DuPont Circle

Part 2 of an adventure which began on Sunday, backdated from a few days later.

DuPont Circle, 1:00pm (cont.)

The phrase "DuPont Circle" refers to one of three things: the neighborhood between Adams Morgan and Foggy Bottom, the Metro station which services it, and the traffic circle after which both are named.  I'm in the actual circle, sitting on a bench (as noted earlier) digesting my lunch.  I'm also people-watching.  It's a habit I learned from my father, although I'm tempted to call it a skill; it takes more than simply passivity to observe the world around you.

The Circle is an interesting place to observe people.  DuPont is a pretty tony neighborhood, an apartments here aren't cheap.  This is the sort of place that young people like me aspire to live in, and by the time we can actually afford it, we're no longer young.  Yet alongside the well-off not-so-young urban professionals who walk through the Circle, Starbucks in hand (or, it being a weekend, who jog through the Circle, earbuds firmly inserted) are families playing ball on the grass, students picnicking, people walking and grooming their dogs, and tourists (or maybe natives - can't tell from this distance) lounging about around the fountain (above, with people and below, with pigeons).

But also meandering about this circle of grass enclosed in a ring of concrete are the homeless men, some sitting alone, some asleep, some whiling away their time playing chess at the tables, and some wandering aimlessly about.  All are black, save one who sits at a table and talks incoherently to the air.  It is interesting that amidst the undisputed affluence of DuPont Circle is an element of poverty, and not the "just-getting-by" sort of poverty, but the grinding poverty of the homeless, the mentally ill, and the dispossessed.  For someone from the well-heeled Midwest, where the poor are kept out of sight, it gives pause (my first exposure to this sort of poverty was in Chicago, but it is even more present here). 

I shouldn't be that surprised, I suppose, since Washington has a rather troubled past.  As little as ten years ago my waterfront neighborhood was a no-go zone, and fifty years before that, it was a crowded, disorganized slum (perhaps a bit strong, but they did raze the area in the 50s for a reason - this author is of the opinion that it was a horrible mistake*).  A slum from which, if you looked the right way, you could see the U.S. Capitol.  The homeless men in the Circle may not be able to see the Capitol, but they could walk there from here.  I wonder if anyone there would do anything for them?  Some things change, some things change only on the surface, and some things always remain the same.

* I should note, for the purposes of clarity, that the Waterside Mall the author mentions has since been torn down and the area redeveloped into a sleek complex of office towers, one of which, I am told, will soon house the Mayor's office, and the glitzy new Safeway I shop at every week.  Redevelopment isn't all bad, you see.