Voyages to U Street

I have to go from my home in upper Northwest to the U Street corridor quite frequently, as it is the residence of not only Ben, Ian and Parnes but also some friends of mine from Wesleyan who live half a block away. Formerly, I only went using 13th Street, because it took me right to 12th Street. But there was something about 13th Street I never liked--possibly the stop signs, possibly the excessive lights. In any event, I never felt like I was really reaching my full potential.

So I resolved to try 14th Street two nights ago. This was the first time in awhile that I had been down this extremely important commercial corridor. It's faster in its northbound stretch, which is good, and has a lot of pupuserias, which would be helpful if I ever go during dinner time. However, it has a lot of possibly sketchy commercial establishments. Also, when I crossed over Webster Street, there were 12 police cars on both sides of the block. I don't know what all that was about.

Nonetheless, the police cars probably has to count as a downside. Also, when you get to the heavily gentrified portion atop the Columbia Heights metro, traffic gets a lot slower. On a side note, for some reason there's a Ruby Tuesday's in the Gentrified Zone. Why? Who goes there?

Anyways, overall I would say I prefer 14th Street. It's more interesting and I think it's faster.

Going back from U St last night I took the park, because I had to drop someone off in Dupont first. On Broad Branch road, past the split with Beach Drive, there was a Taurus going 15 mph. There was a line of three cars directly behind him. I didn't know what to do. Clearly, this fool had made the foolish mistake of taking the parkway, at night, without knowing where he was going. But how do you fix it? There's nowhere for him to pull over, and it's very dangerous to try to pass him across the median. Eventually I honked at him out of frustration. I feared that I was being too much of a road jerk, but in fact it got him to stop on a straightaway, allowing the three trailing cars to pass him. So I guess something good came of it.