#but i didnt grow up seeing many other white people. most of my classmates were black. a lot of the teachers were black.

[digital-sigil]

yknow. something i think about a lot.

how much does the place and environment someone grew up in effect what physical features someone finds attractive? like, not even necessarily home life n all that, just... the kind of people you saw in your everyday life.

[96xie]

2019

a whole summary of this difficult year

2019 was full of unexpected good and bad surprises along with lessons and experiences.

january

spent good time with mocha, wayo and brian

had such a good time with guildies from our game

met up with some other ppl from the same game and didnt feel too good bc i was never good with crowds and/or groups that were already well established

tried tinder for the first time because i thought it would be nice to put myself out there for once

feburary

continued my tinder journey and actually had fun with it. it was pretty scary at the same time because it was such a new experience talking to other people and to have them notice you? because i always knew and felt that i wasnt really the desirable one.

actually hooked up with a guy from last months meetup and hung out twice. thought it was going somewhere because he, too, showed signs to progress further ((was wrong because he lied and showed red flags later))

one major red sign to me: no response after genuinely saying thank you for rides and dinner. im the type of person who always says thank you because im honestly grateful for the little and big things. he basically shrugged it off.

also, a huge liar. yah, big no

i brought him to my friends birthday bc they and himself wanted to meet each other, it was fun while it lasted but stuff happened

towards the end of the month, i cut my ties off with him for being awfully mean to me and also cut ties with my “friends” for having really bad assumptions of me.

i was frustrated with myself at that time bc his cats gave me a bad breakout and i felt super ugly. also i wasnt sad over him, but over the fact that i let myself be treated like a second option. eventually i learned that it was good that i didnt let things go further and that i only deserve the very best.

even though i was hurt, i thought it was a good experience, esp since i havent really been in the “dating game” for years. like it was a just a small step to putting myself out there once again

a week later after that a classmate asked me out and got tons of compliments from him and wondered “the universe really works in crazy ways”

march

met some cool people through the same mobile game on a discord server and they were much better than the first group.

also met this really funny dude in the same group. like he was so fun to talk to and he understood my dumb lingo

remember when my classmate asked me out on a date? it turned out a bit weird. but considering this was my first date in YEARS i thought it was a cool experience. got some carne asada fries outta him

i had the dude i was talking to call me so i could leave the date tho LOL ((he helped me lots, esp how to deal with awkward situations with my classmate. also at this point, i really liked talking to him but i wasnt rly sure if i wanted to date other guys bc i had been hurt previously)

this month was pretty much dedicating most of my time talking to him and i enjoyed it alot

also went to pubs for the first time to hangout with my coworkers. such an interesting place

april

tried rollerskating for the first time ever, ended up with a bunch of bruises but it was cool!

also tried 7leaves for the first time and instantly fell in love with mungbean

also went clubbing in sf with my friends and it was such a fun time like i had SO much fun

i got auctioned off of SAD! that phase was just a crazy ride. while there was many that dm’d me, there was only one special person that i only replied to and continued to talk to him on a daily basis

((honestly, i was scared that i was taking things a bit further with him because a part of me was like “are you ready for this?” and “have you really recovered from that guy?” or “can you give this guy your all?” just alot of overthinking))

spent 4/20 at sf with my friends, and overall had a GREAT time. took too many hits and drank so ya gorl was crossfaded. not sure if i wanna do tht again tho

unfortunately woke up with a swollen face and it lasted for a LONG time.

may

so my face is still swollen, still bad, red as a tomato and at this point i was really hesitant to meet up with the guy ive been talking to. i mean!! my skin was SO bad. i felt like i was gonna make a fool out of myself by scaring him away

but,,,, he was still willing to see me despite my appearance and : ( he was so accepting and typing this makes my heart ache bc he is SUCH a good man : (

i met up with the guy towards the end of the month in sj and first thing he does when i walk up to him is give me this great warm hug and so many smooches !!!!!!! like my heart is melting

eventually we became official !!! he got us an airbnb for the night and we jus spent time cuddling on the bed and honestly i : ( i like him so much

june

my birthday wasnt rly that like “wow” it was actually kinda annoying

my bf flew up to sf where we met up, explored the city and slept the night in at an airbnb. next day went to oakland where i introduced my friends to him!

went to my first festival with several with my friends, including ppl from our same guild from our game and it was SO fun

rolled for the first time and it was SUCH an experience. redosed like twice and ended up hallucinating which is something ill def not do again

also i really wished my bf was with me at that time : ( while i had an extremely fun time, i wish i shared that moment with him : (

july

went to vegas for my cousins 22nd bday. shit was wild

also rolled there.

also threw up for the very first time

a fight broke out at the club and that shit was fuckgin CRAZY and it was RIGHT next to our table

also used alot of my money for the whole trip in which nobody really told me about so …. i was like ok.. fuck …

also my skin was still bad during these past months so it was pretty hard masking it

like really hard. with someone with terrible eczema, its just extremely hard to hide it

august

bf flew to sac!!! he met my mom for the first time and we explored the city and stuff

and went on an ikea date! and! honestly i just really loved spending time with him :c

we also spent time with my friends! they came over also! and ate some fuckgin bomb ass waffles

and then took bus down to la to meetup with some friends from our guild towards the end of the month!

it was pretty nice to be able to stay with my bf in his apartment !!!!!

also some scalding tea but thats rly for another time

to make it super short tho: our friend that we’ve known much longer than the girl he met (less than 3 months) dropped our friendship SO quick lol

september

cousin bonding @ beach, too cold for tht doe

towards the end of the month, my bf flew me down!!! so i spent the weekend with him and like always, only had a good time with him!

AND ALWAYS EATING GOOD FOOD!

october

during this fall semester, i took online classes and one of them was a 8week class. there was a topic about mental health and how we can take care of ourselves better and i just thought it was such an important thing to cover. i feel like its not talked about enough

november

spent thanksgiving with my family down in morgan hill and ate good food! honey ham has a special place in my heart.

went black friday shopping first at walmart, lowkey disappointed in myself because i was bummed out the apple watches were sold out. the materialistic part of me jumped out oof

slept at my cousins then went to the mall! didnt get anything besides really good bulgogi fries. i hated going into stores tho cuz everything was literally crowded. hated it !!!!!!!

went to a small festival in sacramento with my friends at the end of the month and this time is 7 of us (than the usual 5)! it was sososo fun.

also took my coworker with me, it was actually amusing to see bc our group were all asian and he’s the only tall white guy

made hotpot at home and we also went out for milktea and waffles again! sooo good.

december

flew down to see my bf again and only had a good time! went to this garden with beautiful lights and ! ugh! SO pretty!

cried in his bed before my flight back, cried on the plane, cried at home and cried before i slept. i miss him

also racked up alot of hours so i could pay for my tuition and my family’s bills. kinda sucks bc im pretty tired but i gotta do what do i gotta do.

christmas was a bit lonely bc my mom went to the philippines and i dont rly talk to my brother but my kuya came the next day and we ate n watched stuff

overall, it was a whacky year. but im so glad to have met ed. he means SO much to me. a part of me was so hesitant to date him because i mean, he’s man with his life set. i dont have a car, im still in school, i have this part time job where im giving my mom all my paychecks and which the only money im keeping is just my tips (not much), i still have issues with myself and other conflicts and honestly theres much to do, learn and grow from. but he’s so supportive, understanding and loving and i love and appreciate him from the bottom of my heart. most of the time i wonder if im doing and if im being enough for him. i worry about that alot but he’s so patient with me. i laugh alot when im with him and i feel so happy.

did i mention that we are long distance? him being in la and me in sacramento. so the only thing thats connecting us is facetime. maybe once every two months will i see him in person but yep. when i had my first panic attack, i really wanted him right next to me. at that moment i felt even more sad because of course you’re gonna want you’re significant other during a moment like that. but anyways, i always miss him and i always want him next to me and i always love him. i want to hurry up and get my education done with so i can be with him. not to sound like omg im so madly infatuated with him type of thing tho. he’s someone who understands me and knows how to love me.

i hope 2020 treats me well despite all the challenges ahead of me.

[hey-hey-chan]

Demon!Stray Kids

❀ Fantasy/supernatural

❀ Word Count: 1.8K

❤ For @strgaykids who gave me this idea. I know your bias is Felix, but this became a Chan fic because he was my bias :(( and im sorry it sucks i cant write anymore :(( also i didnt reread this so dont hate me :(( 

❀ a/n: So here’s something new ,, there’s no love interest i guess just pure brotherhood :^) Sorry this is so short ,,, im having a bad time of writers block :( 

Chan 

I felt my opponent push me down, my stomach and face hugging the ground a little too intimately. I grunted in pain.

“GET UP! GET UP!” I heard the older man yell. I groaned. I couldn’t stand with my legs feeling like they were jello and that my bleed was spilling all over the mat.

I felt another kick come in contact with my side. I held in a scream, but I still let out a groan of pain. 

“You wimp! You can’t even fight a girl!” I heard another student yell. I knew woman were strong, but I still felt a blow to my ego. Although, the girl didn’t seem to like his statement. 

“Whatever! You can’t even beat me, you asshole!” She screamed, ignoring me for a split second. 

I heard the familiar whistle blow, signaling the end of a fight.

“Song Hyemi wins!” The instructor yelled bitterly. I felt myself being pulled up and to the sidelines. “C’mon boy! You can’t keep losing when you’re in line for the throne!” I heard the other kids laugh at my misery and who their next king was. 

I was ashamed. 

All demon royalty had the strongest of powers ranging from fire, manipulation, and mind reading. Yet, I had nothing. Not even an once of any ability. 

All demons had some powers, yet they weren’t as strong as the royals. Except they were all stronger than me. 

“Good fight, Chan. See you next time.” The girl I was fighting nudged me and gave me an evil smile. She walked over and high fived all the other students in our class. I wanted to be mad at her, but I knew she was an amazing fighter.

“Aw, Chan hyung, it’s ok, your powers will come in one day.” I felt a hand on my shoulder, making me slightly more at ease. I look behind my shoulder and sighed at the red head I call brother.

“Really? Because I’m almost 21 and no sign of any abilities have come in. Plus, I’m not like the usual demons. I have no urge to fight or to go hunting.” I set down my weapons and sit on a bench. 

Hunting. That’s what demons call finding evil demons, yes, there are ones more evil than us, and sucking their souls out. Just like any other species, we had jails, crimes, laws- we weren’t savages. 

“It’s ok bro, you’ll find your drive some time. Plus, so what? You’re a nice guy! That isn’t-” Before my brother could finish his sentence, I felt hands rest on my shoulders, spinning me around.

“Do you think this is a game?” He shouted immediately once all the other kids were in the lockers. “Huh? You think it is? You think dying on the battlefield when millions of people are counting on you? You think that’s just one big joke?” He screamed at me. I stood still and let him project his anger on me, but my brother was a different story.

“Hey, he’s trying, my brother is a good guy, ok?” I held Felix back before he could say any more.

“You’re right, I’m being stupid. I need to train harder...but it’ll be useless without my powers. I’m a strategist, not a fighter.” I confessed. The instructors eyes turned an ashy gray, contrary to his dark charcoal eyes. 

“You better learn how to fight soon or else your younger brother will have to step up instead. Chew on that, boy.” The man stomped out of the room like a child, leaving me and Felix to stand in the empty room. 

I felt a pat on my shoulder even before I could even think.

“Don’t listen to them, bro. You’re a smart guy and maybe our kingdom needs some more smarts than big burly guys.” He joked. I laughed at his childish humor. 

