9th and Q- no vacancy

This image is a chestnut from 2008, showcasing guerrilla citizenry or guerrilla government. Ray, an oldtimer who lives near the intersection of 9th and Q, is credited with painting this abandoned. Not just slapping a random coat of paint on, no, he painted on the wishes and dreams of the neighborhood. A wish for a nice cafe, with chairs and a white table cloth and maybe Starbucks like coffee being served would appear where a rotting corpse of a building sits. If you can read French, which I can't, there is some humor in the words painted.
Well fast forward to today and there is no cafe but rather nice looking residence. On the list on right there was a link to a now defunct blog Off Seventh about the problem area that was the intersection of Q and 9th Streets NW.
Around the mid-00's this area was an intersection of vacancy. Even across the street, opposite of 821 Q NW, was a hole of despair. Ray or some others called it "Lake Woodson", as it would fill up with rainwater. It was not a pretty sight, but if you want to see what it looked like visit https://flic.kr/p/8GNn4 and https://flic.kr/p/7xiSW . Now that former hole in the ground is a residential building with a couple of units, as seen in the image below.


The area has gentrified and there are still vacant holes along 9th Street needing to be filled, which displaces nobody, unless you count homeless squatters and rats. Just around the corner are vacant and possibly vacant properties, those I will deal with next week.