog watching, is now available. —Morgan Baskin

“There is only one secret—passion.

You have to get a good product first, and then you have to like and love what you are doing.�

Heat Da Spot 3213 Georgia Ave. NW; (202) 836-4719; heatdaspotcafe.com Once you spot the lowercase red “H� made from red crates outside the building, you’ll know you made it to the right place in Park View. Heat Da Spot, known for the friendliness of its staff, opened in 2015. It’s one of my favorite breakfast spots, serving Ethiopian and American food that is consistently delicious and coffee that is reliably strong.

Their Ethiopian breakfast, featuring spongy injera, ful (mashed beans), eggs, onions, peppers, and tomatoes, is one of their most popular dishes, but my usual order is a bacon, egg,

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ARTS

Far Out

did a huge spreadsheet and tried to figure out what would go in the six individual editions, and then, with a rough layout, started putting them together and coming up with storylines that would carry over from issue to issue.

730DC is publishing a limited-run speculative fiction newsletter that imagines D.C. a century from today.

WCP: What kind of research did you do to figure out which things you’d bring into the future?

JK: A lot of it is based on what I’m interested in and what I want to explore. I write about the bus, I write about slow streets, I write about housing occasionally, and I’m very interested in urbanism and the things that affect our city.

Something that might not be obvious is that I spent a lot of time researching the 1920s. That was really helpful, for me to think, “It’s the year 2020 now, let me look back 100 years ago, and let me see what they had in the ’20s that we still have, let me see what was brand new, what was important to them then, and let me try to extrapolate that 100 years into the future.”

By Emma Sarappo @EmmaSarappo

WCP: What is Dispatches from 2120?

Josh Kramer: Dispatches from 2120 is a sixweek, limited-run fictional newsletter project published by 730DC, and it is imagining the city that we live in 100 years from now. It’s the idea that you can do research about contemporary issues and ideas—racism, infrastructure, urban life—and you can use that research and that knowledge to create a piece of fiction set in an imaginative future or alternate reality. The readers of 730DC, to begin with, are an audience who care about housing and transit and homelessness and education, and this newsletter kind of speaks to that. It’s kind of pushing people to think about these issues in a much, much different context than they’re used to.

It’s nice to get immersed in fiction. I actually read a piece of speculative fiction that was set in D.C. in the future, and it didn’t deal with D.C. culture at all, and I hate that! A big pet peeve is the fact that our city is just a placeholder for [the federal] government, and obviously it’s not. Obviously, 700,000 people and growing

WCP: Why try speculative fiction? What does fiction allow us to learn?

Josh Kramer

What will D.C. look like in a century? Will it be dealing with any of the same issues we have today? We can’t know for certain—but we can guess. That’s the idea behind Dispatches from 2120, a new speculative series written by Josh Kramer and published weekly for the next six weeks by local newsletter 730DC. Kramer, a freelance writer and artist (and City Paper contributor) has worked with 730DC before, writing pieces on Metrobus’ cash surcharge and the importance of going to your ANC meeting, but Dispatches from 2120 is especially ambitious. It’s modeled after other works of “speculative journalism,” Kramer says, like Sam Greenspan’s podcast Bellwether and the New York Times’ “Op-Eds From the Future,” and written in the style of 730DC’s daily newsletter. It’s also got plenty of multimedia components, including a weekly narrative comic, an Instagram Live event, and contributions from other artists. The team plans to incorporate reader responses, as well. Kramer spoke with City Paper about the project, its scope, and its aims.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

live here, and we are a large mid-Atlantic city on the East Coast with our own stuff going on, so I liked the ability to portray that, besides just being the capital of the United States. And, spoiler alert: In the newsletter, that’s changing.

WCP: Did you come up with this entirely on your own?

JK: It was a collaborative process, kind of a conversation with two of the editors at 730DC, Hayden Higgins and Lily Strelich. I’ve worked with them before on my other 730DC projects. At the beginning of the year, before coronavirus, we’d been talking about doing a limited-run series already, because I had some ideas. After meeting in person to talk about this and going back and forth, this was the one that we were immediately like, “Oh, this is the most fun and the most out there, and probably the most difficult, but probably the most rewarding if we get this right.”

