Historic Anacostia along with hundreds of communities around the country are losing their soul, style and history to gentrification, according to Anacostia native Jason Anderson and Modesto Flako Jimenez from Bushwick, New York. During a weekend-long salon discussion series entitled “Taxilandia: Anacostia Experience,” the two artists said they would rather stay in the neighborhoods they were raised in and attempt to maintain the community’s culture, memory and their family’s legacy.
“I’m a community organizer and I’m just invested in this community,” said Anderson at Honfleur Gallery during “Taxilandia.” “Everybody I know here I have a good relationship with. Somebody tried to rob me two weeks ago and my mom said I should move, but no. I’m just connected. I attempted to make plans to relocate but I can’t explain what it is that keeps me here.”
The homogenous enclaves where neighbors are like family and businesses forge authentic relationships with the community are transitioning to: condos grounded by chain stores, eerily long-hallway apartments, and identical neighborhoods with red doors and siding and sans serif font house numbers.
Mom-and-pop stores and carryouts that can’t keep up with rising rents are being pushed out along with D.C.’s Indigenous renters and homeowners, and some newcomers–gentrifiers–are normalizing neighborhood disconnectedness.
“Taxilandia” reveals that D.C. is not alone.
As the multi-city project is “taxiing” through select cities, it partners with local artists and storytellers to amplify neighborhoods that are experiencing gentrification. “Taxilandia” organizers center community engagement by sending attendees a survey of questions and requesting photographs prior to arrival, which are added to the show’s presentation and discussion.
Throughout the discussion, participants have the opportunity to share their memories of what made their neighborhood great, whether or not conditions have changed, and if gentrification is beneficial or harmful to communities.
“Why would I leave? This is where I grew up,” said Jimenez, who curated Taxilandia based on his experience with gentrification in his New York neighborhood. “My grandmother didn’t get to the point of literacy to buy, but she left me her rent-controlled apartment. I’m now in a neighborhood where my apartment would be $3,000 a month and I’m under $1,000, so I’m in the city living pretty much like a homeowner. I know the person that might stick me up. I run a business in my own community and I’m able to travel the world.”
Reflecting Through Art
During the salon, both Jimenez, 42, and Anderson, 50, flipped through photographs spanning the last 30 years in the neighborhoods they grew up in.
Anderson, whose artist name is Jay Sun, shared photos of himself on the former corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE and Good Hope Road SE (now Marion Barry Avenue SE), where a boarded up facade hid a vacant lot where Capital One Cafe now sits. He shared photos of himself on the porch of the Frederick Douglass House, and reminisced about playing football in the adjacent yard with grace from National Park Service rangers, even though it wasn’t allowed.
Anderson also shared a dated photo of himself ordering food from the bullet-proof glass counter at the now-closed Sunny’s Carryout. He said he went there as a kid and ultimately bought French fries for his own children from there until it closed and reopened as the Black-owned DCity Smokehouse in 2013.
“There’s not one person I bet you can name that was born and raised in Anacostia that’s still here,” said Anderson, who ran for mayor of D.C. in 2010 as an independent. “My house was inherited. Our family had a fire and once we got it fixed up, I moved in and took over the mortgage. For years, we’ve been screaming not just for artist attention, but against political misrepresentation, and asking for attention and help and resources. But now that white folks want to bring art to Anacostia, there’s all of the cameras and attention.”
Ward 7 renter Lynn Horton attended the event and shared a photo of a large apartment building near Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road in Northeast that replaced some of her childhood jaunts like Yum’s Carry Out, a laundromat and Discount Mart, which her grandmother told her used to be a bowling alley. She said replacing and rebuilding is not only displacing many residents, but also dims the “old-school” feel of neighborhoods, convenient shopping and watching out for each other.
“Some parts of gentrification I’m happy about, but I miss Discount Mart and the laundromat, but I know it means more space for housing,” said Horton, who has lived in the same neighborhood since she was a year old. “I love my apartment. I now have a garden, and my neighbors look out for me. I don’t know if I will have that if I move and buy a house.”
Thank you. This is a terrific article and captures the issues beautifully.