DC pizza shop owner faces backlash after congratulating Trump

Menomale Pizza owner Mariya Rusciano joins ‘The Faulkner Focus’ to explain the controversy surrounding her shop after they congratulated President-elect Donald Trump on his election win.

Historically black ... yeah, I know. We’ve discussed this before. LeDroit Park is my favorite example, unless I pause long enough to remember the Anacostia Historic District. Both of these are now loudly proclaimed to be “historically black” neighborhoods. Both of them were not only historically white neighborhoods; they both had restrictive racial covenants, which is very unusual in DC. Frederick Douglas won a landmark civil rights case to break the racial covenant and buy his lovely house on the hill in Anacostia, from which he walked back and forth to work in DC every day across the Navy Yard bridge.

Neighborhoods change. Even Anacostia is now gentrifying; it’s too close in not to. Unfortunately, it still has too many housing projects in too small an area to rebound as quickly as it otherwise would. That said, we know several families that moved off Capitol Hill to Anacostia — starting 25 years ago or more — to get more house for less money. There are areas in Anacostia now that would leave a lot of freepers, who are operating from old information, catatonic from cognitive dissonance.

But then there are the housing projects, and the drug markets and free fire zones surrounding them.

The LBJ/Great Society Bantustan housing projects were America’s great investment in “historically black” neighborhoods, and the sooner those are torn down, the better. The slum preservationists, of course, fight to keep them, because concentrated and warehoused dysfunction secures them a captive voter base. But you know all this.

Yes, Brookland would have been a great investment 20 years ago. We bought on Capitol Hill over 40 years ago; I’ve long joked that we were the last people to buy on the Hill for under $100k. The far northeast and close-in PG neighborhoods, long battered by lousy planning decisions, are now flipping. It’s probably too late to get a bargain in the Hyattsville Historic District.

Capitol Hill over 40 years ago; I’ve long joked that we were the last people to buy on the Hill for under $100k.

OMgosh. I'm stunned. Enjoy your good foresight!

I was recently visiting in SE around Lincoln Park, and was pleasantly astonished at the gentrification, real estate prices and classy renovations, as well as healthy racial integration among the professional-class residents and the Eastern Market vendors. When I was a kid, "Southeast" used to be a buzzword for "no-go zone", so I hadn't been there since forever, out of habit.

We ate there tonight. Recommended. Very small, casual, inexpensive. It was doing a brisk carryout business, and there were enough sit down diners to feel comfortable — and that’s on a cold night with the Catholic University kids gone. I’m generally not a fan of Neapolitan pizza as I prefer a somewhat thicker crust, but it was still definitely well above average. Right next door to a Ledo’s Pizza, and it was head and shoulders better than Ledo’s, which has a local cult following since Ledo’s started in College Park and became a UMD thing. Maryland’s taste in pizza is as bad as its taste in politics.

There’s actually a second location even closer to us, but I figured parking would be easier in Brookland.

I can’t evaluate the impact of the backlash without having a baseline. But we will go back. The pizza WAS pretty good.

I confess to a conflict, however. We have a pretty good neighborhood pizza place right around the corner from my house, on the other side of the block. I do like to support neighborhood businesses.

The solution is perhaps to eat more pizza. I can live with that, at least for awhile.

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