WCP: How did the pandemic affect this project?

JK: The pandemic has shaped the narrative quite a bit, as have the protests for racial justice, and I’m so glad to have that context in there—which you may not see in the first one, so you’ll have to

14 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Comic panels from Josh Kramer’s Dispatches from 2120 trust me. With the pandemic, with the presidential election, everyone feels super stressed out all the time and like they’re living through something they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.

It’s almost a cliche to say we’re living through history being written right now. But so much of our daily existence and preoccupation right now is thinking about what is next year going to look like? What will the next four years look like?

And I’m looking at a broader horizon, because I think that matters, too, not only what will the pandemic do to us next year, but what will it do to us in 100 years? In the newsletter, the “winter stay-at-home school season” is just something that’s offhandedly mentioned. There is a reference to the COVID-19 and COVID-25 memorials on the National Mall.

JK: Hayden was just telling me that this was the kind of project that they wanted to position themselves to support; 730DC wanted to be able to provide a space for experimentation that works with the rest of their content.

I’m not trying to be 100 percent predictive.

I’m trying to show something that, based on my research, is likely, something that is based on fact, but my version of it is meant to push the reader a little bit. In almost all of the editions, there’s a lot about trees—you might be reading the first one and think, “Why is there so much about trees? Why does he keep revisiting various things about trees?” There are genetically engineered cherry blossoms; “Arborist” is always capitalized and highly respected; everyone knows all the Latin names of trees, and all of this stuff serves a purpose. In this version of the future, our current climate change has moved into something else that is a worlddefining climate catastrophe, and society has become a lot more interested in this idea of carbon sinks and carbon sequestration in the roots of trees. That’s a pretty nitty-gritty idea.

That’s an idea that hasn’t really taken root, sorry for the pun, in society at large, but I think it’s a really interesting idea to explore and I’d like to dig into what the cultural ramifications are of a society that cares a lot more about trees.

WCP: What did the process behind this project look like?

WCP: Looking at the first issue, I’m interested in why your futuristic newsletter is full of links to contemporary sources.

What do you hope to accomplish with that?

JK: The first thing I did was make a massive document that we now refer to as “the Bible,” the way you would with a television show— there’s a “Bible” of what is true in this universe and what is not. I got their feedback on it and sent it to some people I respect, who maybe have more expertise than I do on things like technology or urban planning. From there, we

JK: It does a couple things. This was our big mystery: We’re writing a piece of fiction; how do we make it clear that this is based on real things, and how do we make it feel urgent and in the moment? By putting lots of links in there to contemporary websites and news articles, we wanted to make it so that if someone was shocked by something or had no idea what we

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were talking about, they could spend a few minutes and hopefully gain some useful context.

WCP: You’ve mentioned Instagram components, a comic, and incorporating reader contributions for this project.

What’s the ecosystem of the larger project?

JK: I’m a cartoonist, and that’s my background.

I couldn’t help myself. I wanted there to be some kind of visual component, because the writing wasn’t enough for me. That’s why I did the comic, which is about nine or 10 panels for each chapter, and that’s going to come out on the same day as each edition. It’s kind of a little sweet love story. Some people may not be interested in comics, but I would encourage everybody to look at everything—you get much more of a broad experience looking at everything.

I know some D.C. artists and designers, and I reached out to them early on, so there’s some really exciting stuff built into the actual weekly newsletters: watercolor-style paintings of animals that have gone extinct, the logo for a sports team that I don’t want to spoil.

We wanted to create some space for everyone that wanted to participate and shape this version of the future, and we want to bring in as many people as who want to contribute, because there’s

so much stuff I didn’t even get to touch on. We’re still figuring this out—we want to have the flexibility to send out some bonus messages, to post things to Twitter and Instagram or Medium— basically, the better it is, the more people we want to show it to. We’re definitely open, because there’s a whole universe out there, and I’d love other people in the spirit of improv to grab onto it and say, “Yes, this exists, but also this.”

