How do people afford this city?

In my new and unplanned blog series about how damn expensive life is, I explore D.C.'s cost-of-living and how increasingly unaffordable it is to live here on a non-profit or lower level government-worker's salary. I was reminded of this once again as I searched Craigslist for future housing options for the coming year. Considering that the once "cheap" and relatively well-located areas of the city like Columbia Heights are in the process of being uber-gentrified, it appears hope is lost for the automobile-lacking person who wants to live in a D.C. neighborhood that is in walking distance of a grocery store, Metro, and a few other commercial establishments that aren't liquor stores or Western Unions. The low-end of a 3 bedroom in Columbia Heights now appears to be 2800 per month or 933 per person, usually before utilities are added in.

Hypothetical: If I'm making $15 per hour at a non-profit working 8 hour days, five days a week, I make 2400 per month, before taxes, or 31.2 K per year. My D.C. income tax alone would be $400 per year plus an additional 6% of the excess income above 10,000, which in my case would be $139 per month. Federal income tax is 4,220 plus 25% of the amount over 30,650, which amounts to $4357.50 or 363.13 per month. Medicare and Social Security taxes are 199, by my calculations, so after taxes, I make 1837.87 per month. My health care premium might be around 60 per month (more if I have a "pre-existing condition"), so I'm down to 1777.87 per month. Now, subtract my 933 rent and a 50 utility check (add at least 25 more if I have cable), and I am left with 794.87. I have to eat, which we can approximate at around 250 per month and buy work clothes which maybe be around 60 per month. If I'm paying back 250 in student loans per month, I am now down to about 245, some of which I probably want to put into a retirement account (though it won't amount to the 10% of income that is recommended), the rest of which I should put in a cash reserves account. Keep in mind that Hill staffers often make significantly less than this hypothetical non-profit salary.

So the question is, why, in spite of the high cost-of-living and relatively low salary do young, aspiring public servants move to this city after graduation? I guess my reason was that it seemed like the most likely place to get the sort of occupation I've described and to meet other people with the same priorities, but often enough, people like me come to D.C. and get disconcerted that their peers aren't here for these noble reasons but rather to feed their own ambition. Members of this group are willing to stick out their financial necks to live in a city whose lackluster city services, absent mid-range dining and shopping scene, and pretty uniform group of professionals (i.e., lawyers and aspiring lawyers) can make it at times a trying place to live. Note to my peers: as long as we keep forking over our rent money (and I'm guilty like you), D.C. will continue to be increasingly unaffordable to people like us.

This flight from affordability is of course egged on by D.C.'s subscription to the standard mode of urban renewal today: gentrify, gentrify, gentrify. The luxury condos and shopping complex with the likes of a Target that have swept through Columbia Heights within the past year are a clear culprit for the recently increased rents; they're also the culprit for the continued lack of entreprenuerial character that D.C. maintains. Increasingly, D.C. has become a city for the very well-off, the young cash-strapped, and the long-time residents who seem to have fairly little say in any of this planning. Why I continue to live here, I don't know.

Postcards from Utopia

I just returned from San Francisco and am still revelling in the beauty of all of its sites. One thing I thought about while there is how San Francisco is one of several municipalities that is sometimes preceded with the jabbing moniker "the Peoples' Republic of..." Other places I've heard this prefix attached to are Alexandria, Virginia, the state of Massachusetts, and Evanston, Illinois. The truth is, all of these "Peoples' Republics "are pretty great places to live. While none of them are similar to the Communist states to which the phrase alludes, the policies that make these places seem more socialist or communist can't be too bad if they are such nice parts of the country to visit and live. Furthermore, a place like San Francisco is really a place of thriving entrepreneurialism, not only because it was one of the headquarters to the dot com explosion but also because it has the fewest amount of chain establishments one will find in just about any American city and a bevvy of competing small businesses in their stead. Without further ado, here are some photos from this aforementioned utopia:

