C4 fenty from C1


backed former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee) and imperious leadership. Some Fenty supporters felt


pushed away, said Anwar Saleem, a founder and director ofHStreet Main Street, a group that has guided changes in the Northeast corridor. “They want more inclu- sion in government. They want to be heard,” he said. “Adrian, inmy view, had the opportunity to be mayor for eight to 12 years. The way he handled himself to a cer- tain degree, his communication skills, really hurt him.” Fenty “didn’t communicate with the common man.” Ben Soto, a close friend of


Fenty’s and his campaign treasur- er from his 2000 run for D.C. Council to his unsuccessful re- election bid in September, said: “When he meets resistance, he presses harder . . . It just made him push harder. Adrian’s the type of guy — you’re either with him, or you’re against him. There is no gray area.No pun intended.” Fenty’s successor is D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray. But for Fenty, this is not a time


for reflection. The triathlete in him won’t


allow it — not until his run as mayor ends Jan. 2. “If anything, it’s just sort of


running through the tape,” he said, “to use a sports metaphor.” It’s too soon to gauge how


Fenty will rank among 21st-cen- tury mayors, but he has often urged thosewhowouldjudgehim to look beyond his brash — if at times autocratic — governing style and examine the results. He declined to give an interview to discuss his legacy. Perhaps one of the best ways to


try to ascertainFenty’s imprinton the District is to study the trans- formation of the H Street corri- dor, a project that won him both praise and criticism.


H Street renewal Therevitalization ofHStreet—


an area, like others in the District, that was ravaged by the 1968 riots and decades of neglect — began before Fenty. Williams sought to inject life into the battered boule- vard and create mixed-income communities, goals that Fenty adopted despite suspicion by some in the black community that the project was an effort to price them out of the neighbor- hood.


EZ SU


KLMNO


SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2010 Fenty’s legacy, like his tenure, may be marked by polarizing views If Williams laid the foundation


for theHStreet project, Fenty put down the tracks for what will eventually be a 37-mile streetcar line worth $1.5 billion. “He had a commitment to making sure the streetcar really happened,” said Derrick Woody, coordinator of the Great Streets Initiative under Williams and Fenty. “I think it’s going to be up and running by 2012, at the latest.” It has been a mixed blessing


that has spurredmixedfeelings— common denominators of Fenty’s term. “I don’t see anything he’s done


for me except tear the street up,” said Sheila White, 52, a contract- ing officer for the U.S. Depart- ment of Labor and lifelong resi- dent of theHStreet area. “If they don’t hurry up and do something, these businesses are going to dis- appear.” Saleem, 56, closed his hair sa-


lon and gym after a dwindling customer base said that it was difficult to find parking and navi- gate around bulldozers. It didn’t help that his taxes rose from about $2,000 to $8,000 because of rising property assessments. “We used the streetcar to at-


tract businesses. It motivated people to come here,” Saleem said. David Bowers, 40, said he has


looked out the window of his home at 13th and D streets NE since 1999 and watched groups of young men gather on a blacktop. The blacktop, too, is about to be transformed with a new basket- ball court and dog park, and Capital Bikeshare has installed racks there. “It’s going to be inter- esting to see when the dog park opens, the new clientele,” said Bowers, who facilitates afford- able housing deals for Enterprise Community Partners. He said there has been no


conversation, no direction from the Fenty administration about how different communities can mesh at that spot. Bowers, who is servingonGray’s transition team, said that theD.C. government has an opportunity to guide commu- nities through the changes. “How can we be intentional?” Bowers asked.


Rightnow,HStreet is segregat-


ed at nightfall. During the day, African Ameri-


cans generally frequent estab- lished hair salons, barbershops and clothing stores that survived the riots. At night, mostly white patrons


hit a string of faux-dive bars that brush H Street with an edge similar to that of Brooklyn’s Wil- liamsburg neighborhood. The influx of bars is ironic, said


Sharon Ambrose, a former Ward 6 council member. “I spent years getting rid of bars on H Street. Now, they open a bar a day,” she said. The nightlife has created some


tension as black bar owners and customers have complained about subtle and outright dis- crimination, Saleem said. “I’ve told the owners to stop


that,” he said. Woody mentioned a number of


new minority-owned businesses, including PhiladelphiaWater Ice, as examples of the corridor’s di- versity. But Saleem said that of 148 businesses that have opened in the area in four years, only about 25 percenthave been black- owned.


