Bloomingdale Recruits "Hi"-Sayers for Spring

• March 24th 2014

by Lark Turner

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A long DC winter is receding. The sidewalks are filling up again. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining…and a bunch of people are ignoring each other on the streets?

Not in Bloomingdale, protest the neighbors — or at least one, who’s asking the readers of a neighborhood blog to start saying “Hi” again.

Bloomingdale, touted on UrbanTurf as the neighborhood Where (Almost) Everyone Knows Your Name, has a reputation for its friendly, familiar neighbors. But Maria Fyodorova, who posted the friendly plea on Monday, said she’s been hearing fewer hellos as of late.

“Unfortunately, it seems, many of our neighbors have recently moved from places where saying ‘hello’ on the street was not the custom,” Fyodorova relays via the blog. “They look at you strangely when you say ‘hi.’ Or they avert their eyes. That makes me sad! One of the things we loved most about Ledroit Park and Bloomingdale when we moved here was that everyone said ‘hello!’”

This is what happens when you look askance at someone saying hi to you outside of Big Bear Cafe, ye wandering, laptop-toting DC residents of lesser neighborhoods.

To help solve the problem, Fyodorova is proposing a neighborly club to promote sidewalk interaction among Bloomingdale residents, and is recruiting takers.

“We’ll make flyers! We’ll walk the streets, smiling! We’ll have fun!” she promises.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/bloomingdale_recruits_hi-sayers_for_spring/8271.