When I was growing up, I always felt that I was different. The other kids cast fires, ice, wind, all of these scary elements, and yet I had nothing. I would always stand and watch in awe while my parents stood off to the side sighing. 

I was pacifist. I hated fighting and everything about it. I hated war; I hated violence. And I had raised my brother that way, leaving him to be one of the most powerful demons in the world with no drive to fight. I could only regret what I taught him. 

I patted him on the shoulder and pulled him to the dining area. 

“Forget about it, let’s just dinner.” I muttered giving him a cheeky smile. 

“That’s true, we have better things to focus on, like how hot the girl who was beating you up was-” I immediately slapped him on the shoulder and laughed.

“FELIX! Please tell me that’s not what you were focusing on the entire time.” I blushed. The boy shook his head.

“Nope! I was focusing on how she was beating your ass to the ground every-” I, being the normal big brother I was, gave him a noogie and made him apologize. Although my brother could just blast him with his flames, he decided not to. Which made me even softer for the kid.

“Ok, ok, I give up!” He got out of my grasp and ran a few steps ahead into the dining hall. 

Immediately as we walked in, the glares and stares were on us. I walked confidently forward towards our food, ignoring the blatent hatred in their eyes.

In the demon world, the best were the cruelest, the most cunning, the strongest: I was none of those. 

“LOSER! You can’t even get one hit in!” I heard one kid yell at me.

“You two are a disgrace to the kingdom!” A girl shouted. 

“Just hand down the throne already-” I heard gasps erupt, knowing that comment was too far, but I just kept walking.

“People are so weird these days, they have nothing better to do but hate on us.” I joked to my brother. He scoffed and laughed at my statement.

“That’s true, let me show them at least one brother has powers.” Before I could stop him, a burst of fire shot through the cafeteria, each span of flames stopping in front of each student’s face. 

Their faces turned from laughter to horror, and I wanted to laugh, but I knew it was wrong. 

“Felix.” I warned. He gave me a pouty look and sent away the flames. No one messed with us after that. 

Suddenly, the doors of the cafeteria busted open, shocking each of the students.

“CHAN AND FELIX! Report to the west wing, now!” 

Felix and I had no time to look at each other and rather ran up from out seats. Unfortuanetly, we had a ratehr large crowd follow us. 

“HURRY!” 

At those words, we ran to the wing, looking for any sign of danger along the way.

“Chan-”

“It’s ok!” I calmed, even though I had no clue what the situation was.

As we reached the west wing, I saw it.

Two deranged demons.

Their teeth were rotten, probably from the others they had eaten. Their hair was falling out and sticking out in every which direction. Their eyes where pure black, not whites to be seen. 

Deranged demons were demons who had diseases and often turned crazy to be honest. Their minds were consumed by the natural evil in us and left them to feed on other demons- which was obviously illegal.

Unfortunately, only royal blood were able to destroy deranged demons in the demon world. That’s just perfect. 

Mostly, these demons roam in the mortal world, looking for souls to compel, but of course, my luck is terrible and two very strong ones happened to be standing in front of me.

I felt my brother take a step forward. I instinctively grabbed him and pulled him back.

“No, it’s too dangerous.” I mumbled. He looked at me with a worried gaze in his eyes.

“Dude, well how are you planning on stopping them?” 

He was right. We were the only royal bloods here besides my parents, and I had no idea when they would come. 

“Ok, well then, let’s umm..” I trailed off, unable to think of a plan.

“COME ON! JUST KILL THE THING!”

“Yeah! Let Felix kill them!” 

“YEAH! KILL THEM!” I heard numerous chants and frightened screams behind us, but they weren’t important. I knew if the demons got ahold of one of us, they would not stop. Draining a royal’s soul would lead the demon to be faster, stronger, smarter-something we obviously didn’t want them to be.

“Well bitch, what are you supposed to do?” 

“I DON’T KNOW!” I whispered at the poor boy who was clearly wanting to fight off the deranged. 

Think Chan think. 

I searched my brain for any ideas, but all of them told me to just let Felix fight hem off. I felt useless in this battle. 

“Fine, you can-” 

Suddenly, the deranged started screaming and running towards us. My eyes widened, preparing for the worst, but the worst never came.

I saw flames fly over our heads and right into the bodies of the deranged. Whines and whimpers flooded the west wing and both of them collapsed, fading into the familiar ashes. 

“What are you all doing standing here?? GO EAT YOUR DINNERS!” Felix and I turned our heads around at the same time and stared at the man. The crowd quickly dispersed at my father’s wishes, leaving me and my brother to gulp in fear. 

Waiting for a scolding, Felix and I held our breath. The king took one step towards us and sighed.

“Just get some rest boys, and next time don’t hesitate to kill them. They can easily hurt you and your classmates.” Our father turned around and returned to whatever he was doing.

Once he disappeared from sight, I let out a big sigh. 

“That was rough.”

I sat in the dorms with my brother as we both shared a room.

“Chan?” I set down the book I was reading and looked at my brother.

“Hm?”

“What happens if we can’t defeat those demons next time? What will happen to us?” He asked sadly. I sighed and pushed the book to my side. Chemistry could wait.

“We die.” I deadpanned. The young boy sucked in a breath.

“B-but, we need to kill them next time. I just, I don’t know, I don’t like knowing I killed someone.” He admit. I gave him a sad look and patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t feel bad about having a heart, Felix. That’s something many demons don’t have.” I poked him on his chest, hoping that’s where his heart was. “Compassion is your biggest strength and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” 

He said nothing at my words and I wondered if I said anything wrong.

Suddenly, I felt his lanky arms wrap around my body. 

“You too, Chan. You’re the nicest guy I know.” His words warmed my heart. I chuckled and patted his arms. 

“Yeah, yeah, at least you’re strong though.” I noted. He unwrapped his arms from me and demonstrated his small flames. I gazed in awe at his abilities- they always shocked me. 

Until he set my lamp on fire.

“God dammit Felix, not again!” 

[onlyjihoons]

diamond in the rough; p.j.h

request: anon asked:  hello! can i please have a bestfriends to lovers imagine? angst but a happy ending hehe// wait! about my bestfriends to lovers request, i think i forgot to add the member hehe jihoon pleaseeee thanks again! have a nice day xx

a/n; i combined your request with an idea of mine, i hope you dont mind^^ special thanks to dain(@pinksausageduo) and tina(@whatabrightplace) for helping me out,, not forgetting allison(@pwjins), sarah(@day6euphoria), xuan(@hwinkinghwi)and rissa(@hwangminn)! y’all might not have helped much but it meant the world to me and rescued me from the ditch,, i love you guys

and im sorry iris @101mess i didnt manage to do up 10 fics:’)

starting line:  “Don’t touch me.”

synopsis:  you never believed in falling for your best friend, until one confesses, in the most shocking way possible

warnings: uhh mild language sliiight steam and nothing else everything’s at pg dw

genre: mafia!jihoon,, angst and fluff

length: | a paragraph | drabble length | a short story | your average essay of less than 10,000 words | a fic too long but too short for a part 2|

masterlist//requests are open

"Hey babe," Jihoon slings his arm around your shoulder, "I heard the first class is Economics, and we have it together,"

You shrugged Jihoon's arm away, walking a few steps ahead of him, "Stop calling me babe, its annoying, and your stupid winkies would haunt me for it too." Jihoon. Your best friend since the 3rd year of middle school, your wingman, your #1 supporter. You were there with him since his awkward emo stage, and now that he became an extremely handsome individual. The friendship didn't change despite Jihoon looking better, but he has a hoard of girls, who named themselves winkies, chasing after him at his every whim. You didn't care much about them, since theyre chasing after false hope. But you were indeed afraid of them, you saw how they bullied a girl Jihoon helped out on her first day of school, and they only stopped when Jihoon intervened. Now, not that Jihoon was a fuckboy or anything, although the ambience he carries says otherwise. A true tsundere, Jihoon is more than he seems below his looks. Sometimes however, he could be cold on the outside, warm on the inside, and the opposite on some days. Knowing Jihoon's personality fairly well, you never phantomed that your best friend would fall for you. Jihoon had his fair share of pretty friends, and you just looked like someone to complement him in pictures. You did develop a crush on Jihoon during the first year you met him, but your hopes to only be crushed when Jihoon started gushing over the prettiest girl in the cohort. They did become an item eventually, but young Jihoon's heart to be broken only a week after finding out his girlfriend lost interest in him. He turned to you, his best friend, which resulted in movie night, accompanied by lots of ice cream. As the both of you grew, Jihoon's heart grew bigger for you as well. He seemed to realise that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and not just visual beauty. You, his best friend, was there with him through thick and thin, better or worse. He slowly started to grow fond of the two dimples that adorned you when you smiled, and how attractive you were when you were extremely focused on a task. If anyone were to glance at Jihoon staring at you, the entire galaxy could be seen in his brown orbs, bursting with affection. What a pity, you couldn't see it.

And what you didn’t know, was Jihoon’s involvement with the 101 mafia.

The 101 mafia was notorious for money laundering, and gang fights. The neighbourhood you lived in was the 101’s turf, any other rival gang that went up against them will end up in shambles, and a free trip to the hospital.

You knew of the 101, but you didn’t really involve yourself in those matters(what an irony though, jihoon was your best friend) as your GPA was much more important than finding a boyfriend or getting into fights.

In school, Jihoon was the stellar student, straight As, cocoa hair in a neat but slightly dishivelled fashion, uniform neatly ironed. However, during his “duties”, school jihoon would be thrown in the gutter, the boy would sport a black leather jacket, milky white forehead exposed below his gelled up fringe. Having a black belt in taekwondo, Jihoon was one of 101’s most valuable assets.

Hence, many girls have their eyes on Mr. Sweet but Strong guy, including one of the leaders of the  Fantagio mafia, Choi Yoojung.

Jihoon used to be part of the Fantagio mafia, until the mafia disbanded for a short while. They wanted Jihoon back, but he was in a much stronger mafia than their own. Yoojung was friends with Jihoon during his time in Fantagio, and inevitably caught feelings for the doe-eyed mafia member. 

Alas, she couldn’t confess to him as Jihoon left Fantagio sooner than she expected, and the underlying feelings never left. She had made a point and a swear to herself that she would do anything to let Jihoon be single, even if it means to harm the people closest to him. 

During economics class, Jihoon kept throwing playful winks at your direction, messing with both your mind and heart. You were used to it though, but Jihoon was exceptionally flirtatious today. You rolled your eyes at him, gesturing your finger to his textbook, mouthing "pay attention".

Jihoon did quite the opposite, dragging his table and chair beside you, then settling himself down with a plop.

"What are you doing?" You whispered, seeing a few classmates turning their head at the commotion.

"Shifting my seat to a more comfortable position," Jihoon shrugged, "It's really hot there, I don't like it."

"It's literally minus thirty degrees outside, Jihoon," You tried to direct your attention back to the economics textbook ,"stand outside if you want."

"Miss Y/N and Mr Jihoon, are you done?" Your economics teacher warned, tapping her book on the teachers' desk, "Leave your sweet talk outside of the classroom, not during my class."

You already feel a couple of glares directed at you, not because of your talking, but because of your interaction with Jihoon. There were quite a few winkies in your economics class, and they are constantly vying for the seat beside Jihoon. However, Jihoon being himself, he would always shift to the seat beside you, as the girls' faces would turn into a scowl. Today was no different, but worse when the teacher openly lectured both you and Jihoon as a pair. 

You lowered your head in embarrassment, not wanting to face the wrath of Jihoon’s stupid winkies after class. Before you could shift your seat, a slip of paper was pressed underneath your textbook.