‘A lot of changes’ Gray, 68, grew up on Sixth


Street betweenKandLstreetsNE in a one-bedroom apartment.His older brother still lives in that same rent-controlled apartment for about $600 a month; the average home sells for more than $400,000. That’s an affordable price for


couples who have flooded the area with babies in tow. At the new playground at J.O. Wilson Elementary School at Sixth and K, toddlers’ giggles accompany the roar of the streetcar line con- struction. In addition to the new play-


MARCUS YAM/THE WASHINGTON POST The soccer field atHarriet Tubman Elementary bears Fenty’s name.


Three men are killed in a car crash in Dumfries


Vehicle hits a building on Main Street, displacing a family


BY MARTINWEIL Three men were killed in


Northern Virginia early on Christmasmorningwhen the car they were riding in ran off the road and crashed into a building, authorities said. The crash occurred a fewmin-


utes before 2 a.m. onMain Street in Dumfries, Prince William County police said. A 2005 Nissan was headed


south on Main Street at high speedwhen itmissed a curve and continued straight ahead, the police said. It struck a median and then hit a building in the 17700 block of Main, the police said. Police identified the driver as


Edwin AlexanderMembreno-Po- tillo, 20. The passengers were identified as Roger Adalid Mem- breno, 22, and Jose Ernesto Me- jia-Lopez, 42. All three were listed by police


as residing at the same address on Cliff Circle in the Garrison- ville area of Stafford County.


Information about whether or


how the three men were related was not immediately available. Police said the driver and


Roger Membreno were both wearing seat belts and were trapped in the vehicle. Mejia-Lopez was not wearing


a seat belt andwas ejected, police said. All three were pronounced


dead at the scene, about a half- mile east of Interstate 95, accord- ing to police. Itwas not immediately known


where the men were coming from or where they were going. The address the police gave for them in Garrisonville is about eight or 10 miles south of the crash scene. Police said a storefront in the


two-story, red brick building, which housed a barbershop, was extensively damaged. An apartment above the store-


front had to be evacuated, but none of the occupants was in- jured, police said. They said the Red Cross was


taking care of the displaced fami- ly and that the family’s four dogs were being cared for by the county’s animal control depart- ment.


weilm@washpost.com You, too, could have home delivery. 1-800-753-POST SF


ground and a modernized build- ing, rising test scores also created a buzz among white and black middle-class parents who began thinking twice about moving to the suburbs or sending their chil- dren to private schools. But ten- sion brewed among some resi- dents. J.O. Wilson was already an attractive to neighborhood par-


ents and newcomers, partly be- cause of outreach efforts by the principal,CherylWarley. ButFen- ty and Rhee gave the school a big push. Fenty “was encouraging of pos-


itive changes the neighbors and Ms.Warley wanted,” said Kimber- ly Hart, a 36-year-old mother of two who has lived in the area since 2004. “I don’t know how much credit Fenty should get, but I’ve seen a lot of changes in my neighborhood in four years.” To see Fenty go “makes me a


little nervous going forward,” said Hart,whose3-year-old son Jack is the only white student out of 18 in his Wilson preschool class. But other longtime city resi-


dents, such as Sheila White, thought they had been unneces- sarily excluded. “I don’t think you saw many


people in the administration who looked like me and weremy age,” White said. “At a community


meeting, you’re talking to some- one who’s 30 and has been here a year.”


Critics said that Fenty failed to


absorb the concerns of longtime residents because he wanted to run the city — as he told The Washington Post shortly after taking office in 2007 — “like a business.” Supporters and critics say that


the city got results but that not everyone was inspired. “A city’s not a business. It’s a


collection of people that work and party and live together,” Bow- ers said. “There is a civic con- sciousness that also has to be nurtured.” Restaurateur Joe Englert,


known for helping to revitalizeH Street with a mini-monopoly of hot spots, said he does not know howmuchcreditFenty should get for the transformation. But “he’s probably the second-best mayor we’ve ever had,” Englert said.


BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST Mayor Adrian Fenty kicks off Capital Bikeshare in September. Fenty, a triathlete, has worked to make the District more bicycle-friendly.


EVY MAGES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Pim Pirintr, left, sister AppleAmy Pirintr and JessicaDeMaio hang out at LittleMiss Whiskey’s onH Street NE. Fenty has been praised and criticized for how development in the area has taken shape.


Give it time, said Soto, Fenty’s campaign treasurer. He compared Fenty to Alexan-


der Robey Shepherd, who headed the city’s public works in the 1870s and served as governor for two years. During his tenure, horse-drawn streetcars became the city’s first public transporta- tion system, sidewalks were con- structed, roads were paved, and sewer and gas lines were laid. But he left his post amid accu-


sations of cronyism — and the nickname “Boss Shepherd.” Historians later called him


“the father of modern Washing- ton.” “At the time, he was a dictator,”


Soto said. “Now, they look at him as someone who sophisticated the city.”


