DuPont Circle Lives!

Essays & explorations by Steve Plonk

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Steve Plonk
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DuPont Circle Lives!

Post by Steve Plonk » April 10th, 2010, 8:03 pm

DuPont Circle lives! DC was a whole different town even in the early sixties. "Ich bin ein Berlin" said Kennedy. I remember seeing him
just after the inauguration before we moved to Texas. The fifties were a
great time for people of a certain age & status and who could afford a car.
My folks could get on street parking back then. Now it is probably a really lucky occurence. Wolf Trap Theater in northern Virginia was the site of a boy scout camp. Camp Springs, MD was the site of a coed camp called: "Camp Yokomiko". Howard Johnson's was a cheap place to eat.

There were hardly any malls. I remember being impressed with the escalators in a large downtown Sears. You could eat lunch at the Metro Museum of Art and we did. I was just a pre-teen. When the fifties ended I was ten. I was eleven in 1960. I remember egg rolls with my toddler brother when Mamie Eisenhower was still in the White House.

After the inauguration, I once caught a glimpse of Jackie Kennedy
at the Metro Museum of Art, which, as you know, is part of the Smithsonian Institution. "Thems were the days", as the saying goes.

If anyone has any ancient or recent memories of DC and the beltway let them speak with lips that never lie...More to follow...Exploring further...

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Post by Steve Plonk » April 10th, 2010, 9:17 pm

Wireman, et al, check me out at my "Life in the Horse Lane" column.
Hard to believe...fifty, count 'em years ago...almost! I left DC area at or around Feb. 1, 1961. Kennedy had just been installed in office. My family thinks I am a living history book. Maybe I am...I keep on chooglin'.

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Post by Doreen Peri » April 10th, 2010, 11:36 pm

I have many memories from Dupont Circle. I grew up in the DC area and still live only 20 miles away....

Non Sum

Post by Non Sum » April 11th, 2010, 8:44 am

I visited DC in 1959, when Jack Kennedy had just been elected and Ike still resided at 1600. I was greatly impressed by the tourist half of the city, and depressed just as much by the large close-by slums. A big lesson in government by itself. I was full of optimism that JFK would be able to change all of that in no time at all. And, full of pride that I had worked on his campaign leafleting back in Boston (like he needed my help to swing that state :? ).

I got to see Barry Goldwater, and Everett Dirksen, on the floor of the Senate. Well, not actually "on the floor." They were sitting at little desks that seemed quite similar to the ones at my school. No one was throwing spitballs, but they all seemed just as bored and distracted as my classmates back home. I suppose the senators were just waiting to be promoted (to President), just like we school kids were.

I'll say this for the Senate, at least they, unlike the DC residents, spoke a variety of English that I could understand. Makes me think of the day they shot JFK, and a fellow Marine, from Texas, said to me in reference to LBJ: "At least now we'll have a President without an accent."

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Post by Steve Plonk » April 12th, 2010, 5:56 pm

Reply to N.S.: Well, Old LBJ has been dead a long time, too. LBJ died in 1973 right after Nixon was inaugurated for the second time. Nixon had bad karma and was doomed to be ousted. I rejoiced in August, 1974 when
Nixon resigned. I really liked LBJ but his foreign policies disappointed me.
LBJ was a champion of the ordinary man and of human rights.

One time my boy scout troop and I went to one of LBJ's famous barbeques at his ranch. We were having a jamboree right next door and he invited a bunch of us scouts on over. Didn't get within a dozen feet of him. The crowd was thick and my stomach needed barbeque.

I lived in San Antonio, TX after I left the DC area. I went on many DC visits since, but haven't been in the area since 1979. So, anything that has happened architecture-wise in the past thirty years is like "back to the future". I'd feel like "Rip Van Winkle" if I went back now. Tell me what's happening now. I'm just chooglin' down here in Chattanooga, TN.

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Post by Doreen Peri » April 13th, 2010, 11:35 am

There was a small restaurant/club on Dupont Circle called "Food for Thought." This was the mid to late 70s. My friend, Charley, used to be a regular there and I'd stop by to see him and hang out some nights. They served natural foods, salads with local produce, bean sprouts & homemade wheat bread, a variety of soups, etc. The food was terrific. At night they had local musicians, usually acoustic, really great talent. I loved that place!

All the cool people hung out at Dupont Circle.... the musicians and poets, those peaceful spirited types... those who I felt a kinship to.

Not too far from Dupont Circle was P Street Beach .... a small stretch of park where many would also hang out. No, there is no river there or lake or any body of water so no, there is no beach. I don't know why it was named that. I suspect because during the summer people hang out there and lie around on blankets in the grass, picnicking or sunning themselves... sorta had a feeling of being at the beach.

They used to have concerts at P Street Beach. I went to several but one of the most memorable was when I saw the Grateful Dead. I was a teen. It was somewhere between 1969-1972 .... I can't remember the year. All I remember is they played for hours and hours and hours! It was the longest concert I ever went to. It was just fabulous! I got sunburned and didn't get the Dead outa my head for months. They just played on .....