Don’t be too upset, hmm? I can’t bear to see my best friend like this:( I’ll wait for you in the music room during recess with waffles. And strawberry milk. 

-JH

Your heart warmed at the message, your mood instantly lifted as you listened attentively for the rest of class.

“Dont stop me,” Yoojung seethed, as she pried Mark’s hand away from her shoulders.

“Hey, it’s not right to hurt someone because of your crush on Jihoon,” Mark reasoned, standing in front of her, “and what’s worse, she’s his best friend. Can you imagine how much he’s gonna hate you for hurting her? That’s just not putting the situation in your favour.”

“Do I look like I care?” Yoojung folded her arms, “I have been practically been with Jihoon since he was like fourteen and I know him better than she does.”

“Actually, she has known him since middle—“

“Ok, whatever.” Yoojung rolled her eyes, pushing the frail 127 mafia member out of her way, “I do what I want.”

Jihoon was a man of his words indeed, the boy was seated at the piano seat, two brown paper bags and two bottles of strawberry milk perched atop of the grand piano. Though, he wasn’t playing the piano. He was busy tapping on his mobile phone, presumably some mobile game he was involved in.

You creeped up to Jihoon, then thrusting your hands on his shoulders. The boy let out a yelp, nearly dropping his phone. When he saw that it was you, he placed his palm over his chest, scrunching his nose.

“You scared me,” Jihoon huffed, palm still clutching on his chest, “I thought you were one of the winkies or something.”

You shrugged, taking one of the paper bags and sitting beside Jihoon, “What game were you playing just now? You seemed engrossed.”

Jihoon’s eyes shifted, as he cleared his throat, “Uhh, Mobile Legends.”

“Really?” You quirked your eyebrows, reaching for his phone, “Teach me how to play, I wanna be a cool gamer dude like you too.”

Before you could touch his phone, Jihoon snatched his phone back, raising it up above his head. You frowned, as Jihoon stuck his tongue out.

“What’s wrong with trying to learn how to play games?” You pouted, “I don’t get why you’re so defensive.”

“N—no, it’s just...”

“Hmm?”

“I—“

You pulled Jihoon’s hand down towards you, as you snatched his phone back in victory, your back facing against him as you tried to unlock his phone.

“Yah! Give it back to me!” Jihoon tried to get his phone back, as you finally managed to unlock his phone.

His password? Your birthday.

What surprised you even more was his homescreen, it was a picture of the both of you, during middle school graduation.

“How cute, tsundere Jihoon having our picture as his wallpaper?” You cooed, “We were even so uncool back then.”

“Now you have seen it,” Jihoon tried to grip his phone, “give it back to me.”

“Why?” You teased, “Do you have a girlfriend that I don’t know about?”

“Actually,” Jihoon’s face inched closer to yours, making your heart accelerate at a very fast pace, “I’ve been thinking about this for a really long time, and its also the reason I asked you to come here for.”

“W—what is it?” You stuttered, not used to the proximity of your bodies.

“Y/N, I—“Before Jihoon could complete his sentence, the incessant vibrating of his mobile phone interrupted him, making him curse under his breath as he picked up the call.

“Hello—What?!” Jihoon furrowed his brows, then scrunching up his hair in frustration, “Ok. Make sure you keep a lookout for me.”

With that, he hung up the phone, and looked into your eyes, “Look, Y/N, I’m so sorry, I have to leave now. Something urgent cropped up, and I have to be there.” 

You bit your lip, as you forced out a smile, “It’s fine. Just go.”

Jihoon squeezed your hand, as he left you alone in the music room, two waffles and strawberry milk untouched.

“Hey,” you hear someone call out to you, as you pulled out your earphones. It was the president of the winkies, Yoojin.

You stared at her blankly, as she scoffs, “You really don’t know where to draw the line, don’t you?”

You frowned, not understanding anything she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Yoojin.”

“It’s Jihoon that I’m talking about,” She folded her arms, “Stop being so close to him.”

“What?”

You couldn’t believe your ears, are the winkies really coming at you for something so petty?

“Can’t you see? The oh-so-tough 101 mafia member is so smitten for you, his world revolves around you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, looks like his bestest friend doesn’t know,” Yoojin snickered, along with her other winkies, “Yes, your Jihoon is part of the 101 mafia. A prized one in fact. He doesn’t have a black belt in taekwondo for nothing.”

You were currently in disbelief, thinking that the winkies would do anything in their way to break the both of you up. You knew Jihoon was rumoured to be in the mafia, but he was too good of a student to be part of it. Besides, you were his best friend. He would tell you everything, right?

“I can show you his picture if you want—“ Yoojin’s phone went flying across the floor, glass fragments littering the concrete floor of the classroom.

“I can’t believe you stooped this low to get Jihoon,” Yoojung shook her head as she stepped on Yoojin’s brand new iPhone X, “even a baby wouldn’t believe your words.”

“Choi Yoojung!” She screamed, but no one showed sympathy to her as she picked up her now shattered phone, “Look what you’ve done!”

“What I have done?” Yoojung laughed, “Stopping another uncultured swine from spreading rumours, no?”

The whole class burst into whispers, as Yoojung pulled you by your wrist out of the classroom.

“Look, I don’t normally do this but, I’m sorry.” Yoojung bowed, as she gave you a cup of water.

“What for?” You were puzzled, immediately helping Yoojung up.

“I wanted to harm you...” Yoojung’s head hung low, “and I really shouldn’t because of a stupid crush.”

“Harm me for what?” You laughed, hugging an almost crying Yoojung.

“I wanted to harm you for getting close to my crush, you are really too nice.” Yoojung sniffed.

“Ok, tell me who’s your crush, I’ll help you.” You smiled, as Yoojung shook her head.

“It’s Jihoon,” Your face momentararily stiffens, “and I guess its time to get over him as well.”

“H-hey,” You stuttered, “I can help you, he’s my best friend.”

“No, I can’t.” Yoojung shook her head, “Jihoon has someone else in mind already.”

You slouched, patting Yoojung’s back, “I’m so sorry to hear that, Yoojung.”

“and he has his 101 stuff to handle too, I feel bad to add on to his work load...”

“Wait, 101?” You frowned, “as in the 101 mafia?”

“Jihoon is in the— oh you’re not supposed to know.” Yoojung scratched her head, then standing up, “I’m sorry and thank you.”

“No, Yoojung, wait!” You tugged on her jacket, “what am I not supposed to know?”

“N—nothing.” Yoojung tried to wriggle out of your grasp, but can’t under your iron grip.

“If you’re really sorry, then tell me about it.” 

Yoojung sighed, “Alright, fine. Jihoon is in the 101 mafia, and I’m not joking. He really is in the mafia and is one of the most valued members because of his ability to do well both in school and work.”

Yoojung saw your doubtful eyes, as she whipped out her phone and showed you a picture of the 101 mafia, “Here’s Jihoon,” she zoomed into one of the members in the centre, seated right beside a silver haired man, “he looks different, doesn’t he?”

Jihoon indeed looked different, a boyish smirk stitched on his handsome features, hair all gelled up and a black leather jacket that had “101” imprinted on the left breast pocket. You couldn’t believe it, as his best friend, you had asked him many times about him and the 101. Of course, Jihoon denied it and waved it off with a charming smile, making you forget all about it.“He was in Fantagio before he joined 101,” 

Yoojung sighed as she locked her phone, “And I guess that was when I started developing a crush on him.”

The both of you shared a moment of silence, as Yoojung stood up again, “I know this is a little too much for you to take in, but just so you know, I’m always active on Kakao, so just text me whenever.”

You and Yoojung were more than acquaintances, but little less than friends. You didn’t really know the petite girl well before, but now, you were guessing that you have earned yourself a new friend.

30 minutes earlier

“Jihoon,” Mark gasped over the phone, “Yoojung is going to do something to Y/N.”

“Hello—What?!” Jihoon furrowed his brows, then scrunching up his hair in frustration, “Ok. Make sure you keep a lookout for me.”

Mark sighed, as he slumped into the abandoned desk chair, right outside the music room.

A angry Yoojung carrying a bottle of 500ml Hershey’s chocolate sauce was seen stomping to Jihoon’s class, as she wanted to take revenge on Y/N by pouring the gooey sauce on the girl’s chair. A horrid prank, one would say, but this was no feat to the Fantagio mafia member.

“Yoojung!” She heard someone call out to her, as she froze, and quickly hid the bottle in her uniform jacket.

“Where are you going?” the voice belonged to her crush, Jihoon, who had his hands nonchantly tucked into the pant pockets.

“I was just, going to the toilet,” Yoojung lied, preparing to run off anytime soon.

“But the toilet is the other way, isn’t it?” Jihoon pointed to the opposite direction where Yoojung was headed. She cursed in her head, knowing she was going to get found out.

“So, what were you doing with a bottle of chocolate syrup?” Jihoon pointed at the awkward bulge in her uniform jacket.

She bit her lip, not knowing what to say.

“Are you going to mess up Y/N’s stuff with it?” Jihoon raised his eyebrows.

“Jihoon reading everyone’s mind like a fortune teller, as expected,” Yoojung laughed humourlessly, “Yes, I wanted to mess up Y/N’s seat with it. Why? Are you mad?”

“No, I’m not.” Jihoon shook his head, “I’m just disappointed that my friend would sabotage someone I like through something childish.”

Yoojung hung her mouth open in shock, seeing a different side of Jihoon, where did the 101 Jihoon go? 

“I thought at least you could help me a little with this crush thing, because you have been in a relationship before,” Jihoon explained, then smiled grimly, “and also because I want you to get over me. It’s not worth it, Yoojung, imagine if your boss finds out you’re dating someone from the 101, you’ll be in trouble, you know that?” 

Yoojung hung her head low, sighing, Jihoon was always right, and doing something childish over her jealousy was just really immature.

“Then what about Y/N?” She shot back, “She’s not even involved in anything, what if the rival mafias find out about her? What will you do? Will you protect her?”

“Yes, I will protect her.” Jihoon refuted, “I have even told Daniel about it already. At least she is just someone I like, my best friend, trying to get good grades like how normal teenagers do. But Yoojung, I’m sorry but I only see you as a good friend. Someone I can turn to despite not being from Fantagio anymore.”

Yoojung was now stunned, Jihoon was no longer the immature fourteen year old she met in Fantagio, picking fights at every disagreement. Now, Jihoon has the ability to talk people through reasoning, heck, his face was not helping at all.

“Well then, what do you want me to do?” Yoojung folded her arms.

“Just, don’t try to harm Y/N anymore, and never let her know about my involvement in the 101. Promise?” Jihoon held out his pinky finger.

Yoojung smiled, “We’re still at it now?”

Jihoon nodded, still holding out his finger.

“Promise.” 

Just as you thought your day was going well, Jihoon ditching you, the encounter with the winkies and Jihoon’s involvement with the 101 made it all worse. Thank goodness you didn’t have any other classes with Jihoon for the rest of the day, at least, that would give you a good reason to avoid him.

Or so you thought.

Right after your last lesson, you spotted Jihoon waiting right outside your class, tapping his foot to an unknown beat. 

You rolled your eyes, as you walked past him as if he was invisible. You soon heard footsteps chasing after you, your first instinct was to run.

It wasn’t long until Jihoon caught up with you, as he pulled on your backpack.“Why are you running away from me?” Jihoon panted, “It has been long since I ran after a girl, you know.”

“I don’t think I’m worth running after,” You replied grimly.

Jihoon’s face immediately fell, then placed both of his hands on your shoulders, “Hey, what’s wrong? You know you can tell me anything right?”