(Photo credit: Steph Pituc)

(Photo credit: Steph)

Travel Lists

After visiting SF, I will provide my current, top five global cities list (among the cities I've been to) along with some other travel lists:
1. Paris
2. San Francisco
3. Chicago
4. Rome
5. London

And the top 5 most scenic cites:
1. Salzburg
2. San Francisco
3. Florence
4. Paris
5. Geneva
Honorable mention: Washington D.C. and San Diego

And the top 5 best airports:
1. Chicago O'hare-United Terminal (reason: the neon lights in the moving walkway tunnel, the bevvy of good vendors, the brightness, the exciting people watching, a lot of vendors after the security checkpoint)
2. Detroit McNamara-Northwest Terminal (reason: state-of-the art monorail that shuttles back and and forth between this huge terminal, tons of vendors, sobering bright white interior, like O'hare there are a lot of vendors after the checkpoint)
3. Amsterdam Schipol (reason: like being on an Austin Power's set, lot of weird cafes)
4. Washington-Reagan National (reason: other than it being cumbersomely renamed after one of my least favorite American presidents, the main terminal is nice, airy, and bright with decent vendors and just about enough of them to pass the time before a flight. getting stuck here might be dull though, as it's not that big)
5. Portland (reason: lots of independent vendors and claims to have competitive prices)
Honorable Mention: Dulles for the terminals, though probably not for the security checkpoints and lines

Top 5 worst airports:
1. Paris Charles DeGaulle (reason: uncontrolled lines, long waits, few vendors, unnerving 60s spaceship interior)
2. Raleigh-Durham (reason: it doesn't help that I got stuck in this dull airport because of a cancelled flight with only a Cinnabon voucher to keep me enthused about the wait)
3. Zurich (reason: dull as all get out, and it doesn't help that I had to sleep on an uncomfortable airport chair there overnight with my grandparents)
4. Rome (not sure if it's Fiumicino or Ciampino) (reason: like being inside an 80s hotel lobby, pink and green with fake tropical feel is never a good interior design motif)
5. Boston Logan (reason: meh)
Honorable mention: Frankfurt (reason: haven't been here in awhile so it may look better now, but last i was there it was a mid-renovation madhouse!)

In San Francisco

I'm at my friend Steph's in San Francisco and have been up for almost 24-hours, though I did take some naps on the plane. My inclination when I visit new places is to make generalizations about the people who live there. When I walk into a coffee shop or store, I categorize everyone as a San Franciscan and view their actions as reflecting upon the vibe of their city. The crazy man who yelled at the clerk at Green Apple Books in Inner Richmond about how he "controls his own money" and "wants to be respected" (yeah, this guy was nuts--he was even carrying a rain stick!) is an emblem of the zany tendencies of some of the San Fran residents. The kind people who smiled at me when I moved my bags out of the way for them on the bus are imbued with a California calm that allows them to be much more considerate and thoughtful than the people out East. Today a car almost hit me making a right turn when I had the right of way, but rather than speeding through the turn or glaring at me, the driver actually waved apologetically. It's nice that people have some remorse for their unintended recklessness. Is this San Franciscan, though? Is speeding like a frazzled, over-caffeinated a-hole Distrcit of Columbian? Why is it so tempting to generalize about a locale, anyway?

Rosslyn: probably a lost cause

The Washington Post reports today that the Arlington County Board approved construction of two high-rises in the Rosslyn neighborhood that, if built, will be the tallest in the Washington Metro area. According to the Post:

Arlington officials say they hope the project will transform Rosslyn, a commuter-clogged suburb crammed with outdated boxy buildings, into a modern development that would attract more tourism.

I would hardly call Rosslyn "commuter-clogged"--the area never seems that busy too me, but it is definitely an area that is home to few. "Outdated boxy buildings" is about as apt a description as any of the unremarkable cement edifices that make the view across the Potomac from Georgetown such an eyesore.