I’m also doing an event on Instagram Live on Aug. 17 at 7 p.m., and that’s going to be a lot of fun. Lily from 730DC is going to host and talk to me about the project. It’s going to be an ask-me anything-style event, where I’m also going to be drawing the comic and showing how I actually draw it on paper.

WCP: You say Dispatches from 2120 is neither fully optimistic nor cynical, but how do you feel about the future of our city?

JK: I’m bullish, in the way that people invest in index funds: I agree that the long-run picture is good, but things may get worse before they get better. I can be cynical like any other journalist, but I am optimistic in that I think technology and people who have a vested interest in the future of the city are doing the best they can to make it equitable and prosperous for everyone.

Real Men. Real Hookups.

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washingtoncitypaper.com august 7, 2020 15

ARTS FILM REVIEW

Die Another Day She Dies Tomorrow Directed by Amy Seimetz What would you do if you knew the end was imminent? Not the end for everyone, but you specifically. Would you throw a big party?

Would you shut down emotionally, unable to grasp the enormity of it? Or would you finally do that one thing you’ve been putting off for years? It is to Amy Seimetz’s credit that her new film She Dies Tomorrow mostly sidesteps this hypothetical inquiry. Her film is too strange and unsettling for that. Although it is astute and curious about death in a way that few films achieve, it is never too grim. By jumping from genre to genre, there is genuine uncertainty in how the story will unfold.

Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) believes she will die tomorrow. There is no reason for this, nor any explanation of why she is suddenly so convinced of her imminent demise. Like the absurdist films you might expect from Luis Buñuel, it’s simply her truth. Amy handles it like you might expect: She opens a bottle of wine, withdraws, and listens to Mozart’s “Requiem” on repeat.

Seimetz does not rush over this stretch of the film, and minutes pass without advancing any plot. This is not boring, however, because Sheil’s performance is so strange and Seimetz forces us to consider the state of her hero.

The story kicks into gear when Amy’s friend Jane (Jane Adams) pays her a visit. Jane is worried, and Amy makes no attempt to comfort her. After Jane leaves in a huff, she also comes to believe she will die tomorrow. Amy’s idea is contagious, and Jane spreads it when she attends her sister-in-law’s birthday party. No one handles this realization in quite the same way, and part of the film’s power is how every

ARTS BOOK REVIEW

reaction has an edge of uncomfortable realism.

Instead of following the pandemic-like spread of this idea, She Dies Tomorrow sticks with only a few characters. Seimetz intuits that the worldwide spread is not as arresting or specific as this core group of 30- and 40-somethings. This is where the film exists uneasily between drama and horror: There are lengthy scenes where the characters, downtrodden and hopeless, speak in hushed tones of panic. Then there are hallucinatory sequences of harsh light, a visual representation of how their mental states shift into something more dire.

Unmoored by ordinary behavior and the usual genre trappings, the film suggests these characters somehow have free will. One scene is disturbing, while the next veers to absurdist black comedy. A key moment is an eerie echo of Palm Springs—disturbed people considering oblivion while relaxing beside a pool. You never quite know what you’re getting because these characters, in one moment after another, keep surprising themselves.

Many of the actors only have a handful of lines, but they make the most of them. Sheil has an ethereal presence, like an angel of death, while Jane is relatable and rational (her response to thinking she’ll die is driving herself to the hospital). One subplot involves Tilly (Jennifer Kim) and Brian (TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe), who use their impending doom as an opportunity to air harsh truths about their relationship.

There is an easy temptation to connect every new film in 2020 to what living through this hellish year feels like. A film like this, that is so attuned to genre tropes, earns the comparison.

At one point, Amy mutters to herself “I’m OK, I’m not OK,” a bit like, “She loves me, she loves me not.” That grim truth is 2020 in a nutshell, and whether or not we actually die tomorrow, it is both liberating and frightening to realize we could.

