Never trust anyone under 30.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Older District residents feel ignored by businesses aimed at the young and the hip
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/older-district-residents-feel-ignored-by-businesses-aimed-at-the-young-and-the-hip/2013/11/16/d23f6332-4e16-11e3-9890-a1e0997fb0c0_story.html

By Tara Bahrampour, Published: November 16

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In Cleveland Park, a 50-year-old service road along four blocks of Connecticut Avenue NW has become the focus of a generational clash. A group of largely younger residents seeks to replace the service road with a wider sidewalk that would allow for outdoor cafe seating and provide more space for pedestrians.
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“You can’t hold a kid’s hand and walk down the sidewalk without clotheslining someone. It feels like a parking lot,” said Herb Caudill, a resident with two young children who is lobbying the District Department of Transportation to close the lane. ... But the lane provides extra parking right in front of shops and restaurants, which older residents say makes their lives easier.

“I live five blocks away, and I have two titanium knees, so being able to park there is very important to me,” said Eleanor Oliver, 76, a self-described “neighborhood gadfly” who has lived in the area for 50 years. “We’re all going to be older someday,” she said, adding that the lane’s opponents will appreciate it as they age.
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Oliver — who is part of the contingent that has deployed “Cleveland PARK” lawn signs and buttons — said the younger residents have been dismissive of them. ... “They keep referring to us as ‘the olds,’ and they forget that we were the generation that stopped the Vietnam War,” she said. “So if they thought that they were going to beat us on this little service lane, forget it. They treat us like such ancient people, and they think we don’t know anything. But we were smoking marijuana illegally long before they were a gleam in their parents’ eye. . . . The city is what it is today because all of us old folks stuck around and made it that way.”