Shopping With a Notebook

By Diasia Ellerbee
Howard University News Service

The pet store Chateau stands to the right outside the window of an Orange Line train. A young man gets on the train with two little boys who are his spitting image. The train stops at Minnesota Avenue. To the left, teenage lovers kiss as they make their way to the next Metro station. Teenage guys with heavy North Face jackets and a D.C. swagger laugh and joke with one another as they walk by.

As I open the door to Rainbows on Minnesota Avenue, the security guard says, “Don’t play with me.”

“What?” I ask, thinking that he was talking to me.

He shakes his head “no,” pointing toward his Bluetooth.

I laughed. “Oh, I thought you were talking to me,” I responded, as I walked past the clothes and straight to the shoe section.

Browsing through the small selection of shoes, I smile when I overhear a woman in line say that she buys her underclothes too big so she can put them in the dryer to make them smaller. She and another woman then start talking about their jobs. “White boys think they black,” says the woman wearing a blue furry jacket and a wig with a short cut.

I leave Rainbow and walk next door to DTLR (Downtown Locker Room), which is filled with chatter as people buy sneakers and clothes. The employees fit right in with the customers because they have no set uniform, just the DTLR tag that’s around their neck.

A boy with an orange shirt, blue jeans and braids asks if my friend and I need any help. “No, just looking,” we reply. He moves on to the next customer. A little boy whose favorite colors must be blue and black shows his mom or grandmother a pair of blue and black Nikes. They match his outfit.

A telephone rings in the background as the radio plays T.I.’s song “Whatever You Like.” A couple of friends joke and laugh about money. “Spending that change, come off that bank roll,” yells one of the guys in his extremely soft voice. With his D.C slang, he continues to joke with his friends.

Everyone seems as if they are in their own worlds as they groove to the music and chat with their friends. A guy with dreds and a red hat dances and sings to the music as he waits for his son to pick out a pair of sneakers.

An older guy who looks extremely familiar stops and stares at me as if we have seen each other before, but we both know it is just another case of “you look like someone I know.”

Jay-Z’s song “I Know” must be the jam. As soon as it comes on, a group of older guys start singing and dancing while one of them decides to buy a shirt.

As I write in my notepad, I notice that the sales reps have a weird look mixed with curiosity on their faces.

Standing behind me, an employee with a white shirt and braids tells his co-worker that he is ready to go on break. He’s hungry, but he doesn’t have any money because he gave his check to his wife. With the call of his name, he leaves to help a guy with his purchase.

Two little boys with a lot of personality come into the store singing along with the radio. “I love her because she got her own. She got her own.” Laughing, I realize it is time for me to go. I close my notebook and walk back toward the Metro.

Diasia Ellerbee covers Ward 7 for the Howard University News Service.

November Madness?

By Sean Woolford

March is an exciting time for sports in America. The start of spring training for baseball. Playoff pushes for the NBA and NHL. Combines, pro days and free agency in the NFL. Oh, and who could forget March Madness? Pools, buzzer beaters and an eventual, clear-cut winner (step it up college football) highlight the month as one of the best of the sports’ year. Before we find the next Kansas Jayhawks for this season, teams must go through the preseason tournaments and non-conference schedule. So what do we know here in November?

Best Team:

I’m almost 100 percent sure that Kansas will not pull a Florida and repeat this year after losing more than 85 percent of its scoring and rebounding this past off-season. Raleigh-Durham seems to have the most talent in the country with the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils. North Carolina returns the most experienced talent with all five starters from a squad that went to the elite eight last year and maybe the best coach in America in Roy Williams. (Duke fans would argue that.) The Tar Heels are deserving of the preseason No. 1 ranking. Memphis lost three starters from last year’s team, but still has athletes who will win Conference USA and make it deep in the tourney. Its Achilles heel is still free throw shooting (ask Xavier) and could be huge down the stretch. Louisville and Connecticut are mixed with experienced talent with UCLA looking for its fourth-straight Final Four out west. North Carolina looks like the best of the bunch and the early favorite for the title.

Best Conference:

BIG EAST! The Big East is by far the deepest, most talented conference in America. This conference sent eight teams to the tourney (the most in America) last year and looks to send 10 this year. It has seven teams in the USA Today/ESPN Top-25 Poll and four in the top 10. The ACC is next with four teams in the Top-25 and with North Carolina and Duke at the top end, the conference can make an argument by season’s end, but for now, let’s give it up to the Big East.

Best Player:

Tyler Hansbrough is the returning National Player of the Year. Luke Harangody will put up big stats similar to last year. James Harden from Arizona State will probably be the first guard taken in next June’s draft but the best two players may have been on display last week in Norman, Okla. If you think last year’s performance in the tourney by Davidson’s Stephen Curry was a fluke, you are terribly mistaken. He is (and you can quote me on this) the best pure shooter and all-around player in the country. He may not grade out well for the NBA because he’s as skinny as a twig, but he can score from anywhere and will prove this year that he can play point guard at a very high level. His counterpart and my favorite Player of the Year is Oklahoma forward Blake Griffin. Imagine Amare Stoudemire with the ball handling skills of a Scottie Pippen. That’s Blake Griffin. He’s averaging 20 points and 20 rebounds at this early stage of the season. While those stats will diminish slightly over the season, look out for him torching his Big 12 competition and being the overall No. 1 pick in next year’s draft.

