I Kinda Miss Southeast

When the late, great Honorable Marion S. Barry, Jr., passed away on November 23rd, I realized that I missed more than just the undisputed "Mayor For Life" of Washington, D.C. and one of my most influential mentors.  Seeing so many faces in the crowds as his funeral procession came down Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue by "The Big Chair" or while attending his public funeral service at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center brought on a bittersweet sense of nostalgia.  In the process, I said to myself, "I love the fact that I grew up in Southeast and that our mayor and councilmember fought for us when no one else was brave enough to do so.  More than that, I love my people."  Then, when two fellow alumni of Mayor Barry's Youth Leadership Institute (MBYLI) decided to run for his seat on the D.C. Council--Sheila Bunn, former chief of staff for the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton and the Honorable Vincent Gray, and Christopher Barry, Mayor Barry's son--I was excited for the potential direction in which Ward 8 could head and made me want to be involved somehow, but remembered that my driver's license now says "Silver Spring, MD".  (The differences between the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles and Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration could be another blog post alone, but I digress.)  So if you were to put my sentiments to an old Manhattans tune, you might come to the following conclusion: I kinda miss Southeast.  Let me tell you some of the things that I do miss...

I do miss riding across the Douglass, Eleventh Street and Sousa Bridges, knowing that I'm "home" even before I make it home.  I do miss China Southern being only five to ten minutes away and getting some of the best chicken wings & mumbo sauce in the city.  I do miss "The Big Chair" and Anacostia Metro Station.  I do miss riding past Barry Farms, especially in the summer when people flooded the b-ball courts for the Goodman League.  I do miss seeing that old "Sheridan Terrace '86" mural being one of the last things standing from the original neighborhood.  I do miss Junk Yard Band in their heyday and us Southeast kids would debate with the Uptown kids who was better between them and Backyard Band.  (Of course, we always said "JYB" with a slight bias.)  I do miss hearing cars ride by bumping the good P.A. tapes and CDs.  Even though it was much to the chagrin of my mother and my significant other at the time, I do miss those long, intrepid walks along South Capitol Street and Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue around 10 o'clock on Saturday nights just because.

More than the awesome sauce that very few people can tell you what's actually in it and the legendary landmarks, I do miss many of the people.  The most memorable thing about riding buses like the A8, the 32 or the 92 or taking a ride on the Green Line (a.k.a. "the Underground Railroad") was the random conversations with perfectly imperfect strangers about everything from politics to religion to the ongoing feud between the Skins and the Cowboys.  If you've caught buses from Anacostia on a regular basis, you probably know about Koka Moe--who will spit a freestyle at will in that classic go-go swing about whatever.  When I lived in Parklands for seven years, I was schooled on how Camille Cosby, one of Sugar Ray Leonard's girlfriends, college students and professionals used to inhabit the old Shipley Terrace (now Ridgecrest Court).  Speaking of my old street, I do miss the lady across the street who always complemented me on my ties as she sat in her SUV listening to folks like The Delfonics or Skip Mahoney & The Casuals.  I do miss my old cleaners where the lady always told me "God bless you" as she handed me my clothes and had Christian music playing.  I do miss running into people I actually knew from school, from MBYLI or from doing music.  I do miss my neighbors and I flocking voter precincts like New Image Community Baptist Church or Seventh District Police Department to defy the turnout expectations for our side of town.  Heck, on a recent mumbo sauce run for my sister-in-law, I chopped it up with a dude about China Southern, Star Carry Out on Wheeler Road and Danny's on Branch Avenue having the best mumbo sauce in the "urrrea".  Since I've lived in Montgomery County, those kinds of interactions have happened probably three to five times at the most (so far) whereas I could have three to five interactions like that living in Southeast in one day.

However, there are a lot of things that fall on the wrong side of the "take it or leave it" dichotomy.  I don't miss hearing gunshots or the subsequent police sirens.  I don't miss living in the middle of crime emergency areas, seeing sneakers thrown on overhead power lines or walking past teddy bear memorials for those who fell victim to the violence for which Ward 8 is notorious.  I don't miss being awakened by the sound of [plug in any ratchet rapper of the moment] first thing in the morning.  I don't miss hearing either kids--many of whom are barely ten years old--cursing outside my bedroom window like it's going out of style tomorrow, or a bunch of profanity in public from teenagers and adults in front of women, children and senior citizens.  I don't miss waiting for the bus on my way to work while looking over and seeing young brothers just standing around all day long and knowing exactly what they're doing, especially when the cops come around.  I don't miss seeing so many people care so little for their own neighborhood, including vandalizing property and throwing whole bags of fast food waste outside of their car windows with the attitude that "someone gets paid to clean up my mess".  I don't miss going to places like Subway or the Chinese food spots and seeing my people shout at and/or speak condescendingly to foreigners because they make even the slightest of errors.  I don't miss myself or kids nearly being hit by some bat out of hell trying to be Tony Stewart in a residential neighborhood.  I don't miss the strategic prevalence of liquor stores and fast food chains or the lack of affordable healthy-eating options.  I don't miss smelling weed in my apartment building hallway on the regular.  I don't miss riding in the car with my wife and the moment that we come back into Southeast, her breathing issues are exacerbated because of the lower quality of air compared to Upper Northwest.  Most of all, after taking a ride through my old neighborhood two months after moving out of the city, I don't miss the frustration, sadness, emptiness, anxiety, depression and oppression on the faces of people with whom I once beat the same pavement.  Seeing that bothered my entire life and made me think, "Wow...did we look like that when we lived here?"  I don't care how young or old you are...no one should have to live like that.  Sadly enough, this is why I say that I kinda miss Southeast.

