Outdoor movies are the neighborhood rage

I see a lot of groups organizing "screen on the green" type events at the neighborhood scale, when it was not too long ago that such events were limited to major parks.

It turns out that inflatable screens are easily rented, making projection a relatively simple process compared to 10 years ago, when you needed sophisticated projection systems and the only screens available were hard, fixed, big objects difficult to transport.

The Manor Park neighborhood association screened Casablanca last Sunday (the rain date, it had been originally scheduled for Thursday night), starting out with cartoons for kids.  It was pretty fun.

It was at Fort Slocum, an NPS installation in our neighborhood that mostly goes unused, except for some dog walkers, and occasional users of the picnic shelter.

The Park People park friends support organization in Toronto has produced a guide to organizing such events.

-- How-to Host a Movie in the Park

Seattle Neighbor Appreciation Day

was yesterday.  From the Seattle Neighbor Appreciation Day webpage:

Saturday, February 9, 2013, marks Seattle's 19th annual celebration of Neighbor Appreciation Day. This is the day when we reach out, create new bonds, and express thanks to those who live or work around us.

The celebration began in 1995 when Phinney Ridge activist Judith Wood suggested that the City designate "a special day to celebrate the goodness in those around us and to reach out and strengthen our bonds to each other." Mayor Norm Rice proclaimed the Saturday before Valentine's Day as Neighbor Appreciation Day. The observance has grown every year since.

For example,block parties, potlucks and work parties are being hosted by community centers, city parks, and fire stations--so the Seattle Fire Department had open houses at every one of their stations.  (Pictured: Seattle Fire Station No. 38, Ballard.  Wikipedia photo.)

A webpage has a list of potential ideas for community organizing and other activities.

Dupont Circle House Tour Sunday October 16, Noon - 5 PM

Image: Woman's National Democratic Club, from Wikipedia.

From email:

This year’s Dupont Circle Citizens’ Association House Tour will be held on Sunday, October 16, from 12pm to 5 pm. The Tour follows a meandering route through the areas just east and north of Dupont Circle, and provides access to over a dozen wonderful sites, including many turn-of-the-century town homes, a 2-story condominium, and visits inside the International Student House and the Woman’s National Democratic Club.

In addition to the wonderful homes, the Dupont Circle 2011 House Tour also includes something special – musical performers at many of our sites. A variety of volunteers have generously agreed to showcase their music, creating a wonderfully cultured ambiance as you tour the homes. A sample of the performers you will hear includes classical flutists, contemporary piano soloist, jazz trio, and classical string quartet.

The House Tour is the major fund-raising event of the year for the Dupont Circle Citizens’ Association, with proceeds going toward neighborhood activities and charitable contributions to benefit the entire Dupont Circle community, including Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets, Clean Teams for Dupont Circle Park, Ross Elementary School, Charlie’s Place and Whitman Walker Clinic, Art-on Call, and the 17th Street Arts Festival. So… don your walking shoes and experience this year’s Tour as it cuts a swath through 12 square blocks of Dupont Circle!

Tickets cost $30 in advance, $35 on the day of Tour, and provide admission to all sites and afternoon Tea. The Tea is served this year at the Whittemore House, 1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, home of the Woman’s National Democratic Club, from 2:00 – 5:00 pm.
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The Dupont Circle Citizens Association (DCCA) was established in 1922, and has presented the House Tour every year since 1968. Members of the DCCA work together in an all-volunteer nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the interests of the residents of Dupont Circle. First settled 125 years ago, Dupont Circle is an in-town, urban neighborhood, which contains major residential areas, foreign embassies, renowned museums, and 14,000 of the friendliest and most interesting people in Washington.

Another temporary urbanism project... in Mt. Rainier, Maryland

I forgot to include this as part of the previous entry, so it gets its own. I like the idea of doing a district, rather than one building.

From the Neighborhood Design Center:

Mount Rainier Better Block Project April 9, 12noon - 6pm Join us, and hundreds of community members and partners, as we turn a half-vacant commercial block in Mount Rainier into a vibrant "Main Street" with outdoor cafes, performers, local vendors, and art installations. The goal of the project is to show the economic potential of 34th Street while energizing the community. The event is inspired by the Better Block Project in Oak Cliff, Texas. We are looking for volunteers, vendors, artists, and performers for the event. For more information visit our Events page, Better Block Facebook page, or contact John Flippo at 301-779-6010.

- Better Block Project: A Living Charrette

- "How to Build A Better Block"

- Oak Cliff (Dallas) Art Crawl

- "Next up for Better Block in TX: A plaza" from Cooltown Studios

Other fellow traveler improvement initiatives are

- Parking Day initiated by San Francisco's Re:bar Collective
- City Repair(Portland)
- City Repair Seattle

Again, a big factor in reanimating space has to do with the cost of the space--it's all about the rents and what you can do and what you can't. In DC, commercial rents are so high even in low-in-demand areas that the ability to innovate at the level of a neighborhood commercial district is often crippled.

