Category — Shek Baker

A new episode of the Wasted Words podcast is now available.

It is hosted by your editor, RJ White, and the panel includes The City Desk contributors Shek Baker and Stephen Levinson.

Thank you.

President George W. Bush’s scheduled departure from office next year has many of our citizens preparing for a street fight of sorts. On February 1st, the upscale President Heights neighborhood is scheduled to add a second Bush St. to its ever-growing borders, and seven city organizations, including the Falmouth Hill Preservation Association, the Norbeck St. Residents’ Group, and Community Board 6 are urging the city to halt the proceedings.

To succeed they will have to convince the city council to repeal a 139-year-old amendment to the city’s charter that ranks as one of the most short-sighted and destructive bits of legislation in city history. If the council refuses, as seems likely, a 12-block section of Norbeck St. in historic Falmouth Hill would be re-christened after our 43rd president. Several landmarks on that stretch - including one of the city’s oldest churches and the Teal Estate, the original mayoral mansion - could be torn down or renamed at the whim of the President Heights Community Association, notorious for its draconian covenants that regulate the height, appearance, name and function of buildings within its ever-expanding borders.

The reason our city is almost powerless to stop this possible desecration of its own landmarks is believed to be rooted in an 1865 proclamation that commemorated the Union victory in the Civil War and memorialized the late President Lincoln. At Mayor Brown’s direction, a ridge-top neighborhood of mansions overlooking the eastern bank of the Ostahanoc River, then known as Mob Hill, was reorganized as Presidential Heights, and each of its streets was renamed after one of the country’s first sixteen presidents.

Most of the city’s foremost citizens and captains of industry already lived in the neighborhood, and were granted what were intended to be ceremonial positions in a concern called the Presidential Heights Coalition. Their numbers included former two-term Mayor Stanton Winthrop (ret. 1864, great uncle to Mayor Orson Winthrop), Admiral Archibald Tripp (grandfather of society figure Mabel Tripp), smelting magnate Barnaby Wonsley and other luminaries of the city’s first industrial boom.

It was only at Winthrop’s urging that Mayor Brown ceded to the Coalition any say as to the layout of Presidential Heights. It was declared that the 8 streets running east and west should be named for presidents deemed to have been “assets to the advancement of national interests,” and those streets running north and south named for those presidents held “responsible for tearing the union asunder.” By secret ballot, the so-called beneficial presidents were named Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, Polk and Lincoln. The detrimental presidents: both Adamses, Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan.

That was thought to be that. There was the somewhat quirky matter of two Adams Streets running parallel to each other with only one block between them, but that was viewed as a problem only for a select few wealthy persons (and their postman). The real trouble started in 1869, as the term of President Andrew Johnson expired.

Enraged and disgusted by their president’s disgraceful impeachment, Winthrop and his cohorts bullied Mayor Brown into allowing Presidential Heights to add a Johnson Street running on the “tearing the union asunder” axis. Finding Brown to be pliable on that matter, the reformed Coalition and its allies on the City Council forced an emergency session of closed-door legislation to cement their legacies as arbiters of presidential achievement.

On February 14, 1869, the third amendment was added to the city charter, “Regarding the jurisdiction of the Presidential Heights.” Briefly, it stated that the Presidential Heights Coalition would have full say over all matters related to the government of their neighborhood; few at the time bothered to read the fine print, which granted to the Coalition the right add a new street as each president left office - a right that would be retained “in perpetuity.”

Several administrations later, President Heights (renamed so in 1892) was becoming a problem. It had once been an out-of-the-way, upriver enclave, but as the city grid expanded northward, President Heights marched out to meet it. Streets named after Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison and Cleveland again, all built running north-south, crept off the ridge and down into Galveston Row, an area known in the 1880s for its German and Irish tenement dwellings. Instead of paving new streets, President Heights now began swallowing up existing city roads. Hundreds of families were systematically evicted every four-to-eight years, their slums torn down and replaced with large, handsome houses that were occupied by the city’s most exclusively rich and influential. Patrols of stick-bearing men kept riff-raff from re-entering the newly-annexed areas, and no one of consequence spoke up for the unfortunate victims.

