With a bright pink facade, flowers draped along the doorway, and customers constantly posing outside for selfies, Georgetown’s location of Call Your Mother Deli (CYM) looks like a bagel shop from BarbieLand.
However, CYM finds itself in a battle to stay on the block—its opponent isn’t the Kens, but its own neighbors.
CYM describes itself as a “Jew-ish Deli,” serving bagels at 14 locations. CYM Georgetown, which opened in July 2020, was only their second location.
Since the location opened, some neighbors have argued to Georgetown’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) and the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment (BZA) that CYM shouldn’t be allowed to operate on the corner of 35th and O Street. According to decades-old laws, CYM’s building is zoned for residential use, although businesses have continued to inhabit the space since these laws were passed in 1920.
Despite its history of commercial use, neighbors argue CYM’s success has outgrown its 1,188-square-foot property. They shared complaints with the Voice about lines stretching down the block, trash left outside their homes (attracting rats), and customers sitting on the steps of their houses to eat. However, other residents, including students, say the shop and its atmosphere are a welcome addition to the neighborhood.
The result is a years-long saga that has torn a close-knit neighborhood with decades-long relationships apart and put neighbors—and CYM—unwillingly into the spotlight.
For Andrew Dana, CYM’s co-owner and CEO, the Georgetown location is what he hoped his business would be.
“We’ve grown this business in the last four years since we’ve been here, but Georgetown is still, I would say, the most special shop to us,” Dana said in the June ANC meeting.
While Dana alleged in a June ANC meeting that CYM received “zero formal complaints in the last four years,” neighbors say they’ve made their complaints clear, including through a lawsuit in August 2022, part of which is still pending.
Neighbors told the Voice that they don’t believe Dana has addressed their concerns.
So, when CYM had to reapply for their special zoning conditions this past year, some neighbors organized to kick them off the block.
Since the location was zoned for residential use in 1920, commercial tenants of 35th and O Street have been able to lease the space because they applied for a “nonconforming use” zoning designation. However, because CYM prepares and sells food, its zoning process is even more complicated. In order for CYM to exist, it needs two forms of zoning relief: a special exception to sell prepared food inside a residential space, and an area variance, because it operates as a “Corner Store” within 500 feet of several other Corner Stores.
CYM’s application for special exception zoning hinges on one word: objectionable. In order to get special exception zoning, a business can’t be objectionable, or harmful to the surrounding community. Some neighbors argue CYM has proven objectionable, specifically because its lack of indoor seating pushes its patrons onto their properties.
Coffee Republic, a new coffee shop that opened in June 2023, is directly across the street from CYM. Their CEO and owner, Sean Flynn, explained that CYM’s customers often use Coffee Republic’s tables, which can cause tensions with customers.
“It has a big impact on student relations,” Flynn said. “If we ask somebody to move if they’re not a customer of ours, and they get upset, they get a bad impression, but we’re actually just making room for our paying customers.”
Flynn added that he doesn’t hold CYM’s staff or ownership responsible for customers’ behavior, but that the lack of seating makes the issue unavoidable.
In response to complaints of CYM being objectionable, the ANC voted 5-3-0 in June that CYM should not receive a renewal on its special exception from the BZA, which would force them to close. The ANC doesn’t make any final decisions on zoning law, but makes recommendations to the BZA as stakeholders in the community.
“The applicant has made attempts and promised plans to address these crowds and the detrimental impact they have, but these attempts have not and will not succeed without a fundamental shift in shop operations,” Paul Maysak, ANC commissioner, said in the meeting.
Two of the three votes in support were from both of Georgetown’s ANC commissioners, Joe Massaua (SFS ’25) and John DiPierri (SFS ’25).
“Call Your Mother has been an institution for us,” DiPierri said at the meeting. “It would be more objectionable to uproot this establishment and deprive the thousands of students who use this as a place for food and gathering.”
Other Georgetown students agree with DiPierri and want CYM to stay.
“I feel like taking away Call Your Mother would be losing a part of Georgetown’s culture,” Donhee Cui (MSB ’27) said.
Since the June ANC meeting, Dana said he has worked to make changes, including designating an employee to stand outside on weekends and holidays to ensure customers don’t sit on neighboring stoops.
As a result, the ANC voted on Sept. 3 in favor of CYM operating as a Corner Store, but said they could not come to a decision on their recommendation for the special exception, deferring that decision to the BZA.
Despite CYM’s efforts, some neighbors don’t see it as enough, saying that the property simply wasn’t built to sustain such a bustling business.
“Obviously they’re going to sit outside on a sunny day, on somebody’s wall, on somebody’s steps,” neighbor Mal Caravatti (PHD ’92) said. “It’s basically a problem of a business being in the wrong place.”
For Massaua, the contention is also indicative of greater tensions about whose concerns should be given priority: residents like Caravatti who have lived in the area for decades, or students who for the most part are only temporary neighbors.
“It’s an ownership thing,” he said. “The neighborhood’s always changing, and there’s a crop of students that comes in every four years and rotates, and it’s so close to campus that, in some sense, it is a proxy to the student-neighbor conflict.”
CYM’s fate will officially be decided on Sept. 25, when they appear before the BZA. Massaua says the ruling will largely depend on whether the BZA believes CYM is doing enough to be a good neighbor.
For the neighbors opposing CYM, the ANC, and the business itself, this saga has been incredibly contentious.
“It’s a really nasty fight,” Massaua said.