But there are still ways to be creative.

Parking Day in St. Louis, 2008. Original source unknown.

Real estate coverage of trails access (as desirable amenities)

Geralyn Adams and Norman Dyson ride on Indian Head's Rail Trail. Photo Credit: Ann Cameron Siegal for The Washington Post.

The only meeting where I got absolutely beat down, when I was doing the Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan, was over plans to put a trail in a particular park just east of Towson. I had a bit of hubris about my ability to deal with opposition going into the meeting and I got schooled, big time.

In my observation, they were against the trail not just because they had spent so much time fixing up the park, but because of "misuse" by mountain bikers in the adjacent Loch Raven Reservoir, and they expected that providing multi-use trail access would lead to all kinds of problems.

I countered that with the right design and management (although at this time Baltimore County doesn't have park rangers) you can design out the potential for problems. I even suggested that the State (Gunpowder Falls State Park + the NCR Trail), Baltimore City (which owns Loch Raven Reservoir), and the County (Cromwell Valley Park) join together and do a joint management plan for the parks, which abut each other...

And I also mentioned the fact that after trails are opened they experience high usage and support, that this was the case for the North Central Trail which goes from Ashland Mill Road in Cockeysville up to the Pennsylvania state border (and continues to York) as well as with trails in the Catonsville area ("Input sought on safer bicycle, walking paths in western county" from the Catonsville Times), not to mention Anne Arundel County's experience with the Baltimore & Annapolis Trail.

I still got my clock cleaned.

But I am struck today, reading the Post real estate section, which today features Indian Head, Prince George's County, in the "Where We Live" column on neighborhoods, how many of the recent articles in this feature have specifically mentioned multiuse trails. Today's article has a nice photo of people riding on the Indian Head Rail Trail (shown above).

-- "Indian Head, Md., free of sprawl - for better and worse"

-- "Where We Live: Dempsey, cottage charm in Old Town Alexandria" (1/21/2011)

-- "Old Catonsville: Lovably eccentric" (12/10/2010)

-- "Where We Live: Arlington's Parkway neighborhood, tiny and tucked away" (10/29/2010)

-- "The Arlington Ridge neighborhood: Walking distance to everything" (10/15/2010)

Funeral service for Mrs. Loree Murray of the H Street Neighborhood

Services for Mrs. Loree Murray will be on Friday April 3rd at Pilgrim Baptist Church, 7th and I Streets NE, Washington, DC. Viewing is from 9-10 am. And the service follows, starting at 10 am. She died on March 27, 2009, at the age of 89.

Former Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, Mrs. Loree Murray, and Anise Jenkins, at a Free DC (DC Statehood) event. Photo by Carol Moore.

Mrs. Murray was a stalwart stabilizer of the neighborhood for many many decades. I am not sure how long the family has lived in the H Street neighborhood, certainly since World War II, and they have run businesses and owned property on H Street over the years. I don't know all the children and grandchildren, but many are particularly accomplished (one daughter is a PhD and prolific author) and the family has been a strong supporter of the neighborhood schools over the many decades they have lived in the H Street neighborhood.

The neighborhood association Near Northeast Citizens Against Crime and Drugs was founded in response to the crime and drug epidemic sparked by disinvestment and residential outmigration, which came to a head with the "crack" epidemic in the mid-1980s and the particular success of the Rayful Edmond organization (based in the neighborhood and in the Trinidad neighborhood) in marketing and selling drugs in the area of Orleans Place NE (a one block one way street between L and M and 6th and 7th Streets) around the corner from the Murray residence.

She and others organized many demonstrations, built relationships with the police (part of the problem at the time was the area where the Edmond Organization was active was right on the border of the First and Fifth Police Districts, splitting resources between the areas, rather than focusing most directly on the resultant problems), to right the direction the neighborhood was going.

(In 2006, at the age of 85, Mrs. Murray was one of the graduates of that year's Senior Police Academy class, having received further training in neighborhood policing issues.)

She and others helped initiate the creation of the H Street Community Development Corporation, even if many of us feel that in later years that organization strayed from what we might have considered a more ideal direction.

As a result of her involvement in the Near Northeast Citizens, the Murray household was firebombed at least once...

Mrs. Murray and I didn't agree on everything. Still bristling and the thought of being turned away from the then segregated Kavakos Club at 8th and H Streets NE in 1942, she didn't care that the H Street Community Development Corporation demolished what was otherwise a set of historic buildings, one of which was the oldest building on the corridor, dating to 1872. The memory of racism then was still strong, 60 years later.