By 1952, the neighborhood was an unwieldy mess, 24 blocks long and only nine blocks wide, as nearly every outgoing president had been ranked a failure. It had become a confusing jumble, featuring 2 streets each named Adams, Harrison and Cleveland, all running parallel, and 2 Roosevelt streets intersecting, with no compass designation or any other indication as to how one street differed from its twin. The neighborhood paid no heed to the map-wise geography of other city streets; visitors, especially, were confounded by the unexplained 9 block interruptions of such major thoroughfares as Grume Ave., Main Ave., Brodway and State Road 86 by McKinley, Wilson, Taft and Coolidge Streets, respectively. To make matters worse, the homes within the district were so similar-looking as to be indistinguishable - a consequence of homeowner’s covenants introduced in the 1930’s.

Concerned citizens and legislators from areas bordering the rampaging neighborhood began making annual attempts to rein in the outsized powers wielded by the Presidential Heights Coalition (known since 1926 as “Community Board 8″). Closed-door sessions with the Mayors and Council heads proved fruitless, as Eisenhower, Kennedy and a second Johnson Street replaced roads at the northern and eastern ends of old Galveston Row, shuttering long-time businesses and displacing hundreds more low- and middle-income workers to distant suburbs.

Citizens from all walks of life, newspapers and state legislators decried Community Board 8’s merciless, bullying attitude and were exasperated by City Hall’s total inaction. Mayors regularly refused comment on the subject of President Heights’ expansion, even as it marched toward the equally exclusive (and arguably more historic) Falmouth Hill neighborhood.

In June 1969, Bill Schlammaker, a reporter at the Clarion-Standard, received a large packet of documents and a hand-wringing cover letter signed only, “Concerned in CB8.” In it were purported to be copies of the minutes from over two-dozen meetings of the Coalition/Community Board 8 between 1880 and 1968. The Clarion-Standard ran a four-day series featuring excerpts from the documents, even though no additional source could be found to assure their veracity. Among the highlights:

• In 1945, after the second Roosevelt St. was installed running north-south (and intersecting the first Roosevelt St. on the neighborhood’s northeastern border), Mayor Dell reached a gentleman’s agreement with CB 8 that any future streets would run east-west until such time as the neighborhood achieved more reasonable dimensions; the hideously unpopular Truman administration led to a cancellation of this deal.
• Reasons for deeming so many presidents to be detrimental ranged from the reasonable (Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, Grant’s corruption), to the absurd (Hayes’ beard, Arthur’s “incomparable stench”), to the ridiculously unfair (Garfield’s “insufficient constitution” in succumbing to his assassin’s bullet, FDR’s failure to secure “total victory” in WWII prior to his death).
• All buildings, regardless of size or purpose, were to be painted “virginal white” beginning in 1937.
• Under no circumstances would houses of worship other than protestant churches be allowed to congregate, and no business licenses be granted to “haberdashers, tavern-keepers, blacksmiths, or book binders” (later, “internet cafes” were banned as well).
• The President Heights Community Association allegedly maintained a secret fund consisting of “voluntary” contributions by its wealthy residents. In dire economic emergencies - 9 times in all over a period of 63 years- considerable amounts of money were transferred to city coffers. Schlammaker believed that this gave President Heights incredible levarage against any of the city’s attempts to curb its expansion.

The public outcry wasn’t enough to save what little remained of Galveston Row, but outraged citizenry began demanding action, even as members of CB8 and city hall all described the documents as “preposterous forgeries.” In 1972, Mayor Wilhelm Shapiro was ousted from office with a record-low 8 percent of the vote and it seemed that frightened city council members were ready to bring the third amendment up for referendum, above the objections of CB8. However, public opinion on the matter of President Heights shifted mightily in the wake of Watergate, and the additions of Nixon and Ford streets on the north-south axis were greeted with approving op-ed pieces and general satisfaction (although notably not in Falmouth Hill).