—Alan Zilberman She Dies Tomorrow is available Friday on VOD.

16 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

Feminine Files My Life as a Villainess

By Laura Lippman William Morrow, 288 pages I read much of Baltimore crime novelist Laura Lippman’s first book of essays, My Life as a Villainess, while casually sipping a Natty Boh. This felt appropriate—Lippman is famously attached to Baltimore, her hometown, for one.

But the book really is a beer-on-the-beach read, if you can safely make it to the beach during the pandemic; it’s unchallenging, pleasant, and enjoyable. In the essay collection, Lippman writes about being a working mother, the ethics of hiring a nanny, and choosing happiness over a marriage that seems fine on paper, among other topics. None of the essays are revolutionary, but they’re not trying to be.

There are, though, a few great hits. Her essay about being a 60-something mom of an elementary schooler, pulled from a popular 2019 piece she published in Longreads, is no-nonsense, honest, and infused with a huge dose of heart and vulnerability. Her behind-the-scenes look at watching her husband, David Simon, create and run The Wire, titled “Men Explain The Wire to Me,” is a funny, edifying, and rightfully acerbic piece on watching your spouse ascend to the—literal, according to the MacArthur Foundation— pedestal of genius. Everything in the middle of those two bookending achievements goes down easy, like a cold Natty. Lippman’s hang-ups about class create some hiccups, like when she writes, “My husband and I are solidly middle-class people no matter what our tax return says.” The rest of the book is full of gestures at just how much money Simon brings home and what it makes possible for the couple in a way that’s hardly “middle-class.”

That kind of self-conscious dishonesty about wealth is a shame, because in the book’s best spots, Lippman is refreshingly honest about

herself and her shortcomings as a wife, mother, and friend. Things really get going when she allows herself to be a “villainess” without much throat-clearing—as the essays progress, she loses some of the self-consciousness about personal writing that she worries about in the introduction and becomes unapologetically frank, whether she’s describing herself as attractive without blushing or admitting that she ended her first marriage because she no longer wanted to be married to him, not because her then-husband did anything egregious. When she writes about the fallout of a tweet about her daughter’s school bullies, she doesn’t apologize for the action that sparked the essay—she just follows it into the breach. She holds back on name-dropping some of her extremely famous friends, but lets others slip, even though she wryly notes that she knows how it looks. Lippman has the wisdom to see that some people will see her as a villainess no matter how good she tries to be. Why not have some fun where she can?

What is frustrating, however, are the inconsistencies in the book’s editing. Because many of the essays that appear in My Life as a Villainess were previously published, the timeline jumps around from piece to piece without warning; family members who are referred to in the present tense in one essay are long dead in the next, and the age of Lippman’s daughter keeps changing. (Lippman lightly addresses these inconsistencies in the acknowledgements, where she explains that her daughter’s name is present in an early essay and truncated to an initial later because her philosophy on publicly naming her child changed over time. Still, a dash of retconning—or clearer dates on essays—could have made for a better reading experience.)

For readers of Lippman’s crime fiction, working parents, or anyone who’s tried to balance their creative life with their spouse’s, My Life as a Villainess will be a breezy and fun read. Personally, I’m still waiting on the waylaid Pogues jukebox musical she’s writing with Simon and George Pelecanos: In a footnote, she dryly remarks that it’s entering its 10th year of production.

—Emma Sarappo

CITY LIGHTS City Lights

Black Artists Matter Edit-a-thon At the crossroads of art, justice, and intersectional feminism sits the Black Artists Matter Edita-thon, and you don’t need to go far to contribute.

