NORTH CLEVELAND PARK: See, It Does Exist

DCIST CONTINUES TO REVEL in its revisionist history by poking fun at those who insist that there is indeed a North Cleveland Park neighborhood in Upper Northwest. The term Van Ness didn't really take root until the Red Line went through in the late 1970s. This is a point that I've made in DCist comments on the original offending post.

Denying that there's a North Cleveland Park is like saying that Burleith or Glover Park is Georgetown. Sure, I might be going overboard by calling the area of Adams Morgan north of Columbia Road as "Lanier Heights" but for someone to tell me that Lanier Heights doesn't exist is just foolish.

It's OK to refer to the area immediately adjacent to the Van Ness-UDC Metrorail station as "Van Ness," but to refer to Politics and Prose as a "Van Ness bookstore" is not correct. A bookstore "near Van Ness" is, however, acceptable.

GRAND RAPIDS, Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave

For my introduction on my Grand Rapids series, click here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- I’m not certain how strong the Grand Rapids real estate market is, but all I know is that it’s a buyers market. From historic homes to condos, there’s something here that should please you. And yes, even prime views of the downtown skyline including the gravesite of former President Gerald R. Ford could be yours.

I seem to remember that during an interview with Larry King around the time of the Reagan funeral, the now 93-year-old Ford said that he and wife Betty would be buried on the grounds of his presidential museum, which lies just to the right of the parking lot across the street from the construction site seen in the photo below. Bridgewater Place, built in the 1990s, was originally designed with two towers in mind. Now, construction has started on the second part of the riverfront complex called River House and it’ll be condos … with unit layouts with local names like Pere Marquette, Manistee, Rouge and Grand.

They’ll offer great views of downtown, but boast the best vista of the eventual resting place of the 38th president. Let’s see if that makes it into the marketing materials, which currently trumpet the slogan: “Make River House your home and join the privileged few to own the view” …

Depending on which real estate resource you look at, River House units will start somewhere between $185,000 and $215,000. But if you’re looking for that downtown lifestyle, there are plenty of condos either ready for move-in or will be delivered in the coming year or two.

There’s Icon on Bond, a proposed 20-story condo that’s currently under construction as 400 units in a nine-story residential building. Since it’s in a “Renaissance Zone,” it’s “Tax-Free Living” in a building that looks like could be built somewhere in the heart of Arlington. Icon is being brought to Grand Rapids by the local father-son development team of Moch International LLC. Coming from Washington, where developers are cooling to or backing away from Icon on Bond-like buildings, it makes me somewhat uncomfortable that Grand Rapids is proceeding with such new construction when the state’s economic base is so destabilized.

Grand Rapids has been all a buzz about the massive "River Grand" development (or as some still call it, the “Mystery Development”) south of downtown, a mixed-used retail/residential/entertainment complex that’s supposed to generate 10,000 new jobs. But if all those service sector jobs are purely to serve the big box or anchor entertainment at the site, then the vast majority of those workers aren't going to be itching to buy downtown condos, they're more likely to be renting apartments in Walker or Grandville.

Granted, I haven’t poured through labor statistics, it’s all just a gut feeling. And an acquaintance of mine who analyzes real estate and economic development has been somewhat wary of the overall benefit and success of the “Mystery Development” but we'll see how it all shakes out. The site proposed ... within walking distance of downtown and the redeveloped Heartside district all with great freeway access ... is a golden opportunity for something. Whether it's a House of Blues, as was one rumor I heard (there are countless others), who knows ... It does seem rather suspicious that secretive developer Duane Faust has taken such a keen interest in Grand Rapids of all places and went to great lengths to mask his involvement in the Mystery Development.

What about what’s in town that doesn't require new construction? Want a one-bedroom condo in a renovated furniture factory for under $100,000? There are plenty of old furniture and other factories that have been renovated. In D.C., you have to have P.N. Hoffman come in and build a brand new fake warehouse to give salivating buyers that “urban” experience, a la Adams Station … buyers who will pay $600,000 and up and up for the privilege. Here, there’s plenty of building stock ready for conversion.