Now, however, with the 110 year-old St. Christopher’s Church facing demolition on the second soon-to-be-called Bush Street, and the handsome Teal Estate - home to the city’s mayors from 1874 to 1978 - looking forward to a coat of virginal white paint, Mayor Wilders and the Council are working to solve the peculiar problem of President Heights. But, as councilwoman Meredith Radison (Community Board 8) has darkly pointed out, “We will do our best, but we are in a recession, here…isn’t that too bad?”
- Shek Baker

:: Number of consecutive weeks the Griswold Arthouse has featured Jaws as its “Friday Midnight Movie”: 1,664

:: Number of “Jaws Burger” fried fish sandwiches sold at the adjacent President Heights Cafe’ during in that time: 41,679

:: Percentage sold between the hours of 2 am and 5 am Saturday morning: 83

:: Number of stars awarded the President Heights Cafe’ by irascible Alternative Weekly food critic Gram Sanders: one-half

:: To the Jaws Burger fried fish sandwich specifically: zero

:: The annual Founder’s Day Film Festival (FFF) will be held from August 8 – 11 this summer, with the official celebration of Founder’s Day to occur on Monday, August 11. This will also, as usual, be a paid holiday for all city employees. The theme for this year’s festival is the highly appropriate ‘Summer in the City,’ and the Monday afternoon Founder’s Day matinee will be Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The comprehensive FFF schedule will be released on Friday, June 6.

:: Today, the City Council is scheduled to repeal a 1946 ordinance which banned from city limits any and all stand-alone arcade devices and games. The measure was intended to curb the use of pinball machines in casual gambling, but had the unintended effect many years later of making it illegal to own or operate any cabinet-style video game within city limits (although that aspect of the law was rarely observed and even more rarely enforced, with the city boasting 230 video game arcades during the peak of the fad in 1984).

The Video Game Museum at Mabel Tripp Gardens will be celebrating the occasion by making available for play many of their exhibited games, including Galaga, Defender and Altered Beast.
- David Andrews, Shek Baker, Jon Morris

:: Mayor Wilders’ recent initiative to “clean up” the city’s catalog of archaic, outdated, obtuse or redundant ordinances begins in earnest next Wednesday when he plans to unveil his self-authored C.O.M.B. (Consolidate Our Municipal Bylaws) Initiative. Among the ordinances targeted by the measure are a 1988 ban on prostitution services for pets, last year’s activist “pro-smoking” initiative, and a late 17th-century punishment which calls for “stabbing centrely amidst the fleshie organs” for anyone caught “dealyng with goods of a gypsie nature.”

:: In addition to police officers, emergency response and medical personnel, it is technically illegal in the city to pose as a practitioner of the following professions: Plumber, baker, cobbler, milliner, grocer, asphalt-mixer.

:: Number of local coyote attacks sparking the “Coyotes: This Summer’s Sharks?” three-day investigative series on Channel 8’s newscast next week: 0

:: The Woodbridge District of the city boasts more hair salons, Thai restaurants and British import shops than any other district in the city (124, 70 and 17 respectively).

:: Tourism in the city is down 15% over the same period last year. The Valley Regional Tourism Bureau attributes the decline to budget cuts, leading to a lack of presence for the city in print and internet advertising over the past few months.

:: Ten most common words found in print advertisements in local publications during March 2008:
1. Sale
2. Free
3. And
4. Discount
5. The
6. P.M.
7. A.M.
8. Pork
9. Credit
10. Rebate

:: The Interactive Orwell exhibit celebrates its fifteenth season this year at Agnew Community College’s Wonsley Blvd. campus. Popular with young children and preteens, the “Living Or-world” features an “Animal Farm Petting Zoo”, the “Oceanian Tele-Screen Playground” and “Ministry of Truth Big Brother Relay Race”. This weekend - June 25th, Orwell’s birthday. As always, with purchase of one child ticket, big brothers get in free.
- David Andrews, Shek Baker, Jon Morris, RJ White

:: City sci-fi fans, your annual heartbreak is once again at hand. Organizers’ attempts to book a local Star Trek convention have been rebuffed by the City Council for the twenty-third consecutive year. Vociferous Councilwoman Marge Heath led the charge once again, stating unequivocally that “you freaks will have to go elsewhere for your geek fix.”