On Aug. 11, D.C.’s National Museum of Women in the Arts will host its first entirely virtual edita-thon with Art+Feminism, a nonprofit that has facilitated more than a thousand edit-a-thon events since setting out to correct the information gap in 2014. The goal of Art+Feminism edita-thons is to correct and improve the Wikipedia entries for female artists. They hope to alleviate the gender gap in editorial representation on the site and enrich the available resources about underrepresented figures in the art world. This edit-a-thon will focus specifically on updating the Wikipedia pages for Black female artists whose work is displayed in NMWA’s collection. Edit-a-thons are a tangible way to combat the well-established bias in information quality on Wikipedia. Despite being the 13th most visited site in the world and a major information gatekeeper, Wikipedia’s track record with representation is troubling. Only 17 percent of biographical pages on Wikipedia are about women, and less than a quarter of U.S. Wikipedia contributors identify as female, according to a 2011 survey. Art+Feminism points out that when certain groups are excluded from our collective virtual history, “information about people like us gets skewed and misrepresented. The stories get mistold. We lose out on real history.” At this virtual event, you can learn how to edit Wikipedia articles and join the thousands of people working to correct our virtual encyclopedia and the unbalanced narratives it constructs. The event begins at 10 a.m. on Aug. 11. Registration is required and is available at nmwa.org. Free. —Ryley Graham

City Lights

Climate Speakers Series: Kim Cobb In 2016, Kim Cobb, known to some as “the Indiana Jones of climate science,” had been studying coral in the South Pacific for almost a decade. But when she went diving on a research trip that year, she found that most of the reef had been decimated. Why? Warming oceans cause thermal stress to the ecosystem that can lead to coral bleaching and infectious disease. The more the earth heats up, the more danger underwater environments are put in.

She later called that trip a “bellwether event”

that inspired her to focus her energy not just on documenting and researching the effects of climate change, but on mitigating its effects on the planet’s ecosystems. On Aug. 8, the Georgia Tech climate scientist will host a webinar about the fate of the planet, presented by the D.C. chapter of the environmental advocacy group Citizens’ Climate Lobby. The event begins at 1 p.m. on Aug. 8. Registration is available at eventbrite.com. Free.

—Kaila Philo

City Lights

Writing Past the False Dichotomy Is a dream a real experience? And does experiencing something make it real? Is a story told and retold across generations “true,” even if it evolves over time? Furthermore, how much of our history actually ... isn’t? Depending on where and when you cross it, the line between truth and untruth can be fuzzy or fine, so it’s a bit limiting when writing workshops classify fiction and nonfiction as perfectly separate genres. Enter the ongoing Writing Past the False Dichotomy workshop series from Rhizome DC, where authors are encouraged to break through the barriers of reality to write “true fiction, invented nonfiction, and experimental whateverings.” Journalism this is not. If the truth gets in the way of where your writing is taking you, blow it up. Conversely, if you need to rip pages from the headlines and history books (or even from the book of your own life, if you’re up to it), so be it. Make fiction from a collage of facts or pull a War of the Worlds and invent your own “true story.” The workshop will be taught

by Anna Josephson, an area novelist and essayist. Rhizome DC, a Takoma-based nonprofit community arts space, has been offering a variety of online events since the start of quarantine, including “Dream Cafes” and workshops on DJing and puppetry. The event begins at 10 a.m. on Aug. 9. Registration is available at withfriends.co. $5–$15.

—Will Lennon

City Lights

Hip-Hop Beginner Dance They say to dance like nobody’s watching, but it sure would be nice if you knew a proper move or two. Fortunately, Natasha Hawkins, a longtime D.C. dancer, knows more than a handful. She has served as the director of DCypher Dance, been a dancer with the Life, Rhythm, Move Project, and performed on stages at the White House, the Kennedy Center, and the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Now, on behalf of Element Urban Arts Collective, she is bringing her expertise and choreography to your living room. In a one-hour lesson hosted by nonprofit Artomatic, Hawkins will focus on choreography, technique, and cultural perspective in hip-hop dance.

Although the class is intended for beginners, it promises to be a high-energy way to dive into the movement. Dance technique will start with old-school, groove-heavy motions and progress to the new-school, dynamic energy. Hawkins will also help participants work on coordination, energy, musicality, and style. By the end of the hour, you’ll be sweaty, energized, and ready to bust out

some new dance moves. The event begins at 3 p.m. on Aug. 9. Registration is available at eventbrite.com. Free.

