The Georgetown Metropolitan

The ANC met for its October session Monday night (recording here). As GM previewed last week, there were plenty of community updates. Here are the highlights:

Crime:

Two law enforcement representatives spoke to the commission this week. The first was Lt. Murzig from MPD. His job was somewhat easy this month as he was able to report that crime was low throughout Georgetown over the past month. For instance there were only 3 reported thefts from auto, which is quite low for Georgetown. There were 5 burglaries, all of which were from retail stores over the nighttime. He also suggested that anyone who captures a crime on their security cameras (such as someone jumping you garden fence) should send it along to MPD. While they will probably not open an investigation into it, they can document it and possibly use it in the future with other investigations.

Later Cpt. Jon Hofflinger from United States Park Police spoke. With all the national parks around Georgetown (including the waterfront park and Rock Creek) the USPP is the primary law enforcement agency for these areas. He didn’t have any particular reports to offer, but wanted a chance to explain USPP’s role and how they may end up handling crimes occurring in the neighborhood. Peggy Sands from the Georgetowner asked whether the migrant situation has manifested in tent encampments in parkland in Georgetown. Hofflinger answered no, suggesting that that issue primarily centers in the downtown parks.

Emails:

DC council’s email addresses have changed! The end of the emails are no longer @dccouncil.us. If you want to email the council, the address now ends @dccouncil.gov. Keep that in mind!

Parking:

A representative from Councilmember Pinto’s office spoke. Notably she discussed how the councilmember has backed a bill that would shrink parking zones from the ward to the ANC. This is an issue GM has discussed a bunch in the past. In short, under the proposal you would get exempted from the two hour parking limit only in your ANC (i.e. Georgetown). What that would mean is that Georgetown residents couldn’t park unlimited in, say, Shaw or Dupont anymore. But it also would mean that Shaw and Dupont residents can’t park unlimited in Georgetown anymore. Seeing as the point of residential parking permits are to let you park near your home, this would seem to make sense. But people who use their parking permits to park in other people’s neighborhoods have strong feelings about that! Chair Rick Murphy suggested that Pinto was potentially poking a bear with this proposal. And later, former ANC commissioner Ed Solomon called in to complain that changing parking rules is pointless without enforcement, which can seem lacking in Georgetown. GM has heard these proposals discussed for many years, and suggests that status quo bias is extremely strong.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The Black Georgetown Remembered walking tour has be re-scheduled for this Saturday.
• GU alums started Sweet Green. This program is hoping to produce a lot more Sweet Greens.

This is a photo of Georgetown. Except it’s not really. It’s an image produced from scratch by artificial intelligence. In this case, it’s Dalle-2 that generated it. The technology is really profound. It produces the image not from simply grabbing some images off the internet and cutting-and-pasting them together. It comes up with the image from the absolute ground up.

All you have to do is give the system a prompt and second later you get four examples, each of which is a completely new and unique image. For the photo above, GM asked for “Black and White photo of Georgetown DC” and voila. Here are the other photos from the same prompt:

They are, of course, not truly accurate photos of actual Georgetown streets. But it’s pretty incredible how close to real they feel. All three of these photos could be of blocks of lower Georgetown.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Greater Greater Washington endorses me for ANC 2E02!! They say that I am a “a true standout among those who are highly engaged in Georgetown.” Thank you GGW!
• Rare 18th century home for sale on N St.

The return of the canal boat rides to Georgetown has been a smashing success. Tourists are flocking to it, and the news coverage has been fantastic. Their return took years of hard work by Georgetown Heritage (not to mention $1.5 million). On top of it, a huge amount of repair work of the canal itself needed to be done in order for the boat to have something functional to actually ride through.

So it’s all clear sailing for the rides from now on?

Sadly no. There is still quite a bit of canal work that needs to be completed in order to preserve it for generations more. So as a result, the canal boat rides will pause again in about a month. And they will remain paused all the way until 2025. That’s how serious the work is that needs to be done to shore up the canal. As described in a release from Georgetown Heritage:

The Georgetown section of the C&O Canal will be drained for an estimated 30 months to allow for a major restoration of Locks 1, 2, and 5, as well as critical valve and wall repairs. This will enable the Canal to continue to hold water and host the boat program for generations to come. NPS will host a virtual public meeting this Fall to share additional details about this work. Visit their website for meeting announcements, coming soon….

Boat tours are estimated to return in 2025, and future Canal boat seasons will run annually from April – October. During the upcoming seasons, Georgetown Heritage will partner with NPS to host an interpretive program while the boat is in dry dock near Lock 4 of the Canal – offering visitors a unique way to experience the boat.

So get your rides in now!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice old photo of Key Bridge under construction.
• Georgetowner staff raising money to fight cancer via bike.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Flashy new sushi restaurant coming to the former L2 space in Cady’s Alley.
• Research indicates that William Gaston, who GU’s Gaston Hall is named after, owned 163 enslaved people and advocated against equal citizenship for African Americans.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM would like to consider a long lost school building. If GM were to try to compile a Georgetown version of James Goode’s “Capital Losses“, he would certainly include near the top of the list the old Curtis School.

This elementary school once stood on O St., basically right where Hyde-Addison’s playground now sits. As GM explored in this video, the Curtis School was the first of the modern municipal schools built in Georgetown (1875):

(There were, of course, school buildings in Georgetown long before the Curtis School. The Lancaster School, for instance, started teaching students in 1811. It still stands as a private home at 3126 O St.)