Congress Heights and The Advoc8te are featured in this week's WCP cover story, "Bad Gas".

If you are reader of CHotR or Southeast Socialite  you are already aware of the community's ongoing struggle to get the two gas stations on MLK Avenue, King Gas and the former Chevron Station (now Crown) to clean up their act. Residents have been complaining for years about the terrible service, panhandlers, drug deals, suspect business practices and poor maintenance of the both businesses, primarily the now Crown gas station on MLK Ave and Malcolm X Ave next to Shepherd Park.


The City paper saw our posts and contacted us late last year for a story on the gas stations and this is the focus of this week's cover story. Yours truly is quoted in the article and shares my story of getting my unwanted and surprising "gasoline shower" at the then Chevron Station.

Since then DCRA has done several inspections and even closed the gas stations down for a period of time once it was discovered they were operating without business licenses (and hadn't had licenses for years). Chevron dumped them from their network and forced them to remove all Chevron branding from the station. The gas stations got their business licenses and supposedly cleaned up their act and the Chevron on MLK Avenue now operates as a Crown gas station - with some minor improvements.

Considering that I saw a drug deal go down at the cashier’s window last month pardon my skepticism.

An Excerpt of the City Paper article included after the jump.

Bad Gas: The Story of the Former Chevron at 3011 MLK Ave. SE

At least the food is safe.

By Christine MacDonald on April 2, 2010

Nikki Peele had just been to the hairdresser when she noticed that her silver Ford Focus was running on fumes. It was spring 2008, and Peele was near her home in Congress Heights.

So she pulled into what was then a Chevron station at 3011 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, near the intersection with Malcolm X Avenue. Though new to the neighborhood, Peele had already made a mental note to avoid this particular establishment, with the vagrants who sweep in from the park across the street looking for handouts. She usually filled up beyond city limits but didn’t have that luxury this day.

She went inside to pre-pay, then headed back to pump. It was only then that she noticed something wasn’t right: The pump was missing both hose and nozzle.

“I’m thinking, ‘Who would steal a hose and why hasn’t anyone here noticed?’” Peele says. Just then, “‘Puff’—gasoline showered from above.”

The gas rained down from the awning where the hose should have been attached to the pump. It soaked her freshly coiffed hair and her white blouse and ruined her favorite gold sandals. She rushed to the station attendant, shouting for him to turn off the gas. But by the time he did, all the oily stuff that should have gone in her tank was either on her person, or pooling on the cement lot.

“I really had to make an argument to get my money back,” says Peele, who ended up calling 911 herself and watching from a safe distance across the street when an engine truck arrived to make sure a stray cigarette didn’t light up the station and the block.


The attendant on duty, recalls Peele, showed no surprise and even less concern about what had happened and the hazard it left behind—one indication that it takes much more than a trifling petrol puddle to ratchet things up to crisis level at this D.C. filling station.

Go HERE to continue reading.

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