—Sarah Smith

City Lights

We Fought The Big One with Katie Alice Greer We Fought the Big One is D.C.’s “longest running monthly underground music listening party,” and they’re not about to let a pandemic break a streak that’s been going since 2004.

WFTBO showcases post-punk and DIY music at Marx Cafe on the first Friday of the month— or at least they used to. In quarantine times, they do it via livestream. This Friday, they’ll bookend a performance from Katie Alice Greer with DJ sets from Rick Taylor, inspired by iconic British disc jockey John Peel. Greer formerly played with Priests, a D.C.-based group that started out as a pretty good punk band and evolved into a savage original. With albums like Nothing Feels Natural and The Seduction of Kansas, Priests evaded every label ever used to describe them, lapsing fluidly into spoken word poetry and weird, minimalist disco, all while remaining compulsively listenable. On the WFTBO stream, Greer will play a mix of covers and songs she’s considering for her new solo album. Supposedly, Greer’s new music will be a departure from her work with Priests, but judging by songs recently posted on her Bandcamp page, it will be equally unpredictable. The event begins at 10 p.m. on Aug. 7 on twitch.tv. Free.

—Will Lennon

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DIVERSIONS SAVAGE LOVE

Need some love advice?

Curious about kinks?

Visit the City Paper website for more Savage Love. washingtoncitypaper.com/ columns

I’m a gay guy who’s involved with a guy I met a few months before COVID-19 took off. He’s a great guy—smart, funny, hot, healthy, and easy to be around. It started as a hookup but we have chemistry on several levels and, without either of us having to say it, we started seeing each other regularly. We both live alone and decided to be exclusive due to the pandemic. I honestly don’t know what we’re doing here. It’s some combination of friends, fuck buddies, and married couple all at the same time.

I wanted to keep a good thing going but he just threw me a curve ball that I need help figuring out how to handle. Out of the blue he told me he held back telling me about his foot fetish. He says he’s had very bad experiences with guys who weren’t into it. He’s been keeping it to himself and looking at stuff online. I’m pretty vanilla and not into it, but I know kinks are a thing for a lot of guys and I’m willing to help out a good guy. I’m a longtime reader of yours, Dan, and being GGG is important to me. So I asked him to tell me what that means and what he wants to do. He wants to massage, wash, and kiss my feet, and suck my toes. OK, that’s not hot to me, but it’s probably doable once in a while. He thankfully doesn’t need me to do anything with his feet.

But there was more. I can’t believe I’m writing this: He asked if I would let him paint my toenails sometimes! WTF? He could barely say it and looked kind of sick after he did.

We’re both conventional cis men. Neither of us are into fem stuff. He claimed it’s not about making me femme. He says it’s just a hot thing for him. I know there’s no explanation for why people have kinks, but do you have any ideas what this is about? I didn’t respond at all and we haven’t talked about it since. I’m not proud of that. I’m freaked out by this and not sure what to make of it. I don’t want to ask him directly if this is the price of admission because that seems too big a price to pay and I really don’t want it to be his price.

—Freaked Out Over Terrific Person’s Erotic Revelation Vibe From your panicked response, FOOTPERV, you’d think this poor guy wants to cut your toes off and masturbate while you bleed out.

Dude. He just wants to paint your toenails—as prices go, that’s a very small price to pay for smart, funny, and hot.

Yeah, yeah: You’re both conventionally cis and presumably conventionally masculine.

Since we’ll never know what caused him to have this particular kink—kinks really are mysteries—let’s just run with that: He thinks this is hot, or his dick thinks this is hot, because guys like you aren’t supposed to have painted toenails and guys like him aren’t supposed to paint toenails, FOOTPERV, and this small transgression against gender norms makes his dick hard because it does. While it’s not always the case with all kinks, in this instance, the most obvious explanation is the likeliest explanation. Moving on …

You say he’s a great guy, you say you enjoy being with him, and you say you’re a longtime reader. So you had to know that I was gonna

18 august 7, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com

say this: Buy some fucking nail polish already, leave it on the nightstand where he can see it, and let him paint your fucking toenails.

