The Georgetown Spectator/Boom Town
Hume, Brit
A t a black-tie dinner recently, I was introduced to Pamela Harriman, grande dame of the Democratic Party and soon-to-be ambassador to Paris. We were seated, by chance, at the same table. I told her...
...There are many good restaurants, and several excellent ones...
...She told the same interviewer that hers is one of the "bigger houses . . . with deep gardens...
...Even the decaffeinated coffee is good...
...Along the busy corridors of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street are such trendy emporia as a Polo Store, a Banana Republic, and an Abercrombie and Fitch...
...m rs...
...Oh, him, " said a waitress...
...Just down the street, on the corner of Wisconsin and N, an immigrant businessman named George Stoupakis has spent $700,000 of his own money to turn a defunct Little Tavern hamburger stand into a bright, comfortable restaurant he calls "Stoupsy's Diner...
...He's a regular...
...Stoupakis, though, says he is living a nightmare...
...The university has always generated its share of noise, traffic and drunks, and some M-street bars of years past would make today's rowdier saloons seem elegant...
...First he strode purposefully in one direction, then another...
...It serves a variety of Greek and American dishes at moderate prices...
...I don't know where they get their money, but they seem to have a lot of it...
...Business is brisk...
...There's a lot of distinctly urban noise: sirens, car theft alarms, screeching tires, drunken, bellicose shouting...
...I'm not ready to say as much, yet, but I'm glad that I live three floors up, that I have a parking space that's not on the street, and that Mrs...
...What's he doing...
...I asked...
...I can't tell you...
...The food is quite good...
...Its commercial center still has much of the raffish character of a waterfront...
...But it's like the Third World...
...When I put in storm windows last year, there was immediate improvement—not in the fuel bill, but the noise level...
...G eorgetowners are used to putting up with a lot...
...As an under-age teenager, I used to ride the streetcar to a place called "Julie's" where no ID was required and beer was served even to a friend of mine who ordered a draught one night and pronounced it "drawt...
...You should see what this homeless guy did in my bathroom this morning...
...I let him use the bathroom...
...I try to keep people who are not my customers out, but a guy opened his coat the other day to show me his gun...
...I came here because I thought this is the best neighborhood,"he said...
...There are antique stores and small bookshops...
...I live three floors up, but I sometimes feel those car stereos before I actually hear them...
...The standard view in the neighborhood is that these people are drug dealers who venture into Georgetown to shop for clothes and gold jewelry...
...I told her we are neighbors, both living in Georgetown...
...What they don't have a lot of is regard for the local ordinances, such as those against jaywalking and public urination...
...Long before it became famous for its brick sidewalks, cobblestoned streets, and picturesque rows of federal and colonial townhouses, Georgetown was a thriving harbor...
...What could .I do...
...There are also, however, numerous rough-and-tumble bars and night clubs, and some peculiar shops that specialize in the fancy athletic footwear and designer warm-up suits that seem to attract the people with the boom boxes in their cars...
...He says the police don't do much except issue parking tickets (a major source of city revenue...
...I get drunks, homeless people, drug dealers...
...She smiled, sort of, and looked as if she found it curious that she and I should live in the same hemisphere...
...In the summer, you sit out there and never know you are in a city...
...Georgetown has long been an odd mix of the stylish and the seedy, but some residents now fear that the decay and disorder that afflict much of urban America have caught up with their neighborhood...
...Although her townhouse is just a few doors from my condominium (so near and yet so far), she has been quoted as saying she doesn't know what it's like in Georgetown on Friday and Saturday nights because she's never in town on weekends...
...In a sense, we 'don't...
...If you honk your horn at those doing the former, you are likely to be answered with threats and racial epithets...
...At my place, you know you're in a city...
...Harriman, who could live anywhere, still lives just a few doors away...
...If you complain about the latter, as I did to the man watering my front steps recently, you will get the threats and the epithets, as well as a slurred explanation that "it's biodegradable...
...As we spoke, there was a tall man outside, who would have looked distinguished in his beard and plaid overcoat except for two things: he had a scarf wrapped around his head and was wandering around in the middle of the intersection...
...The most common sound, though, is the thunderous, rhythmic boom of automobile stereo systems with the volume and bass cranked up all the way...
...What an asset: a good, cheap restaurant that supplanted a crummy one...
...Harriman and I reside about a block from both Wisconsin and M streets, very near the commercial heart of things...
...He's out there every day...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