“But you don’t tell me anything,” You felt tears stinging your eyes, “How long were you going to keep from me that you’re from the 101?”

Jihoon kept silent, shaking his head, “No, Y/N—“

You shrugged his hands away, “Why did you deny something that I will find out eventually? Calling yourself my best friend, I don’t think you’re doing a good job at that.”

You then walked off, tears streaming down your face.

“Hey, you’re crying as if your boyfriend cheated on you,” Yeri peeled open the 5th triangle kimbap, handing it to you, “it’s not that bad, Jihoon can protect you!”

“Protect me from what?” You sniffed, taking a huge bite, “his lies?”

“H-hey, he’s your best friend after all, calm down on the roasting, will you?” Yeri laughed nervously, then looking at her wrist watch, “Crap, I’m almost late for cram school. I’m sorry I can’t be with you till your tears dry up Y/N, but you owe me one for 5 triangle kimbaps and 7 bottles of banana milk.”

You sighed as you watch your best friend run off to the nearest bus stop outside the convinience store, slumping in your seat. Staring at the 4 kimbap wrappings and 6 empty bottles of banana milk, you sighed again. Why were you such a glutton when you were sad?

Even though it was only 5pm, the sky was pitch black, tiny stars dotting the sky. During the winter, it was common that the evenings would look like nights, darkening the path to home.You were glad that the estate you lived in had brightly lit lamp posts to guide your way home, but there were a few dodgy corners you had to get past in order to get home. Nonetheless, you never had any encounter with anybody you didn’t want to see.

Until today.

You walked the same route back home like you do everyday, safely passing by the most dodgy looking corners of the route. That night felt especially cold, sending shivers down your spine despite having 4 layers of clothing on.

While you passed the last corner, you let out a sigh of relief, thinking that you got through, until a hand covered your mouth and reeled you backwards.

Your first instinct was to scream, but the stranger’s big hands muffled most of your screams. You also tried to wriggle out of the stranger’s grasp, but they were too strong for you.

“You bitch,” You heard him mutter, “How dare you mess with my sister’s boyfriend!”

“I don’t even know your sister!” You panicked, slowly taking out your phone to dial for the police.

“You are such a liar, aren’t you?” He laughed menacingly, “Park Jihoon is Yoojin’s boyfriend, stop making him cheat on her!” 

You finally managed to escape from the man’s grasp, then breathing heavily, “Jihoon doesn’t even like Yoojin, she’s nothing but a delusional bitch who chases after false hope!”

“What did you say?” The man seethed, taking out a pocket knife, hands quivering in anger.

“I said, Yoojin is—“

Before you could complete your sentence, the man was beat to the ground, groaning in pain. Behind the man was Jihoon, not in school uniform but in his leather jacket. 

“Idiocy runs the family, eh?” Jihoon smirked, kicking the penknife away, “Like brother, like sister. Dumb and dumber.”

“You seem to be everywhere, Park Jihoon.” The man huffed, dusting himself as he got up.

“Didn’t your boss teach you not to screw up in others’ turfs?” Jihoon spat, “Yoohyun.”

Yoohyun sent a punch to Jihoon, which the latter skillfully avoided, and twisted the older boy’s arm and flung him to the ground. You gasped at the sight, not used to seeing this side of your best friend.

“Y/N!” Jihoon hugged your weak frame, “Are you alright?”

“I’m f—fine—Behind you!” You pulled Jihoon towards you, behind him was a charging Yoohyun, penknife in hand.

Jihoon dodged the penknife, but too close a proximity that the blade slightly grazed the young boy’s cheeks, leaving a cut. He ignored it, as the continued throwing kicks and punches to the older boy. You could only watch in sheer shock and fear, not knowing what Yoohyun would do next.

After a few punches and kicks, Yoohyun was beat to a pulp, purple bruises on his arms, legs and face. He cowardly limped away from the both of you, muttering a string of curse words under his breath.

You examined Jihoon carefully, the bloody red cut screaming contrast to his milky white skin, red bruise forming at the corner of his plump lips, brown hair moist and dishevelled, eyes still showing signs of rage. You shook your head, as you dragged him by his wrist, back to your home.

“Where are you bringing me to?” Jihoon asked, enjoying you holding his wrist too much.

“To treat your stupid wounds, you gangster.” You rolled your eyes, reaching your doorstep in a matter of minutes.

You were thankful that your parents were working overtime for today, or they would question why you brought a beaten-up Jihoon home. You lazily jiggled the key into the keyhole, then kicking off your school shoes to a corner. Jihoon followed suit, taking off his jacket and putting it neatly on the clothesrack next to the door.

“You can eat whatever,” You waved to the kitchen, “there is cold water in the fridge too, if it helps.”

As Jihoon watched your figure disappear into your room, he groaned as he got up from the sofa, shuffling to the kitchen to get himself a bottle of water. He gulped down the water quickly, letting out a gasp of satisfaction after finishing the bottle.

“I didn’t know you could fight,” You broke the silence in the house, “you do fight well.”

Jihoon turned around, to be met with your petite figure drowned in a oversized pink and white stripped shirt, hair tied up in a messy bun, complete with a pair of white bunny slippers on your feet. He choked on his saliva, as you frantically ran over to him to pat his back to soothe the cough.

“Do you want me to change? You seem...shocked, as if you have never seen me before.” You stifiled your laughter, patting his back.

“N—no, you’re fine. You look cute.” Jihoon unknowingly spat out, blush reaching his cheeks after realising what he just said.

You shrugged, retriving the first aid kit from the bottom drawers of the island, plopping yourself on the sofa, patting the seat next to you. Jihoon obediently sat there, as you swung your legs on the sofa, resting it above Jihoon’s legs.

“You know, I can’t be with you forever to treat your wounds,” You nagged as you dabbed some disinfectant cream on the cut, “I’m not your maid, you know.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And you can’t be always fighting,” You frowned as you dabbed some saline solution, “fighting is bad.”

The both of you then sat in comfortable silence, Jihoon occasionally wincing in pain as the disinfectant came in contact with his wound. You were too engrossed in trying to treat Jihoon that you didn’t notice that your face was dangerously close to his, close enough for Jihoon to lightly place a peck on your lips.

Jihoon’s heart was beating wildly, even though his brain told him otherwise. He was conflicted wheter to confess to you or to kiss you, he was afraid that either would end badly.

“Screw this,” Jihoon huffed, grabbing your wrist, closing in the gap between your lips.You were surprised, but slowly got used to it as he moved his lips with a little more force, moulding against yours. You gasped as his teeth tugged slightly on your lower lip, you could feel him smirk against your lips.i need holy water The both of you eventually pulled away after a good 20 seconds, gasping for air. 

Jihoon pecked your lips softly one more time, brown eyes looking straight into yours, “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell and trust you with my secret, I just didn’t want you to view me differently after I told you about it. I wanted to confess to you earlier on but I was interrupted, so, uh...” 

“Will you be my girlfriend?” Jihoon looked at you with hopeful eyes, gleaming under the ceiling light.

You hugged your now-boyfriend as you nodded, “Of course I would be your girlfriend, you idiot.” 

[lavender-uke]

Just another rant/story... literally happened just now

*trigger warning: violence in neighborhoods*

so to help me out economically, my sister in law and my brother got me a job through this government program theyve been working for.. and basically i will be giving away phones to people with government need based help. so just a few minutes ago, my brother, my baby neice, my sister in law and I were in their dining room... and we were going through the app i would have to use in order to qualify people for their free phone. My sister in law was showing me how all the mechanics of the app worked... and that’s when we heard four consecutive gunshots come from the liquor store nearby our house... usually people make jokes about how you cant tell a  firework from a gunshot, but this was unmistakably a series of gunshots... and it was certainly not a joke

we all froze... my sister in law and i turned to look at my brother, and my brother looked at us... our eyes were wide open in shock.. and i remember seeing my brother’s face and thinking about how similar his faced looked to DK’s when seventeen won their 1st award on show champion... any other time i would have laughed at the comparison, but at that moment i was just riddled with shock... a few moments passed by.. and it felt like an eternity before we heard a series of more gunshots and this time... they were seemingly shooting at each other.. 

IMMEDIATELY, we all ran and crouched. I heard my sister in law scream “GRAB THE BABY” and instinctively I yelled “LOCK YOUR SHIT” before running out of their dining room, quickly going through their bedroom, and into my parent’s kitchen... turning on all the lights, I ran towards the front door.. a little frightened by how close I was to the street at that point...but I locked the door and turned on the light to the front porch... I then ran into all the bedrooms and closed all the windows, despite the windows already being barred from the outside, and turning on all the lights.. 

we then ran back to the furthest part of the house, and we stayed together until we heard cop cars... it took way too long for them to show up.. considering they were about a single block away from our house and the liquor store up the street... I remember hearing my sister in law yelling “You see?! This is why I don’t like you going over there!” and my brother didn’t say anything .. because he was guilty of visiting that place, specifically its weed dispensery that since being placed there.. has seemingly made our neighborhood more dangerous... my sister in law was confused as to why i kept all the lights on, and my brother and i explained that it was better so as to make it seem like people were in the house.. because usually when things like that happen, the people being chased by cops are inclined to search for houses to hide in, but theyre more likely to choose a house that seems empty (though sometimes, they dont give a fuck and barge into your property anyway, thats why you close and lock everything too)

how bad does an area have to be to have a police station, and a weed dispensery within a block of each other?? and then for people to go shooting the place up without caring if the cops are right next door? and then for the cops to show up late? 

honestly, all i could feel was guilt, because my first thought was “I leave for college tomorrow and then I wont have to deal with this anymore because the town i live in is really nice”... and then i thought about all my underclassmen, the students i mentor, that still have to deal with this on a daily basis... and then i thought about all the classmates that felt pressure and hopelessness from happenings like this... and then i felt angry 

and i still feel fucking angry..

but i used to feel angry because i knew it was the social systems fault, and it encouraged me to do better in school and help my classmates.. but now i felt angry because i was seemingly expected to inspire and save the whole fucking town with my success in college or whatever, and i felt angry that my classmates who are pretty much all now fully dropped out of college felt the same way... i felt angry that this was the place i was expected to be in forever.. i felt angry that i had to fucking prove myself to everyone that im a fucking human with abilities and talents using “the power of education” because thats the easiest way to escape poverty ... even though i know many many MANY of my classmates would have really preferred the privilege to practice their artistic or athletic abilities like the white people do in the suburbs.. .the same fucking suburbs that white people complain that nothing happens.. when we’re over here begging for even an ounce of that kind of life... i felt angry because on top of racism, danger, segregation, and poverty, we have to deal with mental illnesses that never get fucking addressed because we’re 1. thinking about too much other shit and 2. dont have the fucking income to afford a therapist

i feel so fucking angry it sickens me, i feel angry thinking about all the fucking people that will tell me “okay, then what are you gonna do about it? You have to stand! Fight for your people! Fight for your rights! Fight for your education” 

like it is infuriating in the first place thinking about how the VICTIMS have to do something about it but mostly............it is NOT my job or even WITHIN MY HUMAN CAPABILITY... WITHIN MY EMOTIONAL ABILITY... AND MY MENTAL ABILITY... TO SAVE A WHOLE TOWN... TO SAVE ALL OF MY PEOPLE... LIKE IM SOME KIND OF MOSES... because thats how it feels to have expectations for the first time in your life... and thats how it is for most kids in areas like mine... because you know what? yes you’re right. standing up and fighting against racism and segregation together will help us all... but not everyone is emotionally capable of the pressure.. and that doesnt make them weak that makes them human.. because trust me when you live your whole life through this shit.. its not as fucking easy to take encouragement from all this.. its not.. this isnt some shit to be like “welp golly this is why we have to fight!” and shoot inspirational shit out of our ass... this isnt the kind of shit we want to be inspired by... this is our reality.... give some people space to deal with it how theyre comfortable.. because yeah they feel angry at the system.. but damn let them feel what they want to feel first.. even if it takes them years and years to be like “okay.. im ready to face this fight” even if it takes them their whole life.. 

because we’re fucking human... and all the emotional baggage is not easy to deal with.. and we didnt grow up with the “lets sit around and talk about our feelings” mentality.. NOR the “there’s a problem here, let’s fix it mentality” .....quite the damn contrary........

so yeah... rant over 

[adambstingus]

The gentrification of Washington DC: how my city changed its colours

Author Uzodinma Iweala was born in Washington DC, and says the city is in my blood, my diction and my style. But how has the city he loves, and where his mother and father worked, changed since his birth?