Shepherd’s legacy lives on in a


school and neighborhood: Shep- herd Elementary and Shepherd Park.


stewartn@washpost.com


Thanks, TSA, for undoing years of stranger-danger training PETULA DVORAK


dvorak from C1


be fondled and groped in the same way that author Dave Barry described his intimate pat-down. How do you tell your kids that it’s now okay for people with a blue uniform and a badge to touch them in any kind of an intimate way? “People should refuse to be


molested. And NEVER permit your child to be molested,” one poster railed on Flyertalk. That was one of the few, fulminating comments that was clean enough to print. Talking about touching a child


and generating images that show him or her nude is radioactive, no matter how you tackle it. The folks at child abuse pre-


vention organizations are field- ing questions about what to do, and it’s making people queasy. “You need to have a conversa-


tion with your child based on what is going to happen,” said Nancy McBride, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Miss- ing and Exploited Children in Alexandria. “Tell them they have to conduct this examination and theyhave todoit tobesafe.This is just something that has to be done.” But the key here is to let the


child know that this kind of search can happen “only in an airport, only by these people and only when I’m here with you,” McBride said. Will “playing airport” soon de-


throne the old “playing doctor” game?


I’d already begun to worry


about how these new searches would fly with my own children, who are such seasoned travelers that they remind me to pull out their Crocs when we are heading to the airport: “Those are easier at security,Mommy,” they tell me. So I spent some time at BWI to


see how it’s been going. I talked to dozens of parents


right after Thanksgiving. They were coming in on flights from Phoenix, Florida, Dallas, Los An- geles, Oklahoma City and Toron- to.


Not a single parent said that a


child had been invasively searched, both at airports with the newscanners and without. “We went right through, no


search, no problem,” said Tabitha Chase, who was flying from Okla- homa City to Germany with her 6-year-old daughter and a very hot pink Barbie backpack. “I thought about it beforeweleft for the airport. I figured we’d just do what they tell us to do, since we have to get wherewe’re going. But she didn’t get searched at all beyond the normal metal detec- tor.”


Olga Brand, a former criminal


defense lawyer, said she thought about what she was going to do before getting on plane in Florida with her two children, heading back home to Baltimore.“I do think the pat-downs seem inva- sive. I’d go for the body scanner,” she said. But again, no intense search of


the kids. It was just the usual metal detector and a wave for-


ward. So far, there have been just two


cases making the Internet rounds involving kids at TSA check- points. One is about the 3-year- old daughter of a Tennessee TV reporter tantruming hard when a TSA agent runs her hands up the girl’s legs and arms. This child wasunhappybefore she got to the checkpoint, probably somewhere around the gift shop or candy aisle. The search did not look inva-


sive, but, like all searches of little people who just want to smuggle Laffy Taffy onboard, it appeared needless. And the other case was a video


of a child with his shirt off being searched. The dad said he had taken his boy’s sweatshirt off to make the search faster, probably exasperated by the theater of it all and ready to get moving. The kid didn’t look unhappy. I know mine would be stoked to go shirtless and might even strip down to their Spider-Man underpants. When we finally flew out of


Dulles Airport on Tuesday for a cross-country flight to see the grandparents, I was braced to experience the new procedures up close and personal. Beatenupby the traveling pub-


lic, I suspect the TSA is on a massive kindness campaign. One agent wished my child a happy belated birthday, another — this is the first time in six years and several continents I’ve seen this happen — unfolded our stroller after it went through the X-ray, and a third directed us to a back


elevator for the quickest route when he sawwe were rushing. There was nothing but the usu-


al metal detector, and neither child got a pat-down. My hus- band, totally suspicious because he’s amanwith a linebacker build who was wearing a Charm City Cakes sweatshirt, got a pat- down that was only above his waist. All of the passengers around


me with kids had similar experi- ences. None of the child abuse groups


I spoke with has received a single call about a child being touched in a sexually inappropriate way. “And trust me, they call us right away on anything,”McBride said. My guess is that theTSA’s refus-


al to give details about the kid searches is fueling a needless frenzy among parents. “So tell me this: Can TSA


agents touch a child’s genital area? That’s really what all the fear is about, right?” I asked Greg Soule, a spokesman for the agen- cy.


“We can’t go into specifics


about the procedure,” Soule said. But I begged him to be more specific. “I can say this. They will be less thorough in sensitive areas,” he said. I think that is the kind of detail


that parentworld is eager to hear. Nowhowto deal with the remain- ing six hours of the journey?


E-mail me with your airport tales of woe at dvorakp@washpost.com.


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