![]() It pulls even more crowds and more cars, and the street begins to look like a parking lot. A few weeks later, Cities opens a block away, on 18th Street, to become one of Washington's boffo new restaurants - with a dance floor upstairs. But now hundreds more swamp the street outside the million-dollar club, waiting in long lines to dance the night away. People have been coming to Adams-Morgan for decades to eat and drink even before Charlie Byrd and the Showboat made it attractive in the '50s. Look how fast things are happening: Dakota, an explosively popular nightclub, opens on Columbia Road in June 1987. In fact, depending on who's talking, the community is either waking up or being transformed into Yuppieland, a drearily familiar landscape, another glut of trendy shops, chain stores and restaurants.Īnd some people will tell you that a miasma of greed floats in the air, thick and viscous enough to leave a film on your teeth if you smile at what Adams-Morgan is becoming. In Adams-Morgan, fractiousness is an art form, and free enterprise sometimes eats its young. Here, old and new bicker among themselves. It's not merely the typical set of tensions, the longtime residents resenting the new ones. But in Adams-Morgan, nothing is that simple. You'd think the transformation of this once-blighted area into an upbeat street scene, a triumph of small business and entrepreneurship, an asset to the city, would be something to celebrate. Adams-Morgan has rapidly gone from an intersection of mean streets to what is - except for downtown - the most frenzied business spot in the city. Businesses are growing geometrically as developers and entrepreneurs trip over one another, fighting for leverage and space. The tiny business district has erupted, seemingly overnight, into the city electric, reinventing itself almost monthly, crackling with energy and potential. The old clock keeps its own sweet time, as does Adams-Morgan, a quirky world within a city.īut now the clock should be running at double time, hands spinning round in a crazy blur. But it rarely tells the right time, the commonly accepted time the rest of the town perceives as reality. ![]() Sometimes it lingers at a particular time for minutes or hours. See the clock at the top of the curved fac ade? Sometimes it runs. Stand at the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW, where the odors of burgers, burritos, exhaust and sweat mingle, and look up at the old Gartenhaus building, now a trendy clothing store. ![]() IN ADAMS-MORGAN, THE SURREAL IS OFTEN REAL, PARADOXES SELL by the bunch, and metaphors snap at your heels. ![]()
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