:: Number of city venues that have been fruitlessly considered for Star Trek conventions over the years: 11

:: Number of those venues that have been demolished, destroyed by natural disaster or closed down during the 23-year streak: 5

:: Venues most popular with organizers over the years: Pierpoint Docks Convention Center - 5 attempts (including this year), Nabisco Arena (previously Chevy Chase Bank Sportsplex, Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter Garden and Norman J. Kowalski Arena) - 4 attempts, Airport Courtyard Marriott - 2 attempts.

:: Convention organizers are blaming “The Photon Torpedo Pranksters” (seventh item) for hampering their efforts and engendering anger within city government.

:: Other, similarly-themed conventions and exhibits which have been allowed permits recently: CosGenSciAniCon, “Star Wars: The Magic Of Myth” (exhibit at Watson University Science Museum), Asimov!2004

:: There Are Three Lights! Comix and Games, in Fulton Village, is apparently named after some Star Trek reference.
- Shek Baker, RJ White

:: The “Guess Your Weight” game at the Kowalski Piers Carnival (through August 6) was finally shut down Monday after repeated complaints; a statute barring such midway attractions was famously introduced in 1938 following an incident involving fat lady “Alice from Dallas” and has been fiercely enforced since.

:: Champion of the 11-and-under tournament at the Goh Kun Tae Kwon Do Academy on Algonquin Avenue: Jeannie Prince, only the second female champion since 1989

:: Attendance at last year’s “Roarin’ on the River” powerboat race, where there was a huge smashup on the last day which sent two boats flying inland, landing on the 200 block of Main Avenue: 10,219
:: Number of ads for this year’s race which used news footage from the incident (in which, thankfully, no one was badly injured): 3
:: Expected attendance for this year’s race: 25,000+

:: Pastor John Frank of Union Christ Church on Seventeenth Street and Halpine Terrace has requested that no more boxes of old clothes “and other junk” be placed in the parking lot near the facility’s back door. “Our dumpster seems to invite such behavior, but I encourage people to throw these things away themselves,” he said.

:: Number of potholes reported on Prince Stavros Ave. last week: 24
:: Number repaired since by city crews: 2
:: Amount by which the number of flat tires suffered on Prince Stavros Ave. declined this week, according to AAA: 4

:: Greatest number of consecutive days the official city high temperature exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit: 5 (1988)
- D. Andrews, S. Baker, R. White

:: Number of injuries resulting from the “Magic of Sturly Davis” mishap at the Gloria Theatre Tuesday: 7 (6 serious burns, one broken ankle)

:: City champion in the Men’s 70-and-Over spring softball league: Needleman’s Kosher Meats, with a record of 3-0 (including one victory by forfeit).

:: Twenty-one deaths of city residents in the summer of 1988 were attributed to the heat and to the lack of adequate ventilation in several apartment buildings.

:: Number of municipal golf courses: 4
:: Number of privately-held golf courses, including country clubs: 14
:: Number of PGA Professionals holding membership at one of the country clubs: 21

:: Average cost for a single round of golf at a municipal course (2 players): $17
:: Average cost for a single round of golf at a privately-held course (2 players): $74
:: Average cost for an annual membership at a country club: $3,932

:: Average score at Verdant Greens: +9 over par
:: Korean sensation Minna Kim’s score at Verdant Greens: -12
::Pro Golfer Dale “Chum” Green’s last score at Verdant Greens: -9

:: Winner of the Parks & Recreation Department’s Junior Art Fair (July 7): Shelby Fairhaven-Steen, age 9, for her stone and construction paper collage “Autumn in the City.”

:: The city’s animal shelters have found marked increase in the number of stray American White Sheperds in the past month. This week 8 were collected, last week 6 and the previous week 1. Before that, no American White Sheperds had ever been picked up in this city. If you have friends or relatives known to own or breed this animal, Animal Control would very much like to speak with them.
- David Andrews, Shek Baker, Kevin Church

:: Northside residents can expect an extra unlucky Friday the 13th today, as electrical power will be cut off for up to two hours in order to repair a transformer on the corner of Garrick Ave. and Riggins Rd. The device was damaged June 26 by would-be bank robber Kevin Sturgiss when he hijacked a city bus and drove it against traffic during rush hour in an effort to evade the National Guard roadblock set up on Clark St.