In all of this, it’s good to remember that Grand Rapids is a totally different market and the city has been pretty wise over the past decade in what and where it allows development to go in. Considering that many other cities that have gone through speculative real estate frenzies recently are in for some sobering years ahead … (Las Vegas and Miami come immediately to mind) … Grand Rapids may be in fine shape. Yet in Grand Rapids, all the signs for “$0 down” I’ve been seeing seems to signal that many sellers are desperate for buyers.

But after living on the East Coast amid high rent and property values that are generally out of reach of young professionals, the cheap, cheap rent, cheap real estate and the low cost of living in Grand Rapids are assets that are very enticing. Of course, Grand Rapids would need a few additional assets to draw me back. Like I’ve said, every time I come back, there is more and more to like, but yet …

Earlier in this series ...
Part I: Two Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim
Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead

The rest of the series, to be posted in coming days ...
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

GRAND RAPIDS, Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead

For my introduction on my Grand Rapids series, click here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- My friend’s memorial service wasn’t the only death-related ceremony I attended on Sunday. At noon was the annual Latvian cemetery blessing, where local Latvians gather to remember loved ones and the graves of the cemetery’s permanent residents are blessed by Lutheran clergy.

You ask: Latvian? Yes, I’m half Latvian … on my mother’s side. My father side of the family has roots, as I have mentioned, in the District of Columbia, and through the geopolitical realities of World War II, I would eventually emerge in Grand Rapids. Since there are only a few million Latvians in the world, it’s an interesting ethnicity to be tied to, though I can only say that I’m a casual observer of Latvian culture than one who spends time being Latvian, what ever that might be. (Being fluent in the language might help.)


When you think of celebrations at a cemetery, don’t picture the Latvians in some sort of New Orleans-esque funerary parade. It’s actually quite a beautiful ceremony without the dark, somber overtones that are associated with the funerary traditions of some cultures. All of the families with loved ones buried in the Latvian section of Woodlawn Cemetery are expected to return the first Sunday each August and flood the gravesites with floral displays. While there are certainly families who don’t go to the cemetery at all, there are others, who visit the graves of their loved ones frequently, making sure that the graves are looking their best, with new flowers coming in on a regular basis. Having the best floral display has sparked muted competition between certain families in the past. (This year, white gladiolas were the stand-out winners.)

On Sunday, there were about 100 people gathered in front of the large Latvian monument on a knoll on the cemetery’s edge. The weather was nice and not too hot, and unlike a slightly amusing episode from three years ago, the sprinklers did not automatically come on during the middle of the ceremony. (I have never seen a group of octogenarians in their Sunday best move so quickly …)

While the cemetery blessing is a beautiful, touching ceremony –- especially if you understand the Latvian language -- it is also a very sad gathering, and not just because it deals with loved ones who are no longer with us. Year after year, as the Latvian-born participants age and the number of graves increases, the number of American-born descendants at the blessing seems to decrease. I guess that is inevitable in any immigrant population as the first generation dies off and the more Americanized second and third generation loses interest in their heritage. But it is nonetheless sad.

Latvians are well known for their musical heritage -- during the annual song festival outside Riga, where thousands of people get on the national festival stage to sing centuries-old folk tunes and other songs important to the nation -– and on Sunday, it was somewhat uncomfortable listening to the aging Latvians sing … knowing that in a generation or so, the singing is likely to stop all together at Woodlawn. The prospect of the younger generations returning to the cemetery year after year to tend to the graves is not very good.

In the meantime, those who do put a lot of stock in their Latvian identity are good stewards of the cemetery. My grandfather, for instance, is a regular at cemetery, keeping careful watch over the graves of my grandmother, who died in 2001, and my uncle, who died in 1998. We tease him about his new cemetery girlfriends, one who will give him Latvian newspapers and bake him pirags (a type of Latvian pastry usually filled with bacon, fat and onions). It’s a strange widows and widowers club, something that you wouldn’t see at your normal cemetery.

My mother is sending me home with a bottle of Riga Black Balsams, a Latvian liquor that most people tend to hate, but I actually like. To explain what this is, I will leave it to Victor Ozols, who wrote a great post about the stuff on Gridskipper earlier this year.

