By Stephen A. Crockett Jr. • April 10 2019

Back in 1498, a few years after Christopher Columbus pillaged the Caribbean and before he set sail to Trinidad, Columbus landed in the District of Columbia. He asked where he could get a good half-smoke, and the people told him to go to Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street. There Columbus and his crew dined on foodstuffs drenched in chili, and somewhere off in the distance Columbus heard a melodic, thumping sound that he couldn’t register. He asked someone working at Ben’s about the noise and why it had to be so loud.

And thus begins the story of colonization and complaining.

First, the colonizers arrive seeking the culture and resources (i.e., space, “cheap” rent, great food) they so desperately lack, then they seek to destroy said culture, which predated them.

This is a story about a utopian village unbothered by those around it until ships began pulling into port. This is story about white people being on their white people shit.

This is about the Metro PCS on the corner of 7th Street and Florida Ave in N.W. D.C., arguably once the blackest corners in America, and the white people that have moved in only to complain about how the indigenous people before them behave.

This is the story of how the soul of a city gets lost.

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