The last time I returned to Washington DC, I arrived as I usually do, by train into Union Station. It was the end of March, the day before Easter Sunday, and the platforms teemed with travellers coming into town to see the citys cherry blossoms, gifted to the city more than a hundred years ago by the mayor of Tokyo.

The colonnade of delicately blossomed trees along the Tidal Basin walkway to the Jefferson Memorial is a historical and aesthetic delight for visitors; but for me, as a child, they were a harbinger of Washingtons aggressive hay fever season. When I was in high school, I would do my best to run speed workouts on the track while inhaling my own snot and wheezing through pollen-aggravated wind pipes. As an adult, I discovered Claritin and my whole world changed.

When I return by train, weather permitting, I often walk the mile-and-a-half from Union Station to the White House along Constitution Avenue before catching an Uber home, just to reacquaint myself with some of the structures and institutions that make my city so unique.

Here are the Smithsonian Museum buildings, many of which I entered as a child on school field trips. This is the majestic, David Adjaye-designed African American History Museum, so long overdue. There is the Washington monument in marble of two shades because the civil war disrupted its construction. Here is the White House, where the most powerful man in the world resides for a few months longer, a black man like me. This is the Federal Reserve, which for conspiracy theorists is the ultimate arbiter of all our fates. And here are the paths one million people marched along to hear Dr Martin Luther King preach for an end to Americas love affair with structured hate.

Cherry blossom in front of the Jefferson Memorial a harbinger of Washingtons aggressive hay fever season. Photograph: Beau Finley

Washington DC is not a subtle city. Unlike the capitals of other once-great powers which, many hundreds of years old, present a more seamless meshing of monumental memory and daily life, DC is constructed to shout Here I am! I am powerful! to the world.

But walking among the tourists earlier this year, I was filled with both smugness and sadness. Unlike these interlopers, I was born on this soil, within the 70 sq miles divided into four large quadrants that constitute our nations capital. I consider this city and these public spaces my own, yet I am cowed by the vastness of its outsized influence.

I rep Washington DC hard despite not having really lived here since I graduated from high school, and despite spending the past few years working in Lagos. DC is in my blood, my diction, my sensibility and style. I am, though, in love with a city that cannot fully love me back.

****

My DC starts in 1982 at the Washington Hospital Center. I was born in a city that was nearly 70% black. They called it Chocolate City: birthplace of Duke Ellington and Marvin Gaye, home of Chuck Brown and the citys idiosyncratic Go-Go music.

Ronald Reagan was not quite two years into his presidency, and Marion Barry was still a mayor celebrated for having made the jump from civil rights activist to consummate city politician. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was still an active thoroughfare, not yet closed to traffic for fear of assassination attempts or terrorist attacks.

Uzodinma with his father at his high school graduation

There was also trouble. Drug usage and crime rates had steadily escalated through the 1970s, creating a vicious cycle of white flight and depressed municipal revenue, which in turn led to decreased services, increased poverty, worsening crime and further white flight to the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

The DC I entered was a divided city, populated by a minority white elite in the upper north-west section of the city that buzzed around the corridors of power; and a majority mixture of black wealthy, middle and working class with the poorest residents confined to pockets of debilitating poverty, and largely ignored in the citys outward projection of itself.

Yet this great divide did not manifest in the way you might have noticed in other cities.

For as long as I can remember, the majority of Washington DCs police force has been black. For that reason, perhaps, the city has been spared some of the worst excesses of police brutality, exacerbated by racial misunderstanding. But young as we were, my siblings and I still felt the racial tensions in assumptions our friends and their parents made about where we should live (read: not in the affluent suburb of Potomac); in the joking remarks white classmates made about majority black sections of the city (automatically the ghetto) to which they had most likely never been; in the skin colour of the people riding the metro buses compared to those on the subway or driving their cars; and in white peoples presumption of incompetence on the part of the mostly black city officials.

Even more troubling to me was the fact that growing up white in Northwest DC or the surrounding suburbs meant one could get away with not noticing these complex racial dynamics. Im pretty certain that for many of my classmates at the elite private school I attended, my black classmates and I formed the majority of their substantive interactions with people of colour.

But Washington DC has always been a divided city, most obviously between the officialdom of the United States federal government headquartered here, and the informal lives of the people who inhabit the city and its surrounding suburbs. It is a city fractured by its infatuation with official remembrance (as seen in its monuments and museums), and its seeming indifference to the personal memories of the permanent residents whose lives have truly shaped it.

The National Mall in Washington DC. Photograph: Beau Finley

***

People often speak of DC as if it has always existed in its pure state; as if brought to us by virgin birth. In fact, its territory was carved from two slave-holding states. Within its original borders were two slave trading ports: the first in what is now the trendy north-west neighbourhood of Georgetown, and the second in the modern city of Alexandria, Virginia.

Upon its founding, nearly a quarter of DCs population was black, and just under 10% of that population was free. The citys grand avenues and whitewashed structures were built by black slaves and freemen for the powerful white men who met inside to pass laws and uphold social norms that severely compromised the fundamental rights of black Americans.

Slavery is the reason DC looks like a half-eaten sandwich on a map. Slave holders in Virginia feared a growing abolitionist block in the United States congress might eventually push to outlaw slavery in the federal capital, so they petitioned to have the portion of the capital donated by Virginia returned to the state in 1846.

Four years later, congress outlawed the slave trade in the nations capital. Soon after, during the nations catastrophic civil war, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in all states, triggering an influx of ex-slaves from the south who sought safety and opportunity in this relatively progressive enclave.

DC has since seen the rise of a flourishing black community that, despite both legalised and de facto segregation, managed to found the nations most prominent historically black university (shout out to Howard I see you), produce a strong class of black professionals and artists, and amass black wealth in a way few other black communities have done in the United States. This was in part due to the benefits of proximity to an ever-expanding federal government which was generally more progressive than the southern state governments that did everything in their power to limit the freedoms and economic progress of black citizens.

Washington DC has seen the rise of a flourishing black community despite its history of segregation. Photograph: Beau Finley

***

When my mother came to Washington DC in the early 1980s, she had three things on her mind: her new job at the World Bank, the one-year-old baby girl she gave birth to just before earning her PhD, and me as yet unborn but already demanding a larger living space than she and my father had originally intended for their temporary sojourn in America.

My mother found a three-bedroom apartment at 4600 Connecticut Avenue just a few blocks from the Van Ness metro station, and half a mile from the Wesley United Methodist Church where I was baptised, attended pre-school, and where we still attend Christmas Eve service when assembled as a family during the holidays.

For my mother, the decision to live in Northwest DC was practical. She didnt have a car and needed to be close to her demanding job; and she needed something affordable (which much of the city was at that time). When she interned at the World Bank as a young graduate student, her African and black colleagues advised her to avoid Virginia because, despite cheaper accommodation, its political and cultural history made it more hostile to minorities.

The Iweala family at Uzodinmas high school graduation

I almost took a place in Adams Morgan, but the apartment was too dark, my mother told me the last time I was home, as she drove me to Union Station to catch my train back to New York. Adams Morgan is now an overly trendy area to the north-east of Dupont Circle, but 30 years ago, it was more immigrant, more black and Hispanic: the kind of place your mother dragged you after church on Sunday so she could buy oxtail, crayfish and dried cod from the Latin American and African grocers selling the ingredients of the Nigerian food we regularly ate.

Later, after adding two more children, my family moved to Potomac, Maryland in large part because my father, a man who values his quiet and privacy, wanted enough space that he didnt have to see his neighbours unless absolutely necessary.

My mother built her career in downtown Washington DC at the World Bank headquarters, close to the White House. She worked with the international and domestic policy makers and practitioners who often move to Washington in waves as presidential administrations, congressional terms and ambassadorial appointments turn over.

Most of the kids I went to school with were white. They lived in neighbourhoods of white people, shopped in grocery stores with other white people, attended church or synagogue with other white people. For them, and in large part for me and my siblings, DC was wealthy and white even if this wealthy whiteness was hardly representative of the city. Perhaps Im unkind, but Id wager that many of my classmates were unaware, except for the odd cross-cultural or cross-class interaction, that the city they lived in actually looked more like me than them.

I knew this because my father worked in a Washington DC just a few miles from my mothers office, but worlds away culturally, economically and psychologically.

If my mother worked in official DC, then my father, when he finally moved over from the United Kingdom and began work at Providence Hospital in Northeast DC, built his career in unofficial Washington. Located on Varnum Street Northeast, Providence sat in a working-class black neighbourhood not far from the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

On the drive there, I would notice how the houses shrank in size and grew closer together. Some had fake green turf lining their front steps. There were fewer trees and the grass in the beds separating the curb and street was patchy and brown. The streets also had more cracks and potholes than in other areas of the city. Though it was perfectly safe and pleasant, it was evident, even to a childs eye, that this place received less attention than parts of Northwest DC.

When my father first started at Providence in 1993, his patients worked unglamorous jobs as teachers and support staff for government offices, as bus drivers, police officers and firemen. They carried with them stories of a vibrant and diverse majority subculture that, largely unbeknown to greater America and the world, built and shaped DC.

I remember working in Providences stuffy medical library, which occasionally would fill with black doctors and nurses taking a quick break away from the hectic wards. I also remember walking around and hearing an entirely different kind of English spoken: a slow, almost southern drawl that was instantly inviting and comforting. Washington DCs indigenous (for want of a better term) black folk were kind and open. They asked strangers, How is your day? and smiled, because that was good manners.

I liked it, my father told me when I asked what it was like to move from Manchester, England and Edinburgh, Scotland to black America. I was finally able to practise; to use my skills to take care of people and make money to support my family; and to work in a community that appreciates your work even more because you look like them.

Two decades ago U Street was a predominately black neighbourhood, but has since been gentrified. Photograph: Beau Finley

***

All that changed with the citys budget crisis of the mid-1990s. These were the nascent years of the extreme partisanship and Republican intransigence during the (hopefully) first Clinton presidency, that managed to shut down the federal government twice including right after the blizzard of 96 (which meant DC schools were closed for almost two weeks).

As usually happens during spats between the branches of the federal government, DC got tossed around in the middle, and ended up being stripped of its little sovereignty when President Clinton and the Republicans agreed to appoint a control board to oversee city finances.

As with many American urban centres that have seen financial hardship, this meant corporate executives making hardnosed decisions to cut services and save money. One of the casualties was DC General, the citys public hospital, which served lower-income communities across the district. After DC Generals closure, hospitals such as Providence saw an increase in patients from some of the citys more neglected areas, and it wasnt pretty. We saw a lot more gunshot wounds. We saw much more in terms of drug addiction and alcoholism, my father told me.

