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my walk today during my lunch break, and some highlights of downtown washington DC:

• the current DC court of appeals is the old DC superior court, most famously where the conspirators who intrigued to murder president abraham lincoln were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by hanging in the year 1865.
• chinatown and judiciary have a lot of old churches - such as the Small Jewish Museum, formerly the oldest synagogue, moved from 6th and G during the redeveopment in 1969 to its current location at 3rd and G, and the oldest Irish Catholic church in DC, St. Mary’s at 5th and H. anyway, the point is that Chinatown sucks, and consists of roughly one block, with all surrounding blocks legally required to have their business names in chinese, warranting absurdities like the starbucks, subway, fuddruckers, and “irish” bars having chinese names.
• a thought I had passing 5th and K, where a liquor store owner was murdered in a robbery in recent years - K Street west of mt vernon sq: glass buildings, lobbyists, suits, rich ppl, law firms, occupy dc, overdevelopment, Georgetown, GW, capital.  K St east of mt vernon sq: projects, abandoned houses, crackheads, dope dealers, hookers, people getting shot dead, poverty, busboys n poets. also, NY ave is such a clear obvious boundary between shaw and downtown - the rowhouses of shaw rise high like a literal wall between those fairly preserved historic blocks and the gutted blocks, parking lots, and empty shells of buildings that consist of downtown DC below NY ave.
• walking down the neighborhoods on either side of the freeway is depressing. the building of the highway forced an entire neighborhood out of existence, and much that remains is a shadow of what it was. now there’s a homeless shelter, a few abandoned apartments, a few too-expensive condos and glass cage office blocks for gentrifiers, some old businesses like auto shops and soul food carry outs that somehow have survived, and other manifestations of urban decay. I get sad sometimes that DC was allowed to get like this, and to lose so much of its character. downtown is just so depressing sometimes.