When questioned last week about rumors he would return to Ward 6 after a disastrous loss to newcomer Kwame Brown (D) this year, Brazil said: “In my 14 years of public service, I have grown to love the city, its people and especially the residents of Ward 6. Although I am intrigued by the notion of seeking elected office, right now I am focusing on completing my current term in office, my family, my professional career and exploring the best way to use my knowledge and experience to serve the city in the future.”
Brazil once seemed invincible in his home ward, where he has lived since his entry into city politics in 1990, when he defeated Barry-era political pro Nadine Winter (D). Brazil became a favorite of the Hill’s swelling restoration and gentrification crowd; he was handsome, accessible, genial — a friendly figure who frequented local restaurants and bars. But that intimacy was lost when, restless, he decided to try for citywide office and made a disastrous try at the mayoralty during the Democratic primary of 1998 (when Mayor Tony Williams won).
Brazil was first known on the council as one of the “young Turks” — white-collar professionals (Kevin Chavous [D-Ward 7] was another) who sought reform and businesslike financial stability after the chaos of the Barry years.
But it soon became apparent that developers and real-estate interests held his ear.
As head of the Economic Development Committee, he seemed to be the mayor’s equerry, backing whatever development plan Williams’s brilliant and ambitious planning czar, Andrew Altman, came up with. As a result, Brazil got the mayor’s ringing endorsement in this year’s election cycle as the councilman stood for a third four-year term.
That race should have been a walkover for Brazil, but he was up against energetic youngster Brown, who had nothing but old-style knock-on-every-door (and do it twice) politics. Meanwhile, Brazil was suffering from mini-scandals, including a most untimely revelation that he had a “close relationship” with a staffer and had rewarded her with a well-paid job.
The upshot was that Brazil lost badly. Now at 55, he faces an important choice.
Almost sure to run against him are Keith Andrew Perry, a young and rising Democrat who ran against Ambrose in 2002, and Chris Allen, 23, already a power in local Democratic circles. Allen was the organizer of the Howard Dean campaign here. A third possible is Tommy Wells, a member of the school board for the Hill.
Market glows
See the glorious colors of food
If you want to see Eastern Market as it once was, today’s the day.
Here the brick sidewalks gleam from the morning’s damp and crowds throng at every stand. Long lines wait patiently for heavy pale bundles at the poultry stands, for once not really minding the time, for it is part of the drama of food, and it is utterly different from waiting at the checkout line in a chain store.
Eastern Market at its core is a winter place. It swelters and lolls through the long, hot days of summer, barely moving and scented with decay. But come the first frost it awakes, filled with clean cold air; the pace quickens, the eyes open and the feet move.
Piles of fresh greens — turnip, rape, mustard, collard, kale, spinach, cress — wait at the Paik and Calomiris vegetable and fruit stands. Butcher Bill Glasgow presides over his bloody business, deftly cutting with his big fingers immense slabs of red beef.
Meat seems to be everywhere. Jose Canales displays the red hams of Spain, Italy and Smithfield, Va., meat that is as dense as wood. His brother Emilio offers Argentine beef, dark, dark red, and every kind of sausage.
Far down the line, Chad and Richard Glasgow try to compete with seafood — though this is not its time; it is the time for heavy meat dishes, dark tastes, mounds of potatoes, deep yellow acorn squash in butter. Tom Glasgow of Market Lunch, most voluble of all the merchants, carries on a line of chatter that includes local politics, sports and, most of all, the follies of the city government.
Turkey man Mel Inman is the center of attention. Competitor Chris Nicholas has retired, and Inman is supreme, handing out the carefully wrapped bundles of fresh turkeys and marking names off a list while, in the alley behind, large men heave waxed boxes bearing more and more birds into the building.
Tonight, they’ll all leave exhausted. It’s the 127th Eastern Market Thanksgiving on the Hill.
Park pace
25 years on paper
The National Park Service (NPS), after a 25-year gestation, has a new plan for the jumbled, trashy Georgetown waterfront at the foot of Wisconsin Avenue N.W.
The first element to emerge from a quarter-century of paper shuffling? A parking lot to replace the lot at the foot of 34th. Other elements include vaguely detailed triangular park areas that would stitch a strip of parkland from Key Bridge downstream to join the Anacostia waterfront.
Actually, most of the “new” plan has been known for years as the 1987 plan. What is new is the NPS has deleted the interesting idea of a floating restaurant just downstream of the Key Bridge, a restaurant that over the years has been imagined as the former presidential yacht Williamsburg or a steel barge. Plan scuttled.
The NPS has dithered for years about what to do with its extensive waterfront holdings along the west bank of the Potomac — land that is either construction fill from the C&O Canal, the rail bed of the defunct Chesapeake and Ohio line or river marsh and flood plain. The NPS has always found a reason do to nothing.
But now plans are set for construction of the parking lot next spring, with completion by 2006, according to Washington Business Journal’s Eleni Kretikos.
If the past is any clue, it will be your grandchildren playing in this park.
METRO
• There is a D.C. baseball team free of contention and financial strife — the 15-and-under fastball softball team the Washington Senators, based here on the Hill at Tyler School, 10th and I streets S.E. Coach Stan Kolbe (whose daughter Alie throws at 50-plus mph) is crowing about the team’s selection for the national tournament to be held this winter at Orlando, Fla., in mid-February. With a record last year of 20-5-2, these young women could top the league. ...
• The Hill’s “Irish Channel” by North Capitol and Massachusetts Avenue, where the Phoenix Park Hotel, Irish Times and the Dubliner beckon, is celebrating a 30-year anniversary. Dubliner manager Rob Heim, whose pub is 30 years old this year, “isn’t planning anything special, just keeping the word out.”...
• Swank kitchens for the Hill are the provenance of 8th Street S.E.’s latest retailer, Mayfair Avenue, at Stitch D.C., the upscale yarn shop at 731 8th St. S.E. Kitchen stylist Carla Sabloss is offering unusual items for home and kitchen; she’s on hand Mondays and Saturdays. …
• The Navy is making waves: construction has begun at the Washington Navy Yard on the most difficult and important portion of the long awaited “River Walk.” A fence along the Anacostia River shoreline on Navy property will enable walkers to connect with the river when completed. When? That’s another question entirely. ...
• Condo seekers better hurry: JPI, the vast Texas company with projects in a dozen states and Canada, is planning 247 luxury condos on the former Boys Town property at Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. between 13th and 14th, and interested buyers thumbing the impossibly glossy brochure say it’s almost sold out. ...
• Good news from Office of Property Management’s Aimee Occhetti: She reports city money is there — $3 million, more or less, for the rehab of the Old Naval Hospital. Meanwhile, the city is close to choosing between two tenants, the Art of Living Foundation and the Capitol Hill Foundation. …
• Quote of the week, from Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, speaking Thursday to Ward 6 Democrats: “All those great people we had in 2000, we told them, ‘Go to hell — we’ll call you if we need you’. But Karl Rove kept every one.” |
