Economy
What D.C.’s Go-Go Showdown Reveals About Gentrification
A neighborhood debate over music swiftly became something bigger, and louder: a cry for self-determination from a community that is struggling to be heard.
I live down the street from a Metro PCS store at the corner of 7th and Florida in Washington D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood, and every weekend, when I’m crossing the road at that intersection, I bop. The small, nondescript-looking cellphone retailer blasts go-go music from outdoor speakers most days, and it’s really hard to ignore the conga drum beat.
The store is, in many ways, an embodiment of Old D.C.—the District as it was in the 1970s and ‘80s, when rents in this once-predominantly African-American part of town were a lot cheaper and go-go was the made-in-D.C. funk soundtrack of the day. But a lot has changed in this neighborhood, which has experienced dramatic demographic shifts since the 1990s.