After over 26 straight years of living in the city of my birth, I feel torn sometimes because I traded the noise of Alabama Avenue for the quiet of Briggs Chaney Road.  Anytime you move away from an area that helped to shape your culture, personality and view of the world, it's easy to have a little mover's remorse and feel like a bit of a traitor from time to time.  However, when I'm outside and feel like I'm in the middle of Bambi or smell fresh air instead of marijuana, I realize that this is where God wants me and my family to be at this phase of our lives and I have no regrets.  I often think about what my dad said to my grandmother when she asked why I moved "all the way out there": "He lived in Southeast all of his life; he probably wanted a change of scenery."  When I think about my five-month-old son, God has placed him in a more advantageous position in life that wasn't afforded in childhood to me or my wife from Chester, Pennsylvania--which isn't a walk in the park either--and that's a blessing because we'll be able to teach him how to appreciate where he is due to where we've been.  He'll have access to a quality school system, good recreation centers and be exposed to sports that aren't as promoted in the inner city among Black kids like soccer, baseball, tennis and golf--even if he still chooses to play basketball or football.  He'll be exposed to a diverse range of people, which will help him to appreciate other cultures as well as his own.  The common ground and unity that he'll have with his friends will extend beyond being products of dysfunctional environments.  He doesn't have to hear the footsteps of criminals running through alleys or seeing twenty cop cars flood a block after a huge fight in the neighborhood.  He will never have to defend where he lives because it's perceived as too dangerous, too ghetto or too Black.  As long as I'm around, he also won't have to defend himself against people who think he doesn't have enough "edge" to him because he's not from the hood.  Bottom line, he won't have to grow up with the same chip-on-my-shoulder, back-against-the-wall mentality that I or many others from Southeast needed in order to succeed, survive or simply prove that we were worthy of belonging.  It's not by any means perfect in Mo County as many of the problems often attributed to Southeast rear their ugly heads here as well, but he can exist a lot more peacefully out here and that's what's important to me.

Although my son may never live in Southeast, he can still pull from the good qualities that I learned while growing up there.  Although he may never need to use milk crates for basketball hoops or pots, pans, buckets and shopping carts for musical instruments, he can still learn how to make something out of nothing from my numerous artistic examples and come up with his own inventiveness.  He probably won't experience the go-gos or the good block parties--you know, the ones when "Sardines" blared through the speakers and brought everybody in the neighborhood together--but he will still learn that same importance of community and good times and apply it even better amongst his friends, schoolmates and future associates.  He'll be in a greater position to learn once he enters the Montgomery County school system, but my experience with teachers who taught on the forsaken side of town while caring about their students like their own children will teach him to demand more of his educators than just regurgitating the yearly curriculum.  He probably won't be a part of the same youth leadership institute that helped to bring me out of my shell, but passing down those leadership qualities to him will foster an attitude of leading by example, knowing every bit about where you come from and having a servant's heart for the people.  Even though he will already have a good spiritual foundation before he utters his first "Hallelujah" or "Amen", he can still learn from my trials and tribulations during my humble beginnings in Christianity at a house church on Halley Terrace and have an even deeper personal relationship with the Lord.  Of course, he'll still have to travel about thirty minutes to get the best chicken wings and mumbo sauce when we go to grandma's house, but he has to get a full set of teeth first before we cross that bridge.

After being a resident of Ward 8 for over eighty percent of my life, it's extremely difficult not to cheer for my old stomping grounds--even if I'm in the nosebleed seats doing so.  I always want to celebrate the most awesome people and the brightest spots in Southeast--not what the media portrays to keep the tourists from veering too far off of the beaten path.  I always want to have at least five good things to say out of my mouth about Southeast before I allow one negative thing to pour forth from my lips, even if I know the ugliest of truths all too well.  To not appreciate the invaluable life lessons learned in Anacostia, Washington Highlands, Bellevue and Congress Heights would be telling God, "You didn't know what You were doing when You allowed me to live there.  I should've been raised somewhere else, somewhere better."  However, whether it's a New Yorker moving to Miami, a Philly bull moving to Cali or someone in the Midwest just trying to get out of tornado country, God has a way of getting us out of our comfort zones so that we can be more than just comfortable in a new land; we can be victorious in that new territory because He taught us how to win in spite of ourselves or our circumstances.  At the end of the day, I'll always love and be a champion for the good that makes Southeast what it is no matter what my mailing address says.