Mrs. Murray was very supportive of my and other people's involvement in working to improve the neighborhood. Near Northeast Citizens supported successful grant proposals for a public art project in 2001 (which never got built because of wacked ANC opposition at the time) at 8th and K Streets NE and for the first round of historic preservation survey in the neighborhood in 2001 and 2002, the creation of the H Street Main Street program in 2002, and the desgination of the Uline Arena as a historic landmark a few years later.

Mrs. Murray was a longtime proponent of DC Statehood and active in many other pro-city initiatives.

She will be missed.

And I was proud to walk in her footsteps.

Criminal bicyclists

(yeah, sure, "Law and Order" has episodes where the perpetrator rides a bicycle but...) I went to a community meeting in 2000 or 2001 about the Metropolitan Branch Trail, and a resident made a comment about how the trail would bring crime to the adjoining neighborhood.

I scoffed. But over the years, I've come to realize that this is about "the other." Anyone who is potentially different than you is to be feared.

This makes it difficult to change things that need to be changed, and to bring people together.

Chuck sends us a link to a Boston Globe article, "Suburban peace vs. pedal power: Sudbury group sounds alarm over proposed bike trail," about the planning for a bicycle trail. From the article:

Looking out at a lushly wooded area beyond a stone wall on her 100-acre estate, Carole Wolfe's face darkened. There, in the distance, she said, nervously pointing a finger, stretches a former rail corridor that, if some have their way, could bring trouble upon this town where her family's roots date to Colonial times. "Instead of solitude," Wolfe said, "you'd be having people."

Wolfe is among a band of vocal Sudbury residents raising the alarm against a proposed bike trail along a pathway where trains once chugged.

Opponents of the "rail trail" say the path would draw hundreds of thousands of bicyclists who would bring with them noise and other disruptions into what is now a pristine landscape. Hordes of bikers, walkers, and rollerbladers would scare away wildlife, they say, and invite crime from trespassing to vandalism and assault. ...

The Sudbury trail would be a segment of the proposed 25-mile Bruce Freeman trail beginning at the Lowell-Chelmsford line and winding to Framingham. With gas prices escalating and alternative transportation increasingly popular, bike trail supporters say their decades-long push for the trail is now a no-brainer. Connecting to major mass transit hubs, such as the West Concord commuter rail terminal, it would provide a good alternative to driving, they argue.

"The public benefit far outweighs any other concerns," said Tom Michelman, president of Friends of the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, honoring the late longtime state representative from Chelmsford.

Sudbury remains a holdout. The wealthy hamlet of stately Colonials and rolling farmland, where change comes slowly, could obstruct plans for a continuous path. Opponents of the rail trail in Sudbury - who created Sudbury Citizens for Responsible Land Stewardship to fight the plan - say they are prepared for a lengthy battle. Jim Nigrelli, president of Sudbury Citizens, called the rail-trail advocates "strong-minded"; other opponents are more blunt. "It's like a cult," Maurer said. ...

Already, the fight has been marked by aggressive maneuvers. Maurer said she has covertly monitored e-mail communications among the trail's supporters, hoping to gain a tactical advantage. Nigrelli said that a supporter of the trail accused his group of stealing supporters' signs from town center. ...

Some opponents have gone so far as to make unusual threats. If the trail is built, some said, they will sell their land to developers who want to build dense clusters of affordable units.

This is the kind of behavior that makes me not think well of people. And this reflects something you see sometimes, about "neighboritizing" public spaces that could be open to people more broadly. It's a different form of segregation.

Interestingly, contrast the Globe story above with the Globe's "Shifting Gears" column, and the story "Wheels of good fortune: Popular path is burnished with new bike racks and rest area, and backers have plans for more trails." From the article:

What makes the Minuteman unique, Johnson reminded me as we lounged on the Lexington town green, is the way it links so many sites and public lands. Walkers and bikers can stop off at playing fields and city parks, from the Arlington Reservoir (swimming permitted) to the woods and wetlands of the 120-acre Alewife Brook Reservation and the 183-acre Great Meadows in East Lexington. The historic Old Schwamb Mill in Arlington is worth a pit stop (also the site of new bike racks).

The 11-mile Minuteman bicycle trail has 2 million users annually. There is a blog focused on the trail, "Minuteman Bikeway Rail Trail," and quarterly trail user meetings. The Clear the Trail initiative is working to get communities to remove snow from the trail in the winter. The town of Arlington did so last year.

New banners posted at the Arlington entrance to the Minuteman bikeway trail in Massachusetts. Image from the website.

A visitor from Ohio offers a morning greeting to Providence passersby

“I’m from North Carolina, where we say hi to people,” explains Thad Davis, who set out to spread good cheer by greeting people yesterday morning in Providence. Providence Journal photo / Andrew Dickerman

Article from the Providence Journal.