Today, N.W. 23rd Street—better known now as the Uptown District—is a youthful hipster’s consumer paradise of chi-chi escape rooms, Phish-themed vegan eateries and moderately upscale marijuana dispensaries.
A little over two decades ago, however, it was a McCormick bottle-strewn no man’s land that housed run-down bodegas, multiple wig shops and, of course, the Centeon Plasma Donation Center, the one true business that kept the area thriving; twice-weekly visits there kept me rolling in canned Stagg Chili, six-packs of Diet Doc Shasta and the occasional handful of GPC looseys during those ultimately useless college years.