The worst was that hospitals in Northwest such as George Washington University Hospital where President Reagan was treated after John Hinckleys attempt to assassinate him, and where my youngest brother now works as a resident orthopaedic surgeon would illegally turn these patients away by telling them they could not treat their problems. How can you do that? Its not right! Its reprehensible, my father told me, his voice still brimming with anger many years later.

They could do it because of a dissonance at the core of Washington DCs existence. The people turned away didnt fit the whitewashed image of the marketable city, even though they were the majority of the population. It was the same reason my siblings and I were able to attend posh schools that could achieve a black student enrolment of 10% in a city more than 60% African American, and find those figures cause for celebration.

The NY Avenue area was burnt during 1968 riots in DC. Photograph: Beau Finley

Two of my closest friends in school, Aaron and Ismael, were black (we comprised 33% of the black population of our high school class) and lived in what were then majority black areas. They were always aware of, but hardly surprised by, how different the city looked after a journey of a few miles.

I have to remind myself that its not required that your parents give you a car when you turn 16, Ismael said once, as we sat in the large, blue Volvo station wagon that my parents had bequeathed to my sister when she started driving, and that I inherited when I turned 16. I took comfort in the fact that, compared to some classmates who drove Audis, BMWs and Range Rovers, my Volvo was slumming it.

Ismael lived in the U street area of Northwest on Riggs Street, between 13th and 14th streets. Today the area is full of chic restaurants, multimillion-dollar row houses and condos and white yuppies (and their strollers). Twenty years ago, it was a predominantly black neighbourhood with more liquor stores than trendy restaurants, and more African immigrants from countries like Ethiopia than American immigrants from Idaho and Montana.

This is the neighbourhood where my father asked me to drop the car off with a Ghanaian man who owned a vacant lot full of problematic Mercedes Benzes and Volvos that he fixed for much less than the dealership a few miles away on Wisconsin Avenue. Young black children played in the streets because backyards were small. The pavements cracked over prying tree roots and there were some businesses with boarded windows; a testament to the 1968 riots that decimated a neighbourhood which had been an incubator for the black artistic renaissance of the early 20th century.

At the time, property values were much lower. Ismaels parents bought their row house in the 1980s for less than $100,000 (75,000). His mother was recently offered over a million in cash for that same property.

Whats changed? Quite simply, more and more sections of DC are beginning to look the way city has always thought it looked. I remember one visit to Ismaels neighbourhood where he pointed to a house at the end of the block with a rainbow flag flying from its porch. There are some gay guys living there now, he said.

This was the mid-1990s so being gay was still a big deal. It was also a harbinger of change; an almost textbook sign that gentrification was on its way. First wealthy but socially unacceptable white people who nobody wants to live next to find acceptance among black people who nobody has ever wanted to live next to. Then, years later, Im more likely to run into a white college classmate on the way back from grocery shopping tote bag slung over her shoulder, kale leaves peaking over the edge than I am to see one of Ismaels old neighbours who can speak to the rise and fall and rise of a community that has always been integral to the citys life.

As Ismael put it one afternoon a couple of years ago when he, Aaron and I sat at Hooters in Chinatown salivating over the chicken wings: When we were in high school, our white classmates used to come here with fake IDs to buy alcohol for their parties, and I didnt like that. Now they live here and they dont like that my mum does too.

Has gentrification really benefited Washingtonians? Photograph: Beau Finley

Gentrification is a tough topic to consider, especially given that my education, income and love for kale means I am demographically a gentrifier myself. For the gentrifiers and those in neighbourhoods being gentrified, there are contradictory emotions caused by the interplay of race, class and ambition in the winner-takes-all pursuit of constant growth that we have termed urban renewal.

Like many major cities built around a humming economic engine (LA has entertainment, New York has finance, my city has the ever-growing, ever-giving federal government), DC is an epicentre for urban renewal and thus a locus of intense debate and discomfort around how this change impacts the soul of the city.

DCs economic transformation began when Anthony Williams, the control board-backed chief financial officer of the city was elected mayor in 1999. In his two terms, Williams brought over $40bn of investment to the city. Coupled with an expanding federal government during the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, this led to an unprecedented increase in population, increased pressure on existing housing stock, and a demographic transformation that has seen Washingtons African American population decrease by 7.3% while the white population has increased by 17.8% over the last 15 years.

Washingtons new younger, often whiter money meets its older darker residents in a process that has accelerated under two subsequent mayors, and resulted in the conundrums facing places like the H Street Northeast corridor, where my friend and original New Yorker Mary lived during her time at Georgetown Law School and where an influx of students, hipsters and Hill staffers has brought new economic life, but also the possibility of cultural erasure, to another historically black subsection of the city.

***

One morning in late 2015 when visiting Mary to attend her law school graduation ceremony, plagued by jet lag, I slipped out of her house early to take a walk around her neighbourhood. As the sun rose, I steered clear of the new hipster pubs and draft beer houses on H Street, and instead followed side streets where aged row houses stooped towards the sidewalk.

I nodded to a dreadlocked man waxing a large SUV. I felt myself being watched, followed. From across the road, a man and a woman cat-called me. I pretended not to hear and continued my stroll, but they crossed the street to stand on the sidewalk in front of me.

The fire station in upper Northwest. Photograph: Beau Finley

The man was rail thin, and wore cut-off jean shorts with frayed hems and a blue form-fitting tank top that exposed his sinewy arms. He waved his skeletal fingers at me. His companion, a shorter, rounder woman with close-cropped platinum hair and a pot belly, stepped forward.

You new to the neighbourhood? the man asked.

Just visiting, I said.

Where from? the woman asked, stepping closer. I stood my ground. You thinking of coming here and buying one of our houses, arent you? she asked.

No, no, I said with a nervous laugh, Im from Nigeria thinking that distance would ease the tension.

But you want one of our houses, she insisted. People keep coming up in here buying our houses and shit, changing the neighbourhood and shit. Must be because we got that good stuff.

Then she reached forward and grabbed my crotch. You want that good stuff? Her companion squealed with delight as she cackled: You come with us. We can show you that good stuff.

Um. No, thank you, I said, and quickly stepped on to the grassy patch next to the sidewalk and hurried off. As I quickened my pace, I could hear them cackling to each other. The man in the tank top finger-waved good bye.

I was shocked, mostly by the unwanted sexual contact, but also by the realness of demographic and community change across the city. According to the architecture critic Robert Bevan: In part, we recognise our place in the world by an interaction with the built environment and remembering these experiences, and by being informed of the experiences of others: the creation of a social identity located in time and place.

So what happens when the built environment changes directly beneath your feet; when new money brings new structures, or the reconfiguration of old structures, that define a physical-mental-emotional space?

Iweala as a child. Though the community has changed, Iweala still loves the city

In DC, as people come for the good stuff in this case, the cheaper real estate of fringe communities the shared memory changes, and communities lose their distinct social identities, falling into the trap of market-defined millennial America. Suddenly, the face of a neighbourhood in real-estate brochures and tourism posters becomes an appropriately bearded 30-something white man or his smiling, blue-eyed girlfriend, their ethnically ambiguous interracial couple friends, and occasionally someone who looks like me. Meanwhile, the original resident is left wondering whether each potential new face represents the increased possibility that they will be excluded from their own story.

My friend Aaron who grew up in Northeast Washington DC with his mother and grandmother (and now lives in New York) told me: I dont know if I could really go back and live there. DC for me was close-knit, working-class residential communities. Its like the city wants something different for itself now. I dont know if Id fit in.

A lot of original Washingtonians I know (rich and poor) share this sentiment, even as there is a recognition that many of the changes have improved the overall perception and standard of living in the city. But there is also recognition that these changes have hardly been beneficial for everybody.

Before I retired, the people who lived around the hospital were all black. Now when I go around there, I notice the faces are different: they are all white and Hispanic and suddenly its become a more desirable place to live, my father said when I asked him what he thought about DCs transformation. I just wonder where everyone went. I just wonder why its only when white people move to a place that people suddenly pay attention.

As the citys demographic shift results in better services for once-black areas that now have increased white populations; as newcomers without concern for the citys rich history and implicit biases become more populous, and unconsciously use the citys security apparatus to neutralise difference that makes them uncomfortable; and as the citys police department itself becomes less black, less integrated with the communities it serves, and more aggressive, people lose faith that the city they once knew still wants to know them.

***

Like all things, cities must change even a city as enamoured of the past and memory as DC. But one hopes that, however seductive the pressures of new investment and economic growth, a fusion of social and economic identities, rather than erasure of one to accommodate the other, is allowed to form a new city soul which respects all of its histories.

Months before my friend Mary graduated from law school, she told me I had absolutely no choice but to present myself for her pre-graduation gala: an elaborate affair in which the almost-lawyers and their visibly relieved significant others, parents and sometimes children, dress up for a night of horror that can only be called adult prom.

The event, held at the National Portrait Gallery in the now-revitalised Chinatown, was close to where I had my horror of a high school prom at the Verizon Center just up the street. After a night of awkward conversation and observing awkward flailing that is future lawyers dancing, we left the event tipsy, holding each other for support.

Driven by an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia, I insisted we walk down towards the Capitol Building. We strolled slowly, occasionally turning to admire the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial shimmering in their floodlights behind us.

The street was empty, and the only sound came from our feet crunching the gravel paths as we walked. A soft drizzle fell, catching in the lights and obscuring the buildings so that everything suddenly felt otherworldly, unreal.

I love this city, Mary said, as I took her hand and we walked towards our waiting Uber. I love my city, I replied.

Uzodinma Iweala is the author of Beasts of No Nation. Order the book for 7.37 (RRP 8.99) at the <a href=“https://bookshop.theguardian.com/catalog/product/view/id/37

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-gentrification-of-washington-dc-how-my-city-changed-its-colours/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/180428149967

[allofbeercom]

The gentrification of Washington DC: how my city changed its colours

Author Uzodinma Iweala was born in Washington DC, and says the city is in my blood, my diction and my style. But how has the city he loves, and where his mother and father worked, changed since his birth?

The last time I returned to Washington DC, I arrived as I usually do, by train into Union Station. It was the end of March, the day before Easter Sunday, and the platforms teemed with travellers coming into town to see the citys cherry blossoms, gifted to the city more than a hundred years ago by the mayor of Tokyo.

The colonnade of delicately blossomed trees along the Tidal Basin walkway to the Jefferson Memorial is a historical and aesthetic delight for visitors; but for me, as a child, they were a harbinger of Washingtons aggressive hay fever season. When I was in high school, I would do my best to run speed workouts on the track while inhaling my own snot and wheezing through pollen-aggravated wind pipes. As an adult, I discovered Claritin and my whole world changed.

When I return by train, weather permitting, I often walk the mile-and-a-half from Union Station to the White House along Constitution Avenue before catching an Uber home, just to reacquaint myself with some of the structures and institutions that make my city so unique.

Here are the Smithsonian Museum buildings, many of which I entered as a child on school field trips. This is the majestic, David Adjaye-designed African American History Museum, so long overdue. There is the Washington monument in marble of two shades because the civil war disrupted its construction. Here is the White House, where the most powerful man in the world resides for a few months longer, a black man like me. This is the Federal Reserve, which for conspiracy theorists is the ultimate arbiter of all our fates. And here are the paths one million people marched along to hear Dr Martin Luther King preach for an end to Americas love affair with structured hate.

Cherry blossom in front of the Jefferson Memorial a harbinger of Washingtons aggressive hay fever season. Photograph: Beau Finley

Washington DC is not a subtle city. Unlike the capitals of other once-great powers which, many hundreds of years old, present a more seamless meshing of monumental memory and daily life, DC is constructed to shout Here I am! I am powerful! to the world.