And if you really hate it, FOOTPERV, if it freaks you out to have polished toenails, or if your masculinity is really so fragile it shatters under the weight of toenail polish, then you don’t have to do it again. But I also gotta say, as off-the-wall sexual requests go, this is a small ask. If you were claustrophobic and your boyfriend wanted to mummify you, FOOTPERV, or if he wanted to use you as a urinal and you weren’t into piss, I would totally give you a pass. Some sexual requests are big asks and the third “G” in GGG (“good,

“And if you really hate it, FOOTPERV, if it freaks you out to have polished toenails, or if your masculinity is really so fragile it shatters under the weight of toenail polish, then you don’t have to do it again.” giving, and game”) has always been qualified: “game for anything—within reason.” Some sexual requests are huge asks, some prices of admission are too steep, and some desires can only be accommodated by people who share them. But this request, what your COVID-19 spouse wants to do to you, is a small ask and a low price, FOOTPERV, in no way comparable to being turned into a mummy or used as a urinal. So smoke a little pot, put your feet in the nice man’s lap, and try to take pleasure in the pleasure you’re giving.

If I sound a little impatient, FOOTPERV, I apologize. We live in a deeply sex- and kinknegative culture, and our first reaction when a partner discloses a kink is often a knee-jerk negative reaction to the idea of kinks at all.

In the moment, we can fail to distinguish

between the big ask/steep price and the small ask/low price. And I hope you can see the compliment this great, smart, funny, hot guy was paying you when he asked. He felt safe enough to share something with you that other guys have judged and shamed him for.

Take the compliment, buy the nail polish, pay the price.

—Dan Savage I am a 37-year-old female who, almost three years ago, got out of a six-year toxic, violent relationship with a man I believe I loved. After I left him for good, my life started to improve in so many ways. However, it seems that my once very healthy sexual desires have died. Ever since we broke up I haven’t felt any sexual needs or attraction towards anybody. I honestly think there’s something wrong with me. I can’t even picture myself being intimate again. A year ago, I went out on a couple of dates with a man younger than me. He was cute and very interested in me, but I just didn’t feel the connection.

I really don’t know what to make of this situation. Any advice is profoundly appreciated.

—Just Another Gal Could it be a coincidence? Besides ridding yourself of a toxic and abusive ex—and that’s harder than people who haven’t been in an abusive relationship often realize, and I’m so glad you got away from him—did something else happen three years ago that could’ve tanked your libido, JAG? Did you go on meds at the time for depression or anxiety? Could an undiagnosed medical condition that came on at roughly the same time create a libidotanking hormonal imbalance? Did you go on a new form of birth control in anticipation of the sex you’d soon be having with other, better, nicer, hotter, kinder men?

If nothing else is going on, if you aren’t on meds for depression or anxiety, if you’ve had your hormone levels checked and they’re normal, if a new form of birth control isn’t cratering your libido, then the most obvious and likeliest answer is probably the correct one: Three years after getting out of an abusive relationship, JAG, you’re still reeling from the trauma. And the best advice is also the obvious advice: Find a sex-positive therapist or counselor who can help you work through your trauma and reclaim your sexuality.

Even if you were to get your hormone levels checked or adjust your psych meds or switch to a new birth control method, I would still recommend seeing a counselor or therapist.

And even if the thought of being intimate with others causes you stress and makes you anxious, JAG, you can still explore solo sex.

You don’t have to wait for the right hot young man to come along in order to reconnect with your sexuality. You can read or write some erotica, you can splurge on an expensive sex toy (have you seen the new clit-sucking vibrators?), you can watch or create porn. Really enjoying yourself may be the first step toward enjoying others again.

—DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net

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