What chu mean ain't no soul food in DC? You must be drowning under all of our water!
Eight Years a Washingtonian Parts 6 & 7
Welcome back to Eight Years a Washingtonian, a series where I talk about what I’ve learned since I moved here in 2016. That year was consequential for not just me but the region and the so-called country I live in, so I am, in a way, treating this like I’ve hit a whole decade here and I’m looking back. because it’s felt like a whole decade.
I had plans for this series to be finished before now, so I’ve decided to combine some of those reflections. Today I’m talking about how hungry I feel, but now I’m not thirsty because what we lack in food that feels like home, we have access to water for baptisms literal and spiritual.
Also, I’ve been trying to make companion YouTube videos, but I think I just want to get the words out, so today on this US Election Eve, I have one thing for you, and tomorrow, early in the morning on Election Day, I’m going to hit you up with some reading distractions while we await our next steps. My musical selection for this post is Ms. Lauryn Hill classic, Just Like Water. After the jump, with the music, we’ll get started with the writing.
That’s exactly what I mean.
Well, so I thought.
Let me talk about what it means for me to have soul food in the first place.
If you’re new to this newsletter, I’m Kristen. I’m my last month of being 38. I moved to DC after a moment of time in Kansas City wishing I’d moved to DC instead. I’m a Black queer (nonbinary pansexual, presenting traditionally Black southern femme) North Carolinian. I can trace said heritage all the way back to the slavers' boat on the Black side and working on where exactly that European ancestor inserted himself into my lineage.
I love making things out of yarn and fabric, curating music playlists, talking for hours about whatever is on my mind, and fixing the one Earth we got.
When I came out as queer, I started to feel a little estranged from my natal family, even though only a few expressed Christian concern. When I feel ungrounded or unable to get to any of my hobbies or people chosen or natal that I care about, I go to food for comfort.
This is why I’m so picky about food and so utterly disappointed at my options for said sustenance and joy in the greater DC area.
Even though I write a newsletter on gentrification, I missed the memo on how that affected Black southern foodways in the region. The crew I was rocking with mostly whooped and hollered about the lack of affordable housing and raggedy transit.
Yet, I also need to see Black restaurants and hairdressers thriving in the center of the city for me to affirm a place as a true urbanist Mecca.
I believed that DC was my Chocolate Rainbow Mecca, full of Bojangles, Mellow Mushroom, and calabash seafood brought by a previous generation of Carolina transplants, cooked proudly to perfection as we asserted our political power.
What I found was crabs. And only the steamed ones were edible and fulfilling. I also found out that my gentrification and Mecca seafood restaurant narrative was also complicated. First by the family who owned Horace and Dickey’s, and secondly by gentrification researcher Brandi Thompson Summers.
The complications? Well, the restaurant family is from New Jersey. And yes, I’m going to drag them for even thinking they can do seafood with soul. The researcher has a hook on what’s going on with H Street, but H Street is still under flux, a phenomenon I called failed gentrification, which I’ll bring out fully in a future newsletter.
Both of these miss that Southern Black edge of analysis and seasoning. That’s what I’m looking for.
But, those crabs, those dear delectable crabs.
And all that water!
On my walks to clear my head around our various water-hugging trailways, I noticed a slight scent of salt in the air.
Salt has purifying powers.
And what I was really searching for was sustenance and purification.
Assurance that my life’s moves had been the right ones.
And atonement for those that were true sins, not just what makes people bent on serving an evil empire or unknowingly caught up in its service think they are.
As the tidal river waves flowed, and I matched my steps to their flow, I learned and felt, that everything was going to be ok.
I love those crabs so much now. And the Thai, Filipino, and homemade soul food of my partner.
Because it’s ok to feed yourself on the smell of water.
Let me close today with this song, from NC’s own The Foreign Exchange that I feel the most captures where my mood is now on a regular day.
Until next time. Get ready to vote for who you want to govern with and govern yourselves accordingly if you already have!
Kristen
I hate that we have to travel out to Murrland to get good soul food! Only place I know where you can get decent breakfast soul food is the Lincoln Diner believe it or not. It's pretty good.