Still, it will be pretty difficult for two towers to change the character of this character-less part of the D.C.-area. The problem with Rosslyn, as with so many other parts of Northern Virginia, is that it lacks distinctive features and that street life mostly shuts down after 7. The designs of the highrises pictured in the Post article appear to deviate little from the dull steel and glass prototype that characterize today's urban towers. Just as the cement buildings of the 1950s-70s appear outdated now, the glass edifices will evoke anachronism a decade or two down the road.

The testimonial from a Rosslyn resident also seems incredibly misguided:

Roa Lynn of Rosslyn said she recently had lunch outside in Shirlington, "alfresco," she noted, and her neighborhood looked bleak in contrast.

"I was struck by how harsh and unpleasant the Rosslyn streetscape is," Lynn said. "I beg you please to approve this project today. Make my neighborhood as nice as the other neighborhoods in Arlington."

First, erecting highrises are hardly the formula for mitigating the harshness of a streetscape. Second, though Shirlington's small, pedestrian-friendly downtown area--all two blocks of it--is certainly more ideal than Rosslyn's, can't we set our sights a little higher than "other neigborhoods in Arlington?" Especially in regards to the businesses in some of these areas, particularly Ballston and Shirlington, which represent more of the same big box blandness that now infests so much of this nation.

Worst of all, this new highrise campaign will only encourage the use of the wholly unbefitting "Manhattan on the Potomac" slogan by Rosslyn business owners who clearly have never visited Manhattan. Ultimately, I remain pessimstic about a renaissance of Rosslyn, which seems condemened to the fate of providing residence to nine-to-five office workers, chain restaurants, Marriotts, and the closest Metro to Georgetown. Nevertheless, I wish this weird neighborhood to my East luck.

Paradigm shift or incremental change?

One argument that has arisen among my co-workers and I lately addresses the issue of human behavior and how to get people to do things that are "good" for them. The resulting discussions have produced some rather daunting conclusions about our society, some which are controversial, others which have been long obvious but somewhat mind-bending when one tries to take a stab at how to change things. Namely, the inefficiency and waste of some modes of living, which is a large part of the problem with how we live today, as I see it, and will be the subject of my rant of the day, where I explore whether we should proceed to address our problems moderately with changes in zoning laws and regulations on greenhouse gas emissions or whether we should just start setting fire to McMansions (kidding, kidding!). What I mean to say is, does America need a cultural shift where our whole paradigm for success is redefined or at the very least moderated so that people don't feel they need to "live large"--which would involve some sort of attempt at trying to influence human behavior, or do we just need to chip away at the problems. Or both? How do "paradigm shifts" happen anyway?

I don't really know, so maybe I'll just rant for now about what went through my mind upon a recent visit through Farifax County. Some people use too many resources. The reason I hated Hollywood's collective global warming lecture at this year's Oscars is because the lifestyle of those privileged people of inconceivable wealth are much more consumptive than the rest of us. This culture is promoted to the rest of us by magazines, tabloids, and music videos that idealize big cars, fancy (though often gaudy) homes, and general profligate living. I don't know how to change that immediately unless some of what people value changes and some of what the media prioritizes changes. Daunting, right?

Furthermore, the ambitions of developers and automakers to ever-expand their business growth has hijacked policy making for many years. The resulting communities are by virtue of their design promoting wasteful habits, like driving to a nearby store that may only be a few blocks away because sidewalks don't exist and there are only arterial (not artillery) roads. Accompanying this sprawl is an aesthetic discordance, between the noise pollution of cars and trucks, the bland, gaudy excess of the homes, and that proliferation of one of the ugliest sights created by humanity--though today one of the most necessary: the parking lot.

