Category: Episodes

Full video Coming Soon!

Walk with Kéthévane Gorjestani, #journalist at FRANCE 24, living in #Paris but in town for the #thanksgiving holidays, in the Dupont Circle #neighborhood of Washington, District of Columbia. Kéthévane transitioned from reporting on #internationalaffairs, covering #protests, #wars, #politics, to covering #sports after the #parisattacks to take a breather from the #intensity of the #frontlines. We talk about #Paris, #travel, and the importance of #tryingnewthings. Thanks for the walk Két!

on youtube:

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Once Around the Block is a video series in which I walk around the block with different guests while filming a casual conversation.
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Related links:
http://www.kethevanegorjestani.com/
http://www.france24.com/en/

Video coming soon!

Here’s the transcript from our walk:

-Hey everybody, it’s Edmond van der Bijl with another episode of Once Around the Block…I’m here with the one the only…

-Dan Silverman…

-Hey Dan how are ya? – I’m well…how are you?

-Very well thank you…it’s great to meet you…

-Yeah this is a novel idea, I love it!

-Thanks man…um…let’s just throw it in there…who’s
Dan Silverman?

-Who is Dan Silverman? That’s an excellent question…probably for the last 11 years in DC I’ve been known as the Prince of Petworth…so I started this website called Prince of Petworth which is now Popville and it’s a website about DC’s neighborhoods…

-Yeah what…what made you start the website in the first place?

-Well it’s gone through a lot of iterations…when it first started I moved to this
neighborhood called Petworth back in early 2003…and at that time Petworth was not nearly was not nearly as popular as it is today and so there was
not a lot of information about what was happening…you know all people talked about was crime but if you wanted to know about some developments some
exciting stuff…there was nothing going on so I said you know why don’t I just give a shot myself because there’s
all this free blogspot technology stuff…I mean I just started it on a whim and it then it just went and it grew it grew pretty big
pretty fast.

-That’s awesome what was that…what did that feel like did you kind of know early once it started growing that you were onto something?

-Pretty soon, I would say it took a year…before I really knew but but the funny thing is that I never started it like with the
hopes of becoming a professional blogger…like the whole sort of development of the blog and the growth and everything has been totally what do you call it organic…

-Oh nice…

-You know where it’s just like okay you know let me …let me start going to this neighborhood, let me start covering this…you know it’s not some things that like
other people who do this they’re like well what was your business plan, what was your strategy?…there’s never been any business plan any strategy anything like that I just sort of like do what I think is interesting yeah it works…

-And that’s enough…

-Yeah yeah…

-So you mentioned like you didn’t start off with thinking you’d be a professional blogger is that what has happened?

-Yes since September of September of 2009…this has been my full-time job.

-Wow!

-I started the blog in in late 2006 so we just celebrated our eleven year anniversary.

-Awesome, congratulations…

-Thank you thank you…

-And you said “our” so you got a whole team now? -No [Laughs] the “Royal Dan Silverman and the Prince of Petoworth”…we are very happy!

-Okay fantastic…Oh, so what else is going on man you got anything happening in your life right now?

-I’ve always got stuff happening in my life, I’ve got two little kids…

-Oh yeah, same here buddy…I’m in the trenches…I have a 5 month old.

-Oh do you really? Oh man, 5 months…it’s funny like…every month I can’t remember…

-I’m going to let you guide me a little bit…

-Yeah we’re just going to circle back…this does a little loop…isn’t this a kinda cool little park?

-Why don’t we skip into that where are we right now?

-Okay yeah so one of the funniest things I’ve learned is that people are pretty intense about neighborhood names and what you call it.
…So right now we’re in like, “Embassy Ville”…so up there are all the embassies…you can see that…I think that’s the Austrian Flag…so there’s a whole bunch of embassies up here…and I think they run the park…so we’ll walk back…depending on who you ask, this neighborhood is Van Ness, North Cleveland Park, if you go like one block that way people call it Wakefield…

-So it’s funny you said people get sensitive or very touchy about their neighborhood?

-Holy smokes!

-Really?

-Holy Smokes!

-Territorial!

-Oh my god if it’s…

-Fascinating…

-…and it was more…it was more so in in Petworth because you know the the neighborhoods weren’t that defined…maybe historically they were but in real life…like if you talk to somebody
you say “where do you live?” they go I live on Georgia Avenue, you know, I live uptown, I live here…and it’s only been pretty recently that people like “No! you live in Parkview”, or “You live in Pleasant Plains”.

-Now they’re dollar bills man it’s real estate…

-Oh my god…it’s funny because like Petworth was a certain area when I first moved in and then all of a sudden people were like “No! that’s Brightwood Park!” I’m like Brightwood Park? what are you talking about?

-I grew up in the city I didn’t know that all these names existed …it’s expanded quickly.

-The really cool thing to do is if you look at super old names actually the there’s a guy who runs…maybe you should do a walk with him…there’s a guy who runs the Twitter for DC Council the council and he tweeted out a list from like I think it was like 1920 or something of all these old neighborhood names…a pretty fun one that some people know it’s called Swampoodle…

-So uh, wait it was like a nickname or a real name?

-That was a real name yeah it encompassed a bunch of what is Noma and the Union Station are today…so ya know it’s just you know I kind of…when people get irritated by the neighborhood name sometimes I’d like to poke them a little bit..like I’d rather ask somebody who’s lived here for 60 years and say hey what do you call this like then I’ll defer to you…yeah but somebody moved here two years ago…”Goddamnit you live in Brightwood or you live in Parkview”…I’m like okay…

-So you I mean you’ve seen DC grow a lot in the last ten years, 11 years…15 years…

-I’ve lived here for 20 years.

-20 years! Ok, I was born and raised here and noticed you had the “Bullets” hat which is a throwback to the original…

-Earl the Pearl. Although I understand the reason for the name change…

-Yes especially we got the kids right now…

-Yeah and you know truth be told I have seen and I do chronicle quite a bit of a crime that does happen you know I’m not trying to ignore the realities of what happened so but anyway…I I do like the old school…funny things is when I moved to DC, six months later they changed the name…I moved to DC they were the Bullets and then there was thins vote…they became their wizards.

-So you’re you’re your own boss.

-I am.

-You answer to no one…

-I answer to…well you know it’s funny yeah people say oh it must be amazing…when I first started doing this full-time people where like “wow you know you must sleep till noon”…it’s like it couldn’t be further from the truth…

-Right…you’re working twice as hard.

-It’s so intense if anything goes wrong, you know it’s on your shoulders…thank goodness I
have somebody that does my advertising and tech support and so that like I can concentrate a hundred percent on content but yeah you know it’s pretty intense when you when you just work by yourself because like let’s say you have a dilemma or problem or something like you got nobody to talk it over with…so it’s like it waves and dives with you like all the glories are you and all the F-ups are you so yeah pros and cons…

-We’re coming up on the block it was really quick we were we had this thing where we thought the other block was gonna be too long this one went by really fast…I’ve got the “WOW” moment at the end, the words of wisdom…which is just really an
opportunity for you to give a shout out or anything you might want to say.

-Words and wisdom, okay remember it’s for my kids…I would say go with your passion you know do people say you know how do you how do you do what you do I said I do what I do because it’s sincere and it’s genuine so do whatever’s genuine to you you’ll be pretty happy!

-Awesome want to say bye to the folks at home?

-Bye wife and kids…

-Awesome…thanks for watching
everybody see you next time…

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