Riga Black Balsam is a strong, dark, scary Latvian booze made from a centuries-old secret recipe of things you can find in the forest. It has the consistency of crude oil and, to the untrained tongue, the bitter flavor of death, but Black Balsam is an acquired taste that pays off big.

If anyone wants to join me in taste testing, let me know. We’ll drink in the honor of all the dead Latvians in the world … saying “Prieka” of course.

Earlier in this series ...
Part I: Two Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim

The rest of the series, to be posted in coming days ...
Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

GRAND RAPIDS, Part I: Three Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim

For my introduction on my Grand Rapids series, click here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- I thought that when I left the District, I was leaving the troubles of the crime emergency behind me. But yet, juvenile crime somehow followed me here. According to Wednesday's Grand Rapids Press, the city recorded its 16th homicide -- not quite up to D.C. levels ... but it’s a large number nonetheless. Many of the shootings have been happening on or near Wealthy Street SE, which anchors a zone of a gentrification of sorts going from the north and inching slowly south. This corridor between historic Heritage Hill and Eastown has seen a lot of investment, with new businesses, a restored Wealthy Theatre, coffee shops, a great new bakery, antique and design stores and the like. But yet, the crime remains.

On Tuesday, I was driving south on Fuller Avenue SE just south of Wealthy Street at Bemis Street when a little boy -- no older than six or seven -- threw a bright green water balloon into the open passenger window and it exploded all over me, all over my camera and my iPod. The cup holders filled with a half inch of water. I was pissed, but fortunately nothing was seriously damaged. While it was just a child’s summertime mischievous prank, what really angered me is that the child was in a group of other children with an adult supervisor -- perhaps a mother in her twenties -- who seemed to not care that drivers passing through on busy Fuller Avenue were getting pelted, potentially causing a car crash.

So if you find yourself in Grand Rapids, beware of the streets south of Wealthy Street. The locals may either shoot you or lob a water balloon at you when you least suspect it. (Speaking of snipers targeting cars … police are also searching for a person who has been shooting up cars on the South Beltline near Byron Center with a be-be gun …)

The rest of the series, to be posted in coming days ...

Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead
Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

GRAND RAPIDS: Dispatches From West Michigan

There's me, rearranging the various pieces of the donor wall at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., last week Friday. My mom put me to work on her creation, shifting different pieces of the mosaiced grid around.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- As a professional blogger, it’s awfully strange not to blog. But I’m on vacation. Sort of … I was chatting online with Kyle Gustafson of Information Leafblower on Monday who scolded me for being on the Internet while on my “vacation.” But yet, western Michigan is not normally a destination for most in search of rest and relaxation. Although my father’s side of the family has deep roots in the District of Columbia, I grew up in East Grand Rapids, an inner suburb of Michigan’s second-largest city, the home of former President Gerald R. Ford.

I returned to the city of my birth last week for a friend’s funeral, a friend who was too young to die, a victim of very unfortunate, tragic circumstances. Out of respect for the family, which I have known for two decades, I’m not going to discuss what is a very private and painful matter.

But this trip home does provide me an opportunity to write about Grand Rapids. Each time I return, this place becomes a nicer and nicer place to return to. But I don’t really have any friends left here as all of my friends who are from here live elsewhere, and left for more interesting places and opportunities Grand Rapids could never provide. I’ve found that Grand Rapids isn’t such a bad place as it once was. In fact, it has a lot going for it, unlike the rest of the state. On the surface at least, Grand Rapids -- which has never been heavily invested in the auto industry -- is a stable, relatively prosperous city in an economically lackluster pocket of the country.

When I examine the site meter of The Washington Oculus, I've found that many of the people who come across this blog do so by doing searches for Grand Rapids-specific terms. So I will continue doing what I can to harness the power of Google and the like to give Grand Rapidians and others what they need. If you’re based in Washington, and don’t care about my hometown, then I suggest you follow my Grand Rapids series, which I start today. In my opinion, this city is woefully underserved by its media outlets and there are very few online platforms to discuss the city how it should be discussed. Most people look at this place as a conservative Christian stronghold where the saying goes “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much.” Well, there’s quite a lot more than that. If only I had some spare venture capital and a crew of bloggers, what I could do with this place …

Part I: Two Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim
Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead
Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler