Last night, members of the upper East Village community gathered at the home of Dena & Charles Verrill to celebrate Andrew and Suk Yang Johnson, owners of Sara’s Market. After running Sara’s Market for 19 years, Andy and Suk Yang have decided to turn over the reins. They will continue to own the building, but have leased the market out to new operators. Best of all, they live just a couple blocks away and will be customers just like the rest of us. So they will make sure the market maintains its great quality.

And from what GM can tell, the new operators will be great. For one thing, you barely have to memorize new names; they’re named Andy and Sue. And they are very friendly and appear to have the energy necessary to keep this vital neighborhood resource in good shape.

GM writes a lot about the merits of living a car-lite or even car-free lifestyle, and how a dense neighborhood like Georgetown helps you live that lifestyle. The thing is, neighborhood markets like Sara’s are absolutely critical to that equation. Being able to walk a few blocks and pick up almost any essential means not having to drive to a supermarket and, better yet, not have to find a parking space when you get home. Multiple nights a week, GM accomplishes a set of “errands” simply by getting off the bus and walking across the street to Sara’s. It adds a whole two minutes to his commute (ten if he starts talking sports with Andy).

And best of all, small markets like Sara’s enable the customer and owner to form a bond. You can see that bond at work when the lower East Village rallied to save Scheele’s. And you certainly saw it last night when a crowd gathered to warmly wish Andy and Suk Yang a fantastic retirement. Their rest is well deserved.

So Bon Voyage Andy and Suk Yang!

Sara’s Market is one of the stars in Georgetown’s neighborhood market constellation. It’s been “Sara’s” for over 80 years and shopping at a store like Sara’s is what makes living in a city so enjoyable. GM normally hops off the D2, walks across the street, grabs milk or whatever else he’s lacking, and walks a couple blocks home. No driving to a huge parking lot. No lines. No huge loads of groceries. Just what you need for a couple of days to get you to your next unpleasant trip to Safeway wherever your going to for the next year.

Proprietors Andy and Suk Yang Johnson are on a first-name basis with many customers and are happy to chat about the comings and goings in the neighborhood. As the lower East Village fears the potential loss of their neighborhood market Scheele’s, GM is happy to note that the Johnsons own their property and are thus in control of their destiny. Also, they are proposing to add a dry cleaner drop-off service, which will only increase the store’s utility to its neighbors.

For these reasons, GM selects Sara’s Market as his seventh favorite thing about Georgetown.

Previously:

8: Bistro Lepic

9: Q St.’s Elms

10: Abundance of Stores

Better than Free:

DC ambulances have developed a pretty bad reputation. Turns out that a good portion of Georgetowners have a better option: the Georgetown University Emergency Response Medical Service (known as “GERMS”) offers free, that’s right, free emergency ambulance service to the West Village. How do they measure up to the pros? DC EMS has an average of 16 minute response time. GERMS is 4.5 minutes. So GERMS is faster and completely free. That’s not a tough choice. Shocking as it sounds, if you need an ambulance don’t call 911, call GERMS at 202-687-HELP (4357). (If you’re an East Villager, try the number anyway. The GERMS rep made it sound like they’ll smudge the boundaries a little bit if called just beyond their jurisdiction).

Sarah’s Dry-Cleaners:

Sarah’s Market is applying to add a dry-cleaning drop-off and pick-up service. Approximately 1/5 of the market will be turned over to this service, although no cleaning will be done on-site. Andy Johnson stated that they probably wouldn’t even have one of those dry cleaner conveyor-belts. Drop-offs and pick-ups will take place from 7:00 AM till 7:00 PM. After a strong showing of support from the community and the East Village commissioners, a motion in support of the application passed unanimously.

Wow, Were they Serious?

GM took a couple stabs at what exactly Neyla was proposing to add as a mural to the building next door. The thing is, the three ridiculous designs that GM proposed probably would have had a better shot than the actual proposal. It was a photorealistic Rome-themed pastiche of a dog statue, columns, 80′s era computer graphics, and tulips. This is a rough depiction of what it looked like:

Needless to say, it wasn’t approved.

Quote of the Night:

“I hate to complicate it, but this is a complicated neighborhood” – Commissioner Birch (a quote-of-the-night machine)

Odds and Ends:

• Neighbors are up in arms about towing companies illegally parking around the Luk Oil station at Pennsylvania and 28th. Have you seen these scofflaws at work?
• After one citizen heroically photographed and ranked all the street-lights to identify the 50 worst so that they could be repaired, DDOT now has decided to simply fix them all.
• Rare lack of unanimity: Two commissioners dissented from the refusal to allow Vivvy’s Nails to put up a sign above the Subway.

Jack is Back:

Council Member Jack Evans is back to speak to the ANC. About what, it’s not clear. He spoke for the February ANC meeting, but without any specific agenda. And like February, the ANC will be meeting in Visitation’s dance studio instead of the crucifix-adorned Heritage Room. Hmm…does Evans just like to show up when there are walls of mirrors around?

Last time he made a few big promises about keeping gun stores out of Georgetown. Will he address the Zoning Commission’s decision which has the effect of granting many stores on M St. the ability to open a gun store as a matter of right? We’ll see.

Sara’s Dry Cleaners?

As mentioned here a little while back, GM’s neighborhood market of choice is applying for a special exception to allow the Johnsons to set up a dry-cleaner pick-up and drop-off to their store. They will come before the ANC next week to request their support. GM will take off his blogger hat (it’s a fez, just in case you’re wondering) and support their application if the Commissioners give the public a chance to weigh in.

Mural by Neyla

Apparently Neyla is applying for some sort of a mural on the adjacent wall of their neighbor’s property. The agenda doesn’t indicate what sort of a mural Neyla is proposing. So GM will go ahead and make some baseless predictions anyway!

1: Steal Marvin’s Thunder

2. Go Surrealist

3. If they had taste or GM had money:

Check back here Monday night to see which of these incredibly likely options they chose.

Owners Andrew and Suk Yang Johnson have been down this road before. In 2006 they applied to convert space in their home on 27th st. into a similar dry cleaning drop off and pick up establishment. The impetus for the change came from the fact that the family that ran a dry cleaner on the corner of 27th and P were kicked out of the spot to make room for Washington Fine Properties. The Johnsons happen to live on a small spit of 27th St. that is zoned C-1 (“neighborhood shopping”). This gave them the opening to offer their home as a replacement to the dry cleaners. It just took a variance from the floor-area-ratio (“FAR”) requirement.

Unfortunately for the Johnsons and the dry cleaners, some neighbors objected to the change (despite the fact that the dry cleaner would have only been relocating about 20 feet). Thus the ANC rejected the FAR variance and the BZA followed suit. And that was that.

Well three years later, the Johnsons are still looking to help the dry cleaners find a location and now are looking to subdivide their market to do so. According to Johnson, they plan to set aside a small section of their store for the drop-off/pick-up business (there obviously won’t be any actual washing machines on the premises). He doesn’t expect it to affect what Sara’s offers food and sundries-wise.

GM is a regular customer of Sara’s and knows the Johnsons well, so perhaps he’s a little biased. But he hopes that this application passes.  First of all, it would be nice to have a dry cleaner so close to home. Second, and more importantly, it secures the future of the market by expanding their revenue stream.