🚀 go-pugleaf

Now this is just really over-the-top.
You guys laugh so nervously at influxions of immigrants
you would think that this was Iceland or something.

Lemme tell you something about Takoma Park "going to hell"
for instance.

First of all, it looks like the GALA Hispanic theater
is moving here -- and the irony is that they'd be better off
downtown, since alone among ethnic groups, Hispanics
are one group you'd almost never see in downtown Takoma Park.

GALA thinks Takoma Park is too suburban?
Why not move GALA to Langley Park or Hillandale,
which is where they'd be drawing their Spanish speaking
audience members from.

That might draw the problems of Hispanics being
forced OUT of Mid-Town DC into sharp relief!

But anyway, back to my story. The place I'm working now
is amidst a former Civil War Fort that became a freedmen's
village overlooking Sligo Creek.

On one side, where it is forested, was an amusement park
at the end of the trolley line coming out of DC.

When the amusement park was taken out, the newly white
residents dug a giant ditch between them and the freedmen's village
(Colby Ave) to protect the value of their new 30's/40's era
subdivision.

The forested ditch and adjacent hillsides became a dirt road
clustered with elaborate redwood A-frames, geodesic domes,
and telephone pole houses built in the 60's and 70's by white
"suburban pioneers". (It's still an unmarked dirt road.)

On the other end of the block, another cul-de-sac was lopped
off for well-manicured 50's era parkside dwellings.
Between the creekside houses was built a big low-income
apartment complex cutting Colby Ave. off from Sligo Creek
and its more expensive homes.

Now here's the funny thing - which side of the "tracks"
or in this case the ditch - is being upscaled, and which is
becoming "overrun" with immigrants?

The mediocre 30's era subdivision with its people-less streets
has remained "stable" ever since, to the point where you'd
never know that it was being "emptied out" by those very white people
who, unlike the incoming new asian immigrants and middle class
black families, desire mainly to live among their own kind.

The well-manicured garden suburbs on the other side of
Colby Ave. overlooking Sligo creek have skyrocketed in value,
and the most expensive new homes are being built right
in the shadow of the apartment complex where footsoldiers
of you guy's "Hispanic Invasion" are still forced to hang their
clotheslines.

The apartment complex, being section 8 / rent controlled, was
an anomalous crime center and drug market on a Sligo Creek
cul-de-sac, culminating in an execution style killing on Colby Ave,
until someone bought the place and spent thousands of hours
*personally* fixing it up. It being still presumably rent controlled,
but oddly enough, doing much better now. Did the "poor folks"
leave? Meanwhile, the remaining section 8 apartments, owned by
someone who lives in Morocco, await their fate at the tender mercies
of the local government, whose new motto for successful rent
control is condo conversion when maintenance gets too bad.

Colby Ave. has had its own "crew" for some time now.
They're quite well known folks on this two-block long cul de-sac.
But these guys aren't kids any more. Their parents are getting on
in years... and as a result of being one of the few old-line
segregated blocks in Takoma Park, the old double-wides,
US Army houses, and shotguns on the block are basically,
well, *on the block* for the highest bidder.

Which may mean lesbians and mixed race families for the most part now,
but it's probably a matter of time before white folks re-segregate
the Sligo Creek area and the only "diversity" in the east end of
Takoma Park is back in the drearier suburban side streets
hard against  New Hampshire and East West Highway.

-BER

Chris Wells wrote:

> Tiny Human Ferret wrote:
> >
> > Down-county, especially some parts of Silver Spring, has always been pretty
> > "iffy" for the last decade or more. Silver Spring's downtown is damned scary
> > at night. It's like there _should_ be people around... but there aren't.
>
> Montgomery-
>
> Adelphi:MCW/MCB/HI
> Langley Park:WT/HI/HE/MCB (area shot to hell)
> Takoma Park:WT/BT/MCW/PSC/MCB/NYMBY (going to hell & they don't know it)