But walking among the tourists earlier this year, I was filled with both smugness and sadness. Unlike these interlopers, I was born on this soil, within the 70 sq miles divided into four large quadrants that constitute our nations capital. I consider this city and these public spaces my own, yet I am cowed by the vastness of its outsized influence.

I rep Washington DC hard despite not having really lived here since I graduated from high school, and despite spending the past few years working in Lagos. DC is in my blood, my diction, my sensibility and style. I am, though, in love with a city that cannot fully love me back.

****

My DC starts in 1982 at the Washington Hospital Center. I was born in a city that was nearly 70% black. They called it Chocolate City: birthplace of Duke Ellington and Marvin Gaye, home of Chuck Brown and the citys idiosyncratic Go-Go music.

Ronald Reagan was not quite two years into his presidency, and Marion Barry was still a mayor celebrated for having made the jump from civil rights activist to consummate city politician. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was still an active thoroughfare, not yet closed to traffic for fear of assassination attempts or terrorist attacks.

Uzodinma with his father at his high school graduation

There was also trouble. Drug usage and crime rates had steadily escalated through the 1970s, creating a vicious cycle of white flight and depressed municipal revenue, which in turn led to decreased services, increased poverty, worsening crime and further white flight to the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

The DC I entered was a divided city, populated by a minority white elite in the upper north-west section of the city that buzzed around the corridors of power; and a majority mixture of black wealthy, middle and working class with the poorest residents confined to pockets of debilitating poverty, and largely ignored in the citys outward projection of itself.

Yet this great divide did not manifest in the way you might have noticed in other cities.

For as long as I can remember, the majority of Washington DCs police force has been black. For that reason, perhaps, the city has been spared some of the worst excesses of police brutality, exacerbated by racial misunderstanding. But young as we were, my siblings and I still felt the racial tensions in assumptions our friends and their parents made about where we should live (read: not in the affluent suburb of Potomac); in the joking remarks white classmates made about majority black sections of the city (automatically the ghetto) to which they had most likely never been; in the skin colour of the people riding the metro buses compared to those on the subway or driving their cars; and in white peoples presumption of incompetence on the part of the mostly black city officials.

Even more troubling to me was the fact that growing up white in Northwest DC or the surrounding suburbs meant one could get away with not noticing these complex racial dynamics. Im pretty certain that for many of my classmates at the elite private school I attended, my black classmates and I formed the majority of their substantive interactions with people of colour.

But Washington DC has always been a divided city, most obviously between the officialdom of the United States federal government headquartered here, and the informal lives of the people who inhabit the city and its surrounding suburbs. It is a city fractured by its infatuation with official remembrance (as seen in its monuments and museums), and its seeming indifference to the personal memories of the permanent residents whose lives have truly shaped it.

The National Mall in Washington DC. Photograph: Beau Finley

***

People often speak of DC as if it has always existed in its pure state; as if brought to us by virgin birth. In fact, its territory was carved from two slave-holding states. Within its original borders were two slave trading ports: the first in what is now the trendy north-west neighbourhood of Georgetown, and the second in the modern city of Alexandria, Virginia.

Upon its founding, nearly a quarter of DCs population was black, and just under 10% of that population was free. The citys grand avenues and whitewashed structures were built by black slaves and freemen for the powerful white men who met inside to pass laws and uphold social norms that severely compromised the fundamental rights of black Americans.

Slavery is the reason DC looks like a half-eaten sandwich on a map. Slave holders in Virginia feared a growing abolitionist block in the United States congress might eventually push to outlaw slavery in the federal capital, so they petitioned to have the portion of the capital donated by Virginia returned to the state in 1846.

Four years later, congress outlawed the slave trade in the nations capital. Soon after, during the nations catastrophic civil war, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in all states, triggering an influx of ex-slaves from the south who sought safety and opportunity in this relatively progressive enclave.

DC has since seen the rise of a flourishing black community that, despite both legalised and de facto segregation, managed to found the nations most prominent historically black university (shout out to Howard I see you), produce a strong class of black professionals and artists, and amass black wealth in a way few other black communities have done in the United States. This was in part due to the benefits of proximity to an ever-expanding federal government which was generally more progressive than the southern state governments that did everything in their power to limit the freedoms and economic progress of black citizens.

Washington DC has seen the rise of a flourishing black community despite its history of segregation. Photograph: Beau Finley

***

When my mother came to Washington DC in the early 1980s, she had three things on her mind: her new job at the World Bank, the one-year-old baby girl she gave birth to just before earning her PhD, and me as yet unborn but already demanding a larger living space than she and my father had originally intended for their temporary sojourn in America.

My mother found a three-bedroom apartment at 4600 Connecticut Avenue just a few blocks from the Van Ness metro station, and half a mile from the Wesley United Methodist Church where I was baptised, attended pre-school, and where we still attend Christmas Eve service when assembled as a family during the holidays.

For my mother, the decision to live in Northwest DC was practical. She didnt have a car and needed to be close to her demanding job; and she needed something affordable (which much of the city was at that time). When she interned at the World Bank as a young graduate student, her African and black colleagues advised her to avoid Virginia because, despite cheaper accommodation, its political and cultural history made it more hostile to minorities.

The Iweala family at Uzodinmas high school graduation

I almost took a place in Adams Morgan, but the apartment was too dark, my mother told me the last time I was home, as she drove me to Union Station to catch my train back to New York. Adams Morgan is now an overly trendy area to the north-east of Dupont Circle, but 30 years ago, it was more immigrant, more black and Hispanic: the kind of place your mother dragged you after church on Sunday so she could buy oxtail, crayfish and dried cod from the Latin American and African grocers selling the ingredients of the Nigerian food we regularly ate.

Later, after adding two more children, my family moved to Potomac, Maryland in large part because my father, a man who values his quiet and privacy, wanted enough space that he didnt have to see his neighbours unless absolutely necessary.

My mother built her career in downtown Washington DC at the World Bank headquarters, close to the White House. She worked with the international and domestic policy makers and practitioners who often move to Washington in waves as presidential administrations, congressional terms and ambassadorial appointments turn over.

Most of the kids I went to school with were white. They lived in neighbourhoods of white people, shopped in grocery stores with other white people, attended church or synagogue with other white people. For them, and in large part for me and my siblings, DC was wealthy and white even if this wealthy whiteness was hardly representative of the city. Perhaps Im unkind, but Id wager that many of my classmates were unaware, except for the odd cross-cultural or cross-class interaction, that the city they lived in actually looked more like me than them.

I knew this because my father worked in a Washington DC just a few miles from my mothers office, but worlds away culturally, economically and psychologically.

If my mother worked in official DC, then my father, when he finally moved over from the United Kingdom and began work at Providence Hospital in Northeast DC, built his career in unofficial Washington. Located on Varnum Street Northeast, Providence sat in a working-class black neighbourhood not far from the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

On the drive there, I would notice how the houses shrank in size and grew closer together. Some had fake green turf lining their front steps. There were fewer trees and the grass in the beds separating the curb and street was patchy and brown. The streets also had more cracks and potholes than in other areas of the city. Though it was perfectly safe and pleasant, it was evident, even to a childs eye, that this place received less attention than parts of Northwest DC.

When my father first started at Providence in 1993, his patients worked unglamorous jobs as teachers and support staff for government offices, as bus drivers, police officers and firemen. They carried with them stories of a vibrant and diverse majority subculture that, largely unbeknown to greater America and the world, built and shaped DC.

I remember working in Providences stuffy medical library, which occasionally would fill with black doctors and nurses taking a quick break away from the hectic wards. I also remember walking around and hearing an entirely different kind of English spoken: a slow, almost southern drawl that was instantly inviting and comforting. Washington DCs indigenous (for want of a better term) black folk were kind and open. They asked strangers, How is your day? and smiled, because that was good manners.

I liked it, my father told me when I asked what it was like to move from Manchester, England and Edinburgh, Scotland to black America. I was finally able to practise; to use my skills to take care of people and make money to support my family; and to work in a community that appreciates your work even more because you look like them.

Two decades ago U Street was a predominately black neighbourhood, but has since been gentrified. Photograph: Beau Finley

***

All that changed with the citys budget crisis of the mid-1990s. These were the nascent years of the extreme partisanship and Republican intransigence during the (hopefully) first Clinton presidency, that managed to shut down the federal government twice including right after the blizzard of 96 (which meant DC schools were closed for almost two weeks).

As usually happens during spats between the branches of the federal government, DC got tossed around in the middle, and ended up being stripped of its little sovereignty when President Clinton and the Republicans agreed to appoint a control board to oversee city finances.

As with many American urban centres that have seen financial hardship, this meant corporate executives making hardnosed decisions to cut services and save money. One of the casualties was DC General, the citys public hospital, which served lower-income communities across the district. After DC Generals closure, hospitals such as Providence saw an increase in patients from some of the citys more neglected areas, and it wasnt pretty. We saw a lot more gunshot wounds. We saw much more in terms of drug addiction and alcoholism, my father told me.

The worst was that hospitals in Northwest such as George Washington University Hospital where President Reagan was treated after John Hinckleys attempt to assassinate him, and where my youngest brother now works as a resident orthopaedic surgeon would illegally turn these patients away by telling them they could not treat their problems. How can you do that? Its not right! Its reprehensible, my father told me, his voice still brimming with anger many years later.

They could do it because of a dissonance at the core of Washington DCs existence. The people turned away didnt fit the whitewashed image of the marketable city, even though they were the majority of the population. It was the same reason my siblings and I were able to attend posh schools that could achieve a black student enrolment of 10% in a city more than 60% African American, and find those figures cause for celebration.

The NY Avenue area was burnt during 1968 riots in DC. Photograph: Beau Finley

Two of my closest friends in school, Aaron and Ismael, were black (we comprised 33% of the black population of our high school class) and lived in what were then majority black areas. They were always aware of, but hardly surprised by, how different the city looked after a journey of a few miles.

I have to remind myself that its not required that your parents give you a car when you turn 16, Ismael said once, as we sat in the large, blue Volvo station wagon that my parents had bequeathed to my sister when she started driving, and that I inherited when I turned 16. I took comfort in the fact that, compared to some classmates who drove Audis, BMWs and Range Rovers, my Volvo was slumming it.

Ismael lived in the U street area of Northwest on Riggs Street, between 13th and 14th streets. Today the area is full of chic restaurants, multimillion-dollar row houses and condos and white yuppies (and their strollers). Twenty years ago, it was a predominantly black neighbourhood with more liquor stores than trendy restaurants, and more African immigrants from countries like Ethiopia than American immigrants from Idaho and Montana.

This is the neighbourhood where my father asked me to drop the car off with a Ghanaian man who owned a vacant lot full of problematic Mercedes Benzes and Volvos that he fixed for much less than the dealership a few miles away on Wisconsin Avenue. Young black children played in the streets because backyards were small. The pavements cracked over prying tree roots and there were some businesses with boarded windows; a testament to the 1968 riots that decimated a neighbourhood which had been an incubator for the black artistic renaissance of the early 20th century.

At the time, property values were much lower. Ismaels parents bought their row house in the 1980s for less than $100,000 (75,000). His mother was recently offered over a million in cash for that same property.

Whats changed? Quite simply, more and more sections of DC are beginning to look the way city has always thought it looked. I remember one visit to Ismaels neighbourhood where he pointed to a house at the end of the block with a rainbow flag flying from its porch. There are some gay guys living there now, he said.

