Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Sesame Street Mount Pleasant Street Redux


Okay, I'm going to try this again, this blogging thing. Just so I can stop myself from procrastinating on this endeavor I've dug up another little ode to Mount Pleasant that I wrote awhile ago. I'm in love with Mount Pleasant again because getting involved in the Mount Pleasant Temporium got me re-involved with my beloved Radio CPR crew. The other very exciting thing which I will write something new about is that after nearly seven years of hellacious struggle, DC's ABC Board agreed to terminate Haydees Voluntary Agreement with the MPNA. Here's the ruling. Stay tuned....
Thanks to all of you who've encouraged me to blog and especially to the group of ladies who made this mutual pact: This February, do something that really really scares you.

Okay so here's my piece about two streets I love: Sesame Street Mount Pleasant Street...

I used to take my kids to Heller's and then we’d sit in Lamont Park and watch the pigeons fly in formation from one building to another. Then the kids would finish their cookies and start running around on the stage and I’d think about why I love Mount Pleasant street so much.

A lot of people are irked by the moniker “a Village in the City” but I really get it. I love the way the main street is situated not as a pass-through from one place to another, but as a destination for people to go about the business of life. “I’m going to the high street,” my husband says on Sunday mornings. I love how people live out their daily lives and ordinary routines on the street. They go get their hair cut. They go to the dentist. They do their laundry and grocery shopping. They wire money and ship packages home. They buy cakes and balloons for their celebrations. They sit on stoops. They run into their friends, their teachers, kids they taught in elementary school. Oh and now they can go to open mic nights and see their friends bands play at Haydees! It’s like an edgy version of Mayberry – or better yet, Sesame Street – the 1970s pre-Elmo Sesame Street.

My favorite scenes in Sesame Street were the ones on the street – Mr. Hooper’s store, Oscar grousing, kids sitting on the stoop with Gordon. I was entranced by this world – the world of “the street” constructed as a safe and accepting place. I could tell that a lot of the kids depicted on the show had less stuff then me, that their homes were smaller, that their streets were dirtier and that their days were populated by odd and sometimes rather unpleasant characters. But there was a sense of acceptance and ease totally absent in my world, on my tree lined street, in my tiny private school. And unlike me, none of these kids seemed afraid. They were allowed to walk their urban streets, to sit on stoops, to go to Mr. Hooper’s store alone.

This image of being a liberated kid in the city lodged into my consciousness and counteracted all the other 1970s media imagery bombarding me that constructed urban life as something fearful and violent and uncaring.


And now, raising my own children here, I try not to get too nostalgic for my own idealized longings or too overtaken by urban platitudes about street smart kids. I love that they want to walk to the corner store by themselves but I walk behind them at a distance, let them feel that sense of liberation I so longed for but with me close behind. "Pretend not to know me," I say and they race off ahead of me laughing and proud to a store where the shopkeeper knows them.


1 comment:

translucent_eye said...

And a great post at that. It is true that we have a very unique street and a very unique neighborhood. I personally like the "Village In The City" moniker, and don't understand the objections. The one thing that I do wish would change is the desire to argue for the sake of arguing. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my debate - but at the end of the day, I don't want it to get in the way of the village.

I like your analogy to Sesame Street. It has been a long time since I've seen it, but it does bring back to some memories and thoughts.

I recently saw a post basically saying that if we replaced the crowd that hangs out by the 7-11 with a bunch of hipsters, it would be a benefit for the neighborhood.

I think sometimes the things that deter people from moving to our little village - in some ways keeps it "our little village in the city" and that can be a very good thing!