November 1st, 2004
We’ve all heard about NIMBYs (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) and their plight to stop sprawl. What with the worsening traffic congestion, I can see their point. But don’t think for once the NIMBYs are just found in the outer reaches of bucolic suburbia. For even in the worst parts of Washington, D.C., the NIMBY lurks. And lately, according to Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post, it’s the threat of a new baseball stadium along the dilapidated Anacostia waterfront that has many worried.
One unfortunate businessman in particular lamented, “I’m in a great state of depression…. I feel like a flyswatter is coming down on me–and I can’t run anywhere.” His name is Robert Siegel and his business is porn. He owns a few gay nightclubs and at least one adult theater and a pornshop. Sadly, a new stadium would probably shut Siegel down–or at least move him elsewhere. And though there are other businesses in the area, including cab companies and recycling centers, Siegel figures prominently in the story. Achenbach is quite critical of city planners, saying that “For some people, a neighborhood is blighted if it doesn’t have a Starbucks.”
So the skineplex is preferable to the coffee shop? Now if they were able to serve Starbucks at the movie theater…
Bizarro Jack November 1, 2004 at 11:32 pm
Couldn’t we have put the baseball stadium in some other terrible place that was already hopelessly homogenous, like Manassas for instance? It seems like an awful lot of trouble squeezing this monster into DC just so Virginians don’t have to drive all the way to Baltimore to see a major league baseball game.He can stick his porn store in his ear for all I care, but it’s much harder to find out where to move a club; I suppose it may be more difficult to find a place to move a gay club into. There are noise ordinances to figure out. There are a number of nightclubs down in that area, and I’ll miss going there. Nation has recently been known as one of the best clubs on the entire east coast (or maybe that honor was withdrawn when the Saturday night “Buzz” event shut down), and I will be amazed if that business finds another location that’s remotely satisfactory after this. It’s really the only thing I’ve seen in the area since 1999 that’s come close to winning the “almost as cool as ‘tracks!’ was” award. Second place is “The Edge,” which is just next door, and also in the path of the stadium.Movie theaters & book stores, pornographic or not, can go anywhere, but the clubs unquestionably have more cultural value than a coffee shop, and DC’s general clubbability could diminish so much that it takes a decade or more to return.You really ought to go to one of these clubs before you decide that you need to have a stadium right there, because if it goes in as planned (actually I think it’s kind of a certainty at this point) you might not see something like it in the area for quite some time. Preferably go before it gets too cold. It’s too bad you missed the Halloween event at Nation, it’s always quite a spectacle. I don’t know how fast the plans are moving – if it will still be there next year, and I highly recommend it.