# Posted 9:35 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

IRONY, CONTINUED: I'm sitting on the steps outside my friend's brownstone. I can't get in because he's still at work. But I'm using his wireless connection to blog.

The Information Age: Where your friends' networks are more accesible than their homes.

On a related note, my friend Josh (not Chafetz) lives at the corner of Vermont Ave. and Q Street in Washington, DC. Before visiting him, I'd never ventured this far east of Dupont Circle. The gentrification process had already begun before my time in Washington about four years ago. But I had no idea how far it's gone.

[NB: I am now indoors, and it is now two hours later. I have learned that writing outdoors is quite charming, but results in many mosquito bites.]

I parked my car earlier tonight at the intersection of 12th and Vermont, well in sight of an abandoned lot that betrays no signs of gentrification. (If you aren't familiar with the local geography, don't worry -- just focus on the concepts.) Having promised to buy my friend some quality beverages, I set off in search of a beverage merchant.

I walked two blocks west to 14th St., a major thoroughfare once known as the border fence that separated civilized Washington from what lay beyond. This time, however, I was coming from beyond.

Populated by auto repair shops, empty lots and the occasional run-down grocery story, 14th St. was once the polar opposite of Starbucks-laden Dupont Circle. For no particular reason, I chose to walk south on 14th. On a single block, there were half-a-dozen buildings under renovation or being built from scratch.

The only open storefront belonged to a Chinese take-out joint. Thus the street was lonely, but something very important was clearly going on. Then, as I approached P Street, I saw the bright windows and letters belonging to the inner sanctum of gentrification: Whole Foods.

If memory serves, there was absolutely nothing on that block (P St. between 14th and 15th) when I left DC just over four years ago. But it wasn't just whole foods. Across the street from it was a luxury apartment building, newly built. The retail space on the ground floor belonged to an upscale bar teeming with late-twenty- and early-thirty-something.

And, yes, there was a Starbucks. After purchasing four fine bottles of Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter, I called Josh on the phone to express my total amazement at what had happened to our neighborhood. His opinion of the matter is especially worth having because he both works for Washington's foremost real estate development corporation and because he is the author of an in-depth biography of James Rouse, one of America's great urban planners.

(Please buy the book now, or Josh won't let me stay with him next time I'm in Washington.)

Hard at work at 9:00 PM on a Sunday, Josh didn't have time for a long conversation. But he did note that the same local residents fortunate enough to get jobs at Whole Foods can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods. Oh, the irony.
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