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Post by stilltrucking » April 13th, 2010, 11:44 am

stilltrucking wrote
Lived in Adams-Morgan neighborhood In the seventies
People asked did I have a death wish.

I Ate at Food for Thought on Connecticut Ave
The city still looked like a war zone still
after the riots in 68
Reposted from the New The New Decade Decade

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Post by Doreen Peri » April 13th, 2010, 11:54 am

Aha! ... I don't remember the city looking like a war zone... but interesting that you went to "Food for Thought" during the same era I was stopping in there.

Maybe we met each other back then after all.

If we didn't meet, you surely met my friend Charley who was a fixture there. He lived there, seemed like. lol

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Post by stilltrucking » April 13th, 2010, 12:51 pm

I was not a regular at Food for Thought but I liked the place a lot. Wonderful ambiance

14 amd U street north west neighborhood where I worked and lived was plenty ruined during the riots in "chocalate town."

when I went back in the nineties it still showed scars from the riots, vacant lots where burned buildings had been torn down and burned buildings still standing. I read somewhere that DC still has lead water pipes inblack neighborhoods.


I have heard that thanks to gentrification the city is not as chocolate as it used to be.

I would walk over to Dupont Cirlce when I worked in the cityduring the sixties and listen to the black power speeches. .

I wish I had been there for that Grateful Dead concert

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Post by Doreen Peri » April 13th, 2010, 1:18 pm

During that era, 14th & U was where the hookers hung out, right?

We used to recite a little rhyme because it was so sad....

14th & U
10 and 2

..........

That meant $10 for the sex and $2 for the room for a half an hour. They were pretty cheap hookers. LOL

There are still some lead pipes left all over the country, I'm sure.... DC doesn't install lead water pipes in specific areas for blacks... geez... but I'm sure some of the older buildings still probably have them.

The city still has a large black population. No, that hasn't changed.

You missed a great concert!

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Post by stilltrucking » April 13th, 2010, 1:51 pm

Ten four the only white people you saw after dark were johns.
But there was a cadre of blue collar workers, grocery stores, garages, machinery repair shops, print shops, auto parts stores where white people worked during the day. And plenty of white owned liquor stores. And there were jazz clubs, and after hour joints and The Howard Theater was on Florida Avenue North west which merged with U St near 7th street.

I worked as a transmission mechanic at a garage at 14th and S NW during the sixties.

During the seventies I worked in Anacostia rode the bus at two AM down MLK Blvd. Any street named MLK BLVD is strange(faces come out of the rain) for a white boy at two AM in the morning. Always the lone white on the bus. Sometimes the hair on the back of my neck would stand up I was so scared. Fellow behind me say he going to stick a screw driver through my throat.
I commuted from my home in Adams Morgan to the Blue Plains Waste Water plant in Anacostia.

I drove a truck hauling the sludge from the plant in a tractor trailer. Every time Nixon flushed I was on the other end of the piple to haul the product away.


Ten four on missing a great concert. I have only seen them live once in Nashiville which is where I moved when I left DC in 74.

Sorry about the rant, I heard too many speeches at DuPont Circle.

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Post by Steve Plonk » April 13th, 2010, 2:15 pm

Thank you both for your back & forth posts. I remember going for long visits to DC in 1964, 1965, 1967, and times in the seventies too numerous to count. Friends of mine used to live in Silver Spring, MD and we used to go down to Dupont Circle and hang out with the hippies and keep our ear to what was happening.

I wish I could've spent the whole summer there in 1965 & 1967, but I had to report both to a new high school in tidewater Virginia and down home in my legendary Underhill, GA, to join the service.
In my high school senior year, 1967, we went on a class field trip before graduation, right before the Six Day War and saw both houses of Congress in session, along with the Smithsonian, et al. A couple of us escaped to go to Dupont Circle and we barely got back in time to catch the chartered bus back.

We had a couple of sub sandwiches at a restaurant near Dupont Circle. I can't remember the name. But, that was in 1967. I also visited DC in 1977, but that was a different matter entirely and subject of another posting.

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Addendum:

Post by Steve Plonk » August 10th, 2010, 1:07 pm

Addendum:

Here's a really cool book about DuPont Circle which has many
nostalgic photos in it and a review: See link, below,
8)
http://washingtonhistory.com/?q=reviews ... ont-circle

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Re: DuPont Circle Lives!

Post by Steve Plonk » January 27th, 2015, 2:38 pm

I really liked the "DGS Deli" nearby on 1317 Connecticut Ave.NW, in the Dupont CIrcle area of DC. :D
It recently was number 30 out of 100 good restaurants & eateries in the DC area. 8) :)
When I get back to DC, probably in May, maybe the family & I can eat there. (It's on the
"red line" & you take the (first?) Dupont Circle stop.)

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