The Best Home For the Straightedge Fan: Where Minor Threat Played Its First Show

• December 16, 2014

by Lark Turner

1929 Calvert Street NW

UrbanTurf usually stays away from publishing rankings or lists…except at the end of the year when we look back at all DC’s residential real estate scene had to offer during the previous 12 months. So, this week, we are looking at not only the best, but the most intriguing and peculiar things that came across our radar over the course of the past year.

A home sold this year boasted a special kind of DC-centric musical significance: It was the site of hardcore punk band Minor Threat’s very first show 34 years ago this month.

Although the December 1980 concert was brief, the gig at 1929 Calvert Street NW (map) launched the band’s brief career. The home on the edge of Adams Morgan, now converted into four apartments, hit the market in January for $2,095,000, was later reduced to $1,995,000, and ultimately sold for $1,875,000 in March.

The owner, Naveed Ashraf, bought the property in 2003 when it was a group house. He rented it for several years before recently converting it into four apartments. Ashraf told UrbanTurf that despite the renovation, elements of the first floor were still the way they were when Minor Threat first played.

“That floor is now apartment #1, with the same hardwood floors,” he said.

In our initial article on the home, a commenter said he lived there between 1981 and 1985, when H.R. of the band Bad Brains lived there, and the home hosted a number of concerts.

While Minor Threat stayed together for just three years, it is one of the bands credited with popularizing the straight-edge hardcore sound, along with Bad Brains and Black Flag. Members Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson went to Wilson Senior High School (our founder’s alma mater) and went on to form the band Fugazi after Minor Threat disbanded.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/best_home_for_the_straightedge_punk_fan_where_minor_threat_played_their_fir/9317