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All right, it's September 29th and we are at Art All Night in Mount Pleasant. Could you tell us your name? My name is Lisa Eckenweiler. Yep. And could you tell us your relationship to Mount Pleasant? So I've lived in Mount Pleasant since 2008 in the spring.

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Wow. And what brought you to Mount Pleasant then? Well, so actually my first introduction to Mount Pleasant was in 2008. I was a philosophy professor at Old Dominion University which is in Norfolk. I had a sabbatical here at a think tank, Center for American Progress and I rented with my husband and then Labrador, may he rest in peace, a basement apartment on 19th Street and we just completely fell in love with the neighborhood. We found the place by accident. None of the Craigslist places worked out, which I think dates me. Does Craigslist even exist anymore? I don't even know. But nothing worked out. We were driving down the neighborhood and we were like, oh look, for rent. And it was probably the happiest place we've ever lived. Then, I got a job at George Mason and we looked at places in the suburbs, in Fairfax County, for a day, and we're like no let's go see what's happening in Mount Pleasant and we were very stubborn and persisted and we ended up finding a house on Kenyon Street, almost at the bottom of the intersection of Kenyon and Irving. What are some of the things that you loved about the neighborhood then? It was the most mixed, diverse, pluralistic neighborhood that I had ever experienced in my life, including in DC. There were older people and younger people, there were African American people, white people, people from South, Central America, and people of very like mixed income, a whole continuum of, you know, economic strata.

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And were there any favorite places or things that you like, places you like to go or stores or just kind of things you remember from Mount Pleasant back then? You know, for us, the thing that was most appealing and continues to be most appealing is the proximity to Rock Creek Park. That's what really drew us to the neighborhood; that and access to public transit. I would really underscore that, but the the access to green space was the thing that was really, really important to us and that continues to keep us here despite our—our you know—the other challenges we face, you know, just around affordability in the neighborhood now, which is, I think, a growing concern. The demographic shifts that we've seen in the neighborhoods since we arrived. But it's really the ability to hop outside and take a walk in the forest, hop on your bike, take the dog for a walk, take our son out to be in green space. It's really hard to find that in any major city, and not even a major city, just kind of anywhere increasingly, I think, in the United States and around the world. So that's the draw. And there isn't a specific place in terms of the neighborhood, but just being in the neighborhood has always been really important for us. I think El West is a place that we always gravitate to and go in and say hello to Veronica. She's a really important person we've known for a long time and—and like a business owner. Patrice who is the owner of Purple Patch, and you know, so I think it's like some of the female business owners that we feel really attracted to, if I was gonna name places that have been important, but it's—it's really the park. That's terrific. You alluded to this already but I wonder if we might go into this a little more detail on some of the changes you've seen since you've been here in 2008? Yeah, I would just describe it in terms of what's happened in the housing and what's happened in terms of the cars. Like there used to be a lot of renters in folks' basements, now it's AirBnB's. And as I, we live at the, as I said, the intersection, down at the back of the zoo. And just like, who's driving out of the neighborhood, the cars have changed. You know, like it used to be I don't even remember and now it's, you know, Mercedes, Teslas. Really, really, it's just become a much more affluent neighborhood. And I don't know, for me, I feel a sense of loss that we've changed just in terms of pluralism, economically and in terms of race and ethnicity. So those are some things that have really been noticeable. I really appreciate though the durability of Mount Pleasant Street and how that really continues to serve a really wide variety of folks. That doesn't seem to have changed really dramatically. It's mostly local economics with, I think, two exceptions, the 7-Eleven, you know, and the Subway. And that, I think, is really increasingly exceptional. So I'm really grateful for that.

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Where would you like to see the neighborhood in, let's say, five years from now? Oh, that's really hard. I guess I wish it would be more affordable. I think that's a really big concern and I don't, you know, that's a hard thing. There are a lot of just factors that contribute to that. I hope that people will really continue to value the diversity of the neighborhood and not take that for granted, you know, just in terms of like, who lives here, where they live, the—the difference. This is a really hard one to explain. For example, there's a really big difference between the daytime life of Mount Pleasant and the evening life of Mount Pleasant in terms of who's around. And I would like to see those things intermingle a bit more. I would like to see the people who work in the neighborhood benefit more from the pleasures of the neighborhood, not just work in the neighborhood. Like, you know, we have a lot of construction workers every day, We have a lot of caregivers every day who live beyond Mount Pleasant, outside of DC. And it would just be lovely to see them integrated in a way where they can enjoy just the benefits of Mount Pleasant in terms of the leisure time, you know, and the opportunities that there are around at night in terms of eating and just, you know, just being in the neighborhood in a different way other than working. So I think that's one of the big things is like I just notice, you know, because I'm a professor so I work at home some and then I'm on campus, but I just notice a huge difference in terms of who's around in the daytime and who's around in the evening and I think like those things would be nice, especially in a democracy if those folks mingled a bit more. So I think that's what I would say and maintain the green space above all else because that's what really makes I think it special here. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. For sure. It was a total pleasure. I really enjoy it.