This was the mid-1990s so being gay was still a big deal. It was also a harbinger of change; an almost textbook sign that gentrification was on its way. First wealthy but socially unacceptable white people who nobody wants to live next to find acceptance among black people who nobody has ever wanted to live next to. Then, years later, Im more likely to run into a white college classmate on the way back from grocery shopping tote bag slung over her shoulder, kale leaves peaking over the edge than I am to see one of Ismaels old neighbours who can speak to the rise and fall and rise of a community that has always been integral to the citys life.

As Ismael put it one afternoon a couple of years ago when he, Aaron and I sat at Hooters in Chinatown salivating over the chicken wings: When we were in high school, our white classmates used to come here with fake IDs to buy alcohol for their parties, and I didnt like that. Now they live here and they dont like that my mum does too.

Has gentrification really benefited Washingtonians? Photograph: Beau Finley

Gentrification is a tough topic to consider, especially given that my education, income and love for kale means I am demographically a gentrifier myself. For the gentrifiers and those in neighbourhoods being gentrified, there are contradictory emotions caused by the interplay of race, class and ambition in the winner-takes-all pursuit of constant growth that we have termed urban renewal.

Like many major cities built around a humming economic engine (LA has entertainment, New York has finance, my city has the ever-growing, ever-giving federal government), DC is an epicentre for urban renewal and thus a locus of intense debate and discomfort around how this change impacts the soul of the city.

DCs economic transformation began when Anthony Williams, the control board-backed chief financial officer of the city was elected mayor in 1999. In his two terms, Williams brought over $40bn of investment to the city. Coupled with an expanding federal government during the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, this led to an unprecedented increase in population, increased pressure on existing housing stock, and a demographic transformation that has seen Washingtons African American population decrease by 7.3% while the white population has increased by 17.8% over the last 15 years.

Washingtons new younger, often whiter money meets its older darker residents in a process that has accelerated under two subsequent mayors, and resulted in the conundrums facing places like the H Street Northeast corridor, where my friend and original New Yorker Mary lived during her time at Georgetown Law School and where an influx of students, hipsters and Hill staffers has brought new economic life, but also the possibility of cultural erasure, to another historically black subsection of the city.

***

One morning in late 2015 when visiting Mary to attend her law school graduation ceremony, plagued by jet lag, I slipped out of her house early to take a walk around her neighbourhood. As the sun rose, I steered clear of the new hipster pubs and draft beer houses on H Street, and instead followed side streets where aged row houses stooped towards the sidewalk.

I nodded to a dreadlocked man waxing a large SUV. I felt myself being watched, followed. From across the road, a man and a woman cat-called me. I pretended not to hear and continued my stroll, but they crossed the street to stand on the sidewalk in front of me.

The fire station in upper Northwest. Photograph: Beau Finley

The man was rail thin, and wore cut-off jean shorts with frayed hems and a blue form-fitting tank top that exposed his sinewy arms. He waved his skeletal fingers at me. His companion, a shorter, rounder woman with close-cropped platinum hair and a pot belly, stepped forward.

You new to the neighbourhood? the man asked.

Just visiting, I said.

Where from? the woman asked, stepping closer. I stood my ground. You thinking of coming here and buying one of our houses, arent you? she asked.

No, no, I said with a nervous laugh, Im from Nigeria thinking that distance would ease the tension.

But you want one of our houses, she insisted. People keep coming up in here buying our houses and shit, changing the neighbourhood and shit. Must be because we got that good stuff.

Then she reached forward and grabbed my crotch. You want that good stuff? Her companion squealed with delight as she cackled: You come with us. We can show you that good stuff.

Um. No, thank you, I said, and quickly stepped on to the grassy patch next to the sidewalk and hurried off. As I quickened my pace, I could hear them cackling to each other. The man in the tank top finger-waved good bye.

I was shocked, mostly by the unwanted sexual contact, but also by the realness of demographic and community change across the city. According to the architecture critic Robert Bevan: In part, we recognise our place in the world by an interaction with the built environment and remembering these experiences, and by being informed of the experiences of others: the creation of a social identity located in time and place.

So what happens when the built environment changes directly beneath your feet; when new money brings new structures, or the reconfiguration of old structures, that define a physical-mental-emotional space?

Iweala as a child. Though the community has changed, Iweala still loves the city

In DC, as people come for the good stuff in this case, the cheaper real estate of fringe communities the shared memory changes, and communities lose their distinct social identities, falling into the trap of market-defined millennial America. Suddenly, the face of a neighbourhood in real-estate brochures and tourism posters becomes an appropriately bearded 30-something white man or his smiling, blue-eyed girlfriend, their ethnically ambiguous interracial couple friends, and occasionally someone who looks like me. Meanwhile, the original resident is left wondering whether each potential new face represents the increased possibility that they will be excluded from their own story.

My friend Aaron who grew up in Northeast Washington DC with his mother and grandmother (and now lives in New York) told me: I dont know if I could really go back and live there. DC for me was close-knit, working-class residential communities. Its like the city wants something different for itself now. I dont know if Id fit in.

A lot of original Washingtonians I know (rich and poor) share this sentiment, even as there is a recognition that many of the changes have improved the overall perception and standard of living in the city. But there is also recognition that these changes have hardly been beneficial for everybody.

Before I retired, the people who lived around the hospital were all black. Now when I go around there, I notice the faces are different: they are all white and Hispanic and suddenly its become a more desirable place to live, my father said when I asked him what he thought about DCs transformation. I just wonder where everyone went. I just wonder why its only when white people move to a place that people suddenly pay attention.

As the citys demographic shift results in better services for once-black areas that now have increased white populations; as newcomers without concern for the citys rich history and implicit biases become more populous, and unconsciously use the citys security apparatus to neutralise difference that makes them uncomfortable; and as the citys police department itself becomes less black, less integrated with the communities it serves, and more aggressive, people lose faith that the city they once knew still wants to know them.

***

Like all things, cities must change even a city as enamoured of the past and memory as DC. But one hopes that, however seductive the pressures of new investment and economic growth, a fusion of social and economic identities, rather than erasure of one to accommodate the other, is allowed to form a new city soul which respects all of its histories.

Months before my friend Mary graduated from law school, she told me I had absolutely no choice but to present myself for her pre-graduation gala: an elaborate affair in which the almost-lawyers and their visibly relieved significant others, parents and sometimes children, dress up for a night of horror that can only be called adult prom.

The event, held at the National Portrait Gallery in the now-revitalised Chinatown, was close to where I had my horror of a high school prom at the Verizon Center just up the street. After a night of awkward conversation and observing awkward flailing that is future lawyers dancing, we left the event tipsy, holding each other for support.

Driven by an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia, I insisted we walk down towards the Capitol Building. We strolled slowly, occasionally turning to admire the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial shimmering in their floodlights behind us.

The street was empty, and the only sound came from our feet crunching the gravel paths as we walked. A soft drizzle fell, catching in the lights and obscuring the buildings so that everything suddenly felt otherworldly, unreal.

I love this city, Mary said, as I took her hand and we walked towards our waiting Uber. I love my city, I replied.

Uzodinma Iweala is the author of Beasts of No Nation. Order the book for 7.37 (RRP 8.99) at the <a href="https://bookshop.theguardian.com/catalog/product/view/id/37

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-gentrification-of-washington-dc-how-my-city-changed-its-colours/

[mavwrekmarketing]

Zosh… zosh… er… af… atain? My name has always evoked a sense of eyebrow-raising intrigue, foreignness, and at times, suspicion. My full name, Zosherafatain, translates to pride and honor in Arabic, though most Iranians, including my family, speak Farsi.

Growing up, however, my name often made me feel everything other than pride. I was born in Massachusetts to an Iranian father and a Greek mother. My brother and I, with our tan complexions and dark brown hair, stood out in our small town, largely populated by Irish people who used to live in Boston. Our last name immediately stuck out in a sea of Smiths, Donnellys, and Connollys. I remember feeling squeamish on the first day of school every year, waiting for the teacher to butcher my name, with the usual quick laughs of my classmates. Zosh, zosher, zosheraf… how do you pronounce that name? Zosh-er-af-a-ten, I would quickly state, hoping to avoid embarrassment, and saying it with a quick roll of the tongue so that it sounded easier to say.

There were other times when my status as a first-generation American was fraught with tension. Our house got egged twice, and on both occasions, it wasnt even Halloween. In a neighborhood where the only other family that somewhat resembled us was Indian, it was easy to find the reason why: we were outsiders.

Another time, our neighbors father called my dad a camel back rider. From a young age, I had internalized a sense of feeling foreign in my birth country. This is too often felt by youth of color who learn early on about their otherness through prejudice, taunting, and often times, as a result of violence. These first memories were from elementary school, before 9/11, which brought a monumental shift in how America treated (and still treats) families like mine.

When 9/11 happened, I remember being glued to the TV, watching in shock as the World Trade Centers collapsed while monitoring the skies above my house to see if Boston was going to be attacked too.

I was in middle school, and like most students my age, I was scared. Unlike my white peers, however, I was also frightened for my family in the Middle East. That night, my dad came home and said in a near-prophetic manner: Bush is going to invade Iraq. Not even a week later, President Bush was officially announcing that exact action.

To my family, the threat of war spreading into Iran, which borders Iraq, felt imminent. Unlike most people in our town, we didnt just feel sadness about the lives lost in 9/11, but also gut-wrenching fear and anxiety. We soon noticed that we were kept for extra security checks at airports, and one of my hockey teammates subtly asked, Are you a terrorist? when I told her that my dad is from Iran.

When my Iranian grandmother visited us in 2002, I was anxious about bringing her out around town. Her chador (head covering worn by Muslim women) quickly outed her, and I will never forget the glaring, dismissive eyes of the shoppers when we took her with us to the grocery store. Though I remember this post-9/11 period being really bad for my family, it pales in comparison to living in Trumps America.

When Trump won the election, I reacted like the progressive half of the country. I was shocked, dismayed, and kept asking myself, How did this happen? On top of that, I was readying myself mentally for what was surely going to be a rollercoaster ride for all Middle Eastern-Americans. At age 29, I am now around the same age that my dad was when he proclaimed Bushs plans to invade Iraq. Like my dad, I reacted to the news of Trumps win by predicting that Trump was going to go after Middle Eastern and Muslim-Americans. Thats exactly what he did by revoking the visas and green cards of people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran.

To call it anything other than a Muslim ban downplays the discriminatory intentions of the executive order. When I saw the images of stranded Iranian grandmothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and young children crying at the airports, I saw not only my family, but myself. Tears quickly escaped my eyes. Luckily, my Iranian aunt who holds a green card was not traveling when the ban was instituted. As it stands, she is like a prisoner in America. She cant leave because theres no guarantee she will be let back in. My father, brother, and I were hoping to visit Iran soon to see our family there. I havent seen my aging grandmother since 2009. The anticipation of seeing her soon is now crushed.

To be Iranian-American in Trumpland is to feel stomach-curling fear. In my heart, I know that this is Trumps plan to make us feel threatened so that the seeds of distrust grow stronger. In comparison to the immediate post-9/11 period, this discrimination feels sharper, less subtle. In many ways, everything that Im feeling under Trumps America is not incredibly new. After all, America has struggled with racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia for centuries.

I have felt the sting of prejudice since I was a kid. Something about this current political climate feels different though. Right after 9/11, when Islamophobic and xenophobic comments slid off my peers tongues without any challenge, I now see people defending me. When I recently wrote a status about how the ban affects my family, I received overwhelming support from white Americans, including people I grew up with in Massachusetts. I see massive marches, anti-Islamophobic slogans, and commitments to keep fighting the ban. To be Iranian-American in Trumpland is to feel fear, but it is also to feel hope, and thats a powerful feeling.

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