Thursday, January 15, 2009

Why I Miss the Places That Are Gone


One after one they fall, those old school places that no one will ever be able to replace because they belong to another time. The Market Inn is the latest casualty in the name of progress. I know I'm a little weird, attached as I am to the rock holes and restaurant relics, but I also recognize when history is being obliterated, and that the value of these lost places has no price tag. Well, maybe pieces of it have a price tag which is how I came home with the upright piano from the Roma on Connecticut Avenue. The piano is a great old work horse that needs to be put out to pasture according to Bobby Lee Birdsong, but I can't bring myself to do it and so it sits, moldering in my living room- still reeking of cigarettes and its past life on hot summer days. The Market Inn auction will be later this month.

The new trend towards reviving the concept of having a town center is a good idea, but how did we stray so far from the original? The answer is cars. We built our lives to suit the automobile, and that meant shopping centers with plenty o' parking which lead to the shopping mecca we called malls,  Silver Spring, Rockville and Hyattsville all fell victim to the concept.  They were all once beautiful towns in their own rights, but all fell victim to" progress."  Now their new "down towns" have a plastic interchangeable feel.  I just can't imagine people working their whole lives in a Baja Fresh as they once did in the old family run restaurants. Hyattsville now boasts an arts district, but part of this includes a sterile line up of "urban row homes."  (Somebody needs to go in there with a case of spray paint. )

 I doubt any of the new restaurants will be collecting nude paintings, suits of armor or hunting trophies like they did in the Market Inn, the Orleans House and the Roma. Ulysses Auger, of Blackie's House of Beef once built an annex called Lulu's which was dedicated to his wife's one time experience as a Queen of Mardi Gras. Now that's what I call a theme restaurant!


Sprinkled here and there the old and the odd places are still clinging to life- establishments like Martin's Tavern, Tastee Diner, Crisfield's, Vincino's and god bless Roger Miller's African Restaurant. Franklin's is a great blend of new and old housed in an old hardware store and serving some of the best beer in the area. And one of my all time favorites is The Hitching Post where you can get a "fried chicken sandwich" featuring at least five pieces of bird and, almost as an afterthought, two pieces of Wonder bread on the side. Here's a picture of my mom on her ninetieth plus birthday (you heard me) and her "sandwich." It just doesn't get much better than this.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, L. I have a great appreciation for your documenting the "disappeared" places and their histories. I lived long enough in and around D.C. that I'm sometimes astounded by the number of places that now exist only in my memory. Now back in Baltimore I'm faced with the same phenomenon here (and I've seen it too in Providence and New Orleans).

    But, despite your personal connection to Blackie's and the Augers, I have to say I'm glad Blackie's and Lulu's have bitten the dust. I've worked in a number of establishments in the restaurant business -- decidely not the most enlightened of industries -- and Lulu's segregation-era treatment of it's employes, in the 1990s mind you, was the worst I've ever experienced. And an investigator for the D.C. Human Rights Commission agreed with me.

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  2. I hear you. DC was not exactly a bastion of forward thinking especially where civil rights and equality are concerned. Still struggling with that.

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