Gentrification as a spectator sport

City Paper reporter infiltrates Columbia Heights "community improvement" listserve, documents the tragicomic travails of bourgeois professionals newly arrived in the neighborhood. A couple of highlights:

• "In November 2002, Columbia Heights resident 'zupancic3' offered a lesson in how to gentrify the corner store—one bottle of Chimay at a time. Offering this bit of unsolicited advice to 'Arthur's Grocery,' the neighbor wrote: 'I would start with selling a few microbrews, and some decent wine.'"
• "In August 2001, Melissa Knutson Leifert and her husband were trying to maximize the charm of their historic row house. The idea was to take a sledgehammer to their kitchen wall, thereby exposing the wonderful brick of the structure. 'What I now have is a wall of tar covered brick,' Leifert wrote. 'Has anyone ever successfully removed this?'"