an open letter to shaw gentrifiers

dear gentrifiers of Shaw,

while some local residents might welcome your low-pigmented skin to their streets, accompanied by increasing property values, ornate flower pots on window sills, foofy bars dotting the former Black Broadway, overpriced organic supermarkets, handsomely groomed gentlemen and well attired ladies enjoying their evening walks, i'm fairly certain they DON'T appreciate you using their public parks as your public dog toilet.

what's most irritating however is how brazenly you let your canine lay a big stinking pile of shit in the middle of center field while my most awesome softball team is warming up. how dare you watch your dear pet pinch out a steaming hot one in pure delight and then saunter happily away as if Bundy Field, at 5th and O streets NW is your widdle baby's very own play/shitting ground. i saw you stroll back to your townhouse with satisfaction and a plastic bag in hand - perhaps you thought leaving aromatic organic fertilizer to infiltrate in between ones cleats or within the seams of a well-aimed softball were some sort of complementary offering to your new neighborhood? perhaps you thought the kids who run after soccer balls and fireflies after our game might be blessed with some super-human night vision in order to avoid your precisely laid traps. do the latinos slave 12 hours a day washing the dishes and cleaning the floors of your new uber hip "dive bar" like to plot their futbol field around a well-formed poop? maybe you think the rather polite crackheads who call foul territory their home after sunset who thankfully, ethusiastically accept our offerings of leftover budweiser - actually aim to set up their beds in your dogs feces, no doubtedly composed of organically raised kobe beef and napa valley summer vegetable filler.

well, as a DC resident, i honestly believe that stepping in your beloved animals' detritus isn't really something that solicits hapiness, enjoyment and appreciation of one's urban landscape. i'm fairly certain that during your leisurely strolls through public spaces your neighbors, gentrified and not, might expect you to salvage one shred of human decency and respect and clean up after yourself and that four-legged creature that is part of your family.

because guess what, i saw you go home, i know where you live and somenday, i might just decide to pick up your warm poo and fling it at your triple locked front door, or your ornate iron fenced in yard, and return it to it's rightful owner. i sincerely doubt you'll enjoy stepping in it, smelling it, feeling it any more than i do.

thank you.