Amanda Mattos contributed to this post.
A recent tip from Dave at Indiefolkforever lead us to a rather unflattering portrait of our fair city. Norfolk & Western, a Portland band that visited D.C. last month, apparently didn’t have a very nice time playing DC9 or visiting the U street/Shaw neighborhood in Northwest D.C. As part of a tour journal posted on Local Cut, the band wrote:
Washington DC proved to be a less pleasant experience for all of us. DC is not the safest city in the world to begin with, and according to my sources, the club we played at was located in a particularly bad area. The guy running sound at the club was hands down the worst soundman any of us have ever worked with. He obviously didn’t give a flying fuck about making it sound good and actually alternated between seeming annoyed and laughing at us when we demanded unreasonable things like, oh, turning the microphones on, or turning down the bass. During Corrina’s set, Joe looked like he was either going to kill somebody or cry. After the show, as we were loading out our equipment, our van was surrounded by what I can only assume were six or seven gang members complete with bandanas and masks over their faces. They just stood there, staring at us shoving thousands of dollars worth of equipment into the van piece by piece. A couple of them even leaned up against the van, casually smoking cigarettes. Corrina got pissed off and said, “You guys want some of this shit?” to which one of them replied, “Fuck yeah, I want some of this shit. I’ve got thirty years, bitch.” They didn’t leave, even after all of the gear had been loaded into the van. I’ve never been so happy to leave a city in my life.
The icing on the cake? We got paid twelve dollars for the gig.
We weren’t at the show, and have had nothing but positive interactions with the venue (which has been home to three of our Unbuckled concerts), so we’d rather not speculate further ourselves about the band’s experience with DC9‘s sound engineer. That they only made $12 obviously sucks, but anyone scheduling a gig the Monday after Thanksgiving must have had some idea it wouldn’t be very well attended.
But forgive us if we get a teeny bit defensive about the line, “according to my sources, the club we played at was located in a particularly bad area.” Those blocks of 9th Street may be relatively less well policed than the rest of the neighborhood, but the idea that a band would dismiss the entire U Street/Shaw neighborhood as being “particularly bad” is obviously silly, and potentially worrisome if other touring acts begin to share the same misperception. The band’s “sources” sound an awful lot like some intern’s parents who haven’t set foot in D.C. for 15 years forbidding their grown children from renting an apartment east of 16th Street. Nearly all of the best live music venues in the city are within walking distance of 9th and U — would Norfolk & Western have felt as uncomfortable were they playing a sold-out show 3 blocks away at 9:30 Club? Given that the last time they came through the area they played at the suburban State Theater in Falls Church, perhaps we could recommend that Norfolk & Western stick to playing venues in less diverse, suburban areas where they would feel less threatened by “gang members.”
UPDATE: Wow, this has got to be one of the longest comment threads we’ve ever had. Just wanted to point out that Dave from Norfolk & Western has joined the discussion, and he seems to be a perfectly nice guy who ended up in a crappy situation and maybe didn’t choose his words all that carefully. So many of our commenters have made really good points about our initial reaction to Dave’s comments, it would be impossible for me to respond to every single one. I would like to say however that as a resident of the neighborhood in question (I live about 4 blocks from DC9), many of you felt as though the point needed to be made that there is an undeniable crime problem in the area — and I hear you. I’ll echo those of you who took the time to express love for the neighborhood but a pragmatic view of the necessity to be careful and aware. I certainly don’t deny that crime happens in Shaw — but having lived here for the last two years and being lucky enough to have become involved in its active community, I felt the need to stand up for my neighborhood. Like I said in the original post, please forgive me if I became a bit defensive.