:: Number of buildings Downtown which skip the 13th in their floor numbering: 2 (The Ansfield Meats Tower, The Walker Consolidated Bldg.)

:: Duration of Tuesday’s partial power outage, affecting the Central Corridor/Downtown, Keets Harbor, North Falls and Roxboro areas: 5 hours, 33 minutes

:: Number of times the entire city has suffered a complete electrical power ‘blackout’: 3 (1967, 1987, 2003)

:: Number of times the blackout originated inside the city: 1 (1987)

:: Number of raccoons electrocuted in a centrally-located transformer leading to 1987’s city-wide blackout: at least 1, possibly 2

:: Amount of electricity needed to kill approximately 2 raccoons: definitely less than 22,000 volts
- David Andrews, Shek Baker, RJ White

:: This year’s Fourth of July fireworks display has been moved to Saturday, at 9pm, at Founder’s Pier.

:: Number of times throughout the years that the City’s fireworks display has been postponed due to the weather: 7

:: Estimated boost in attendance this will bring to the Lithuanian Pride Festival, which had already been scheduled to take place Saturday night at Founder’s Pier: 215%

:: Estimated damage to private and public property caused by the well-known tagger “Joey Ballgame”: $125,000

:: Rumored leading candidates for Ballgame’s true identity: Shamed former Deputy Police Chief Andrew Hotel, tenth-grade French teacher Jane Kapitzky, tenth-grader Lowell Thomas (Kapitzky’s rumored secret lover).

:: Joey Ballgame’s primary neighborhood of activity: The working-class neighborhood surrounding the underground mansion at Sutter’s Hill. Street lore has it that Ballgame’s ultimate goal is to tag the home’s sealed bottom four floors.

:: Northsiders who’ve suffered spotty telephone service these last four days can thank local newsmaker Kevin Sturgiss (Wonsley High Class of ‘86). An unexploded grenade hurled by Sturgiss during his June 26 bank robbery misadventure lodged under the door of a telephone switch box on Garrick Ave. until it was discovered by several Hilworth Junior High students after summer school Tuesday, at which point it detonated, completely obliterating the sensitive telecommunications equipment.
- Shek Baker, Craig Gaines, RJ White

:: Five of the seven warmest temperatures ever recorded in the city occurred in the current millennium. The other two were in 1988 and 1889.

:: If there is a dearth of hot-weather favorite Fla-Vor-Ice at your local Northside market this weekend, blame erstwhile machine operator Kevin Sturgiss. A Jel-Sert delivery truck carrying over 2300 tubes of the cold, sugary treat was destroyed during Sturgiss’ lengthy botched bank robbery (and subsequent hostage crisis, police stand-off and eruption of vigilante justice) Tuesday on Garrick Ave.

:: Forms required to obtain a carriage-driver’s license for the City’s parks: 12, not including those related to the written and driving tests.

:: Forms required to obtain a hack license to drive a cab in the City: 3, including those related to the written and driving tests.

:: Warmest surface water temperature recorded at 17th Street Pier: 31 C, 87.8 F (2002).

:: Most ironic triple bill at the Founder’s Day Film Festival on a day where the high temperature reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit: August 5, 2002: In the Heat of the Night (1967), Body Heat (1981), Sahara (1943).

:: All the traffic lights around town controlled by motion sensors bear a sign reading, “Activate signal by pulling up to white line.” Except for one, which reads “Actuate signal by pulling up to white line.” The sign, at Thomas and Moreland avenues in the leafy Barrington District, is the sole reminder of Department of Public Works chief Daniel Solay, whose maddening attention to detail led him to be fired after a week and a half on the job.

:: 84-year old City Councilman Ned Fortune (District 5 - Little Kishinev/Loftville) has been re-elected to 12 consecutive 5 -year terms, despite the fact that, according to a recent poll conducted by the Alternative Weekly, not one of his constituents will admit to liking him.

:: The US Courthouse on Telegraph Ave., whose air conditioning has been under constant repair since 2003, continues to receive over six dozen weekly requests from jurors to re-stock vending machines with bottled water more than once every two weeks. For the 123rd consecutive week, they have refused.
- David Andrews, Shek Baker, Kevin Church, Craig Gaines