Cleveland Park is starting to look like an old steel town. Last week, Starbucks and 7-Eleven closed, adding to a growing list of shuttered shops: a Blockbuster, a Magruder’s, a Cold Stone Creamery, etc. WUSA’s Bruce Johnson examined the corpse last week wondering why such an elite ‘hood had fallen on hard times. Councilmember Mary Cheh characterized the decline as a problem.

Colbert King recently wrote a column on the racial paranoia bubbling up on Cleveland Park’s listserv. He followed up our own blog post on the subject. Whether residents there are racist or not we can not say. Those stories only prove that people still live in Cleveland Park. There are always the holdouts.

Video and more, below the jump!

With all the bad news surrounding Cleveland Park, we were a bit scared to visit its Connecticut Ave. strip. Had it succumbed to a sort of lawlessness? Were people freaking out over their ‘hood losing its Slurpee machine? Would there even be anyone around to talk to? Had its residents started migrating to the hipper Van Ness, a neighborhood that can actually support a Starbucks?

One thing we did prove: You can still get a parking ticket in Cleveland Park.