Bill Troy opened his Ruff & Ready shop in Adams Morgan back in the 1980s. I was one of the many Washingtonians who browsed and bought the solid, used furniture — desks and bureaus and lamps and art — that spilled out onto 18th Street. The neighborhood changed, lost its funky feel, got whitewashed by bars and restaurants — so Troy moved to 14th below U Street in the summer of 1991. “We were going to have our 20th anniversary sale on Aug. 21,” Troy told me last Saturday. “Now we’re having a closing and moving sale.”
After two decades, Troy is pulling up stakes again, because another neighborhood has changed. This will be his last weekend; he closes Aug. 31.
“Everything has to go,” he tells me. Brass beds, fireplace irons, trunks, assorted china sets, lamps and more lamps. Photos, paintings, ceramics.
You know how the animals in the National Zoo got all riled up before the earthquake rattled our windows this week? And their disquiet was a warning that change was afoot? Troy leaving 14th Street is a sure sign that a neighborhood that has fostered homegrown, funky establishments for decades is going to the condos and the corporate stores.
“When I opened up here there were hookers and drugs and gun runners,” says Troy, a bright-eyed, energetic guy from upstate New York. “It has slowly changed, though there’s still some vice.”
The riots of 1968 that burned 14th Street started a half-block north when a brick went through the Peoples Drug store, then spread to the corner of 14th and U. The neighborhood declined for two decades. The Metro came in 2000. Pioneers moved into apartments. Artists and writers took up residence over small bars and restaurants.
Now there seems to be a condominium going up on every corner. A developer has dug a huge hole across from the Black Cat indie music hall for 100-plus condos. Buildings are rising behind chain-link fences everywhere.
There are still plenty of storefronts that remind us we are in an urban village: Yum’s Carryout, a check-cashing store, Sam’s Pawn Shop, an empty lot here and there. They give the place that lovely, disheveled look and edgy feel. I fear the street will be sanitized soon.
“You lose the neighborhood character when the characters get moved out,” Troy says.
Pixie Windsor, who has run Miss Pixie’s furniture store down the street for almost four years, is preparing to move. Her lease runs out in March, and the rent will rise. “We come in and make a place cool and popular,” she says, “then they kick us out. That’s the way it works.”
But does it have to work that way? If the city would enforce district zoning rules that seek to protect local flavor, landlords might not be able to stuff their retail spaces with bars and restaurants. Otherwise, developers looking to make a buck will make 14th Street just like the nightly free-for-all that has made Adams Morgan grimy, dangerous and less livable.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
