The other day I was getting a sandwich at Taylor Gourmet at 14th and T, and spotted a newsletter called D/CITY about local style and arts. It’s a nicely designed little paper, with photos of allegedly fashionable dudes (apparently straw hats and highwater pants are cool) but what I noticed was that they described the area as the “14th & Shaw neighborhood” — as in “in the words of the immortal James Brown, this is man’s world — and the neighborhood of 14th & Shaw might as well be the center of the universe.” It also claims to be the “14th & Shaw neighborhood report.”
While it doesn’t say specifically who makes the paper, the only advertisers are two new residential buildings from the JBG Companies.
Sorry, JBG, you can’t just invent a neighborhood name, let alone a stupid one. Of course, creating new neighborhood names from scratch isn’t new, as in the NoMa area, but I’m still opposed to it. Let’s not call it that. You can’t pull a fast one over on us.
(And I realize I’m giving it more publicity by writing about it, but I thought it was dumb enough to write about anyway. I also felt the same way about “the GaP,” allegedly the area between Georgia Ave and Petworth. Thankfully that died.)