Final Four Contenders:

Let’s get these out the way. North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, Connecticut and Louisville are early favorites, and I would like to think two of the five will make it to Detroit. I am a fan of Pittsburgh, because Jamie Dixon’s club can play defense of rebounds. Gonzaga is a sleeper with the leadership of Jeremy Pargo and Josh Heytvelt. Don’t forget Oklahoma or Davidson, because all you need is one player to get hot with a good supporting class. (Carmelo Anthony proved that.) Both teams have that potential. My Final Four prediction consists of the Tar Heels, the Cardinals from Louisville, Pittsburgh and UCLA. (I hate this one.) UCLA will find a way to win out West whether it’s a one-seed or not. The Tar Heels will win the East while Louisville will win the South while Pittsburgh will make it out of the Midwest.

There is a lot of season left in college basketball and many things may occur between now and March. But if this part of the season doesn’t get you excited, then you’re not a real fan!

 

 

A Taste of Jamaica

By Pharoh Martin

The intersection of Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue at mid-day is alive with activity and congestive noise. Construction, traffic and a blur of pedestrians are the constant sight while the sun is up. Orange barricades on New Hampshire section off newly laid medians. On one side of the orange divide is the bustling Georgia Avenue/Petworth Metro Station, and on the opposite end stands a two-story Jamaican restaurant that claims to be the “home of the famous jerk chicken.”    

Sweet Mango Cafe sits under the shadow of a hulking half-finished Park Place condominium complex at 3701 New Hampshire Ave. N.W. Its support for political candidates is on full display in the form of banners and signs embedded in the restaurant’s front lawn and taped to the its windows. 

The signage showing support for incumbent Ward 4 Councilwoman Muriel Bowser, independent Council-at-Large candidate Michael Brown and presidential candidate Barack Obama is interrupted by a single, undecipherable graffiti tag that somebody wrote on the wall with a black felt tip marker. 

I am met with the smell of gasoline coming from an outside generator attached to the building when I walk inside the restaurant. About six people are sitting inside the place. A wide-screen television is mounted on the wall. It is tuned to the Weather Channel. The screen shows a newscaster pointing on a map toward a green spiral heading toward Louisiana. The news coverage is reporting about Hurricane Gustav. The sound is muted. Nobody is paying attention.

Inside, the restaurant seems spacious and inviting. Everybody is either waiting for their food or relaxing after finishing their plates. 

One disgruntled gentleman is impatient. He screams that he doesn’t want to wait for his order to be prepared. The order taker calms him down by asking another customer, who is grabbing an order off the counter, if he’d be willing trade his ready order with the disgruntled man because they ordered the same thing. He obliges. The gentleman is calm now.

The lady at the counter asks me if I’m ready to order.

I look at the menu, which is distinctly Jamaican and moderately priced. Laid out before my eyes is a listing of chicken, beef and goat dishes that are curried, jerked or stewed. The most expensive menu item is a curry goat and oxtail combination for $13.20. 

I am ready. I order a chicken patty. The total is $1.71.

Four other workers behind the woman at the couner are doing various duties — cleaning, cooking, preparing and calling out order numbers. Everybody behind the counter has their heads covered, but not in a uniform way. With the exception of the order taker, who’s wearing a black sweater cap, everybody else has on baseball caps  — the type that you would pick up at gas stations and family reunions.

I receive my chicken patty, and it is flavorful. I am able to taste the moist jerk chicken inside the flaky crust. It’s not hard as patties bought on Georgia Avenue can sometimes be.

Bob Marley pictures adorn the walls, as does other Jamaican art. There’s a glass display of cakes and bottled drinks — chocolate and carrot cakes, Red Bull, assorted fruit juices and a carib juice called Grand Slam stud tonic.

The original six people who were there when I entered have dwindled and expanded over the next 20 minutes.

A small group of young males enter through the front door joking with each other in their distinct slang-heavy Washingtonian accents.

A bus driver enters. Customers with Caribbean accents sprinkle in as well. They are greeted by name and exchange pleasantries with the staff. 

The sound from the television is turned on suddenly. All eyes move to the screen. It shows a reporter battling the  hurricane’s wind. She is attempting to hold her ground in the nasty storm while giving the details of what’s going on around her. 

The conversations are indistinguishable. The bevy of District dialects and Caribbean accents are muffled by the sounds of the television and hum of the ceiling fans overhead. 

Because this restaurant sits across from a metro station it seems to be a meet-up spot for Metro employee on lunch breaks. Another Metro operator steps in. He greets the operator already seated and asks her if she’s waiting on a bus. 

“No,” she responds before giggling. “I’m done.”

I look down and see nothing but crumbs staring back at me from atop the brown paper bag that carried the chicken patty. I realize that I’m done, too.