A drive through parts of Fairfax County is case in point of the increasing decadence of many well-heeled people who build or buy sprawling mansions in gaudy Italianate, French Maison, or Georgian style. Not too far away at Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington, one can marvel at the (relatively) small domicile of one of Virginia's then-wealthiest men. How did we go from that to this:

I don't know, perhaps I'm being too aphoristic didactic and condescending. I guess I just don't feel like I need twin Sub Zs, vacation homes, elaborate sculptures in my front yard, and 30 feet ceilings. (P.S., through "researching" this article, I came across a pretty funny website called LA Curbed, which has a McMansions archive that details the real estate listings in that most ostentatious part of the country).

D.C. Drivers, get a grip

I have several gripes against the ethos of Washington D.C. and the rest of the "inside the beltway" territory, and underlying a lot of them is the prevailing Type A attitude of the people who live here. The Type A attitude is on display all the time: when commuters sprint to catch their Metro train during rush hour even though another one is two minutes behind it (running into fellow commuters in the process), when subway riders won't move to the center of the train car to make room for those behind them because they want to be close to the door, when people regard social functions as nothing more than an opportunity to "network," and worst and most fatally of all, when drivers disregard pedestrians merely because they are in a hurry.

I don't know if the bus driver who struck and killed two women who had the right of way at the intersection of 7th and Pennsylvania on Wednesday night was in a hurry, but the driving in this city is so abominable, so aggressive, so careless of pedestrians, so selfish, that this tragedy is not as surprising as it should be. Even today, two days later, as I crossed that same intersection, cars were still racing down Pennsylvania to make the light, broaching the tenuous transition between the yellow and red bulb with reckless nonchalance. Why drivers here are so wound-up is beyond me, because I think they would be happier people if they weren't, but D.C. police need to crack down on the insanity of offensive driving.

Restoring Urban Authenticity or Reincarnating Classism?

High-class Parisians don’t want to come to the Champs-Élysées [...] It’s not prestigious; it’s not pleasant. The people who come are very common, very ordinary, very cheap. They come for a kebab sandwich and a five-euro T-shirt.

--Serge Ghnassia, owner of the fur shop Milady

If nothing else, the French are honest. The Times has an interesting if predictable article about a backlash embodied by the remark of this shop owner against the Champs-Élysées, the crowded boulevard between the Arc de Triomphe and Place de la Concorde in one of Paris's toniest districts. Like Chicago's Michigan Avenue or London's Oxford Street, Champs-Élysées attracts the rabble of tourists and commoners with its megastores and fast food restaurants, not to mention its central location to many Paris sites.

I can definitely get behind Paris's efforts to change the composition of the famous avenue, especially because its astronomic rents are only affordable to international chains; however, I don't think the more regarded Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré nearby merits high praise, as our blunt fur shop owner seems to suggest. After all, that smaller street is also mobbed on weekends, though its ridiculously decadent shops are only accessible to the richest of the rich (or those who are willing to go into massive debt for a thousand dollar handbag). So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while Champs-Élysées is somewhat unpleasant nowadays and while it would be nice to see many more establishments unique to Paris on the boulevard, it will be no more special if it is dotted with high end boutiques--most of them chains as well. Developed societies need to get past this discourse that pits mass consumer goods against the high end, because it reeks of class snobbery and condescension and it avoids aspects of reality.

Underlying some of that resentment is that groups of young people descend on the Champs-Élysées from the working-class immigrant suburbs on weekend nights. The police keep a close watch on them, monitoring their moves.

But some old-timers praise the avenue as a sort of democratic — and free — tourist destination for the underprivileged. “The kids coming from the suburbs are coming from the suburbs to look, to see, to escape the places where they live,” [theater owner Jean-Jacques] Mr. Schpoliansky said. “We are a multiethnic country, and that reality is reflected on our street.”

Instead, the focus should be on preserving the charm and uniqueness of our cities while still constructively addressing the fact that globalization brings apparent benefits like lower priced goods, benefits that cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand by mocking upper-class interests. To some extent, Champs-Élysées has done this better than its counterparts in other cities, what with the tree-lined street; wide, pedestrian friendly walks, and upkeep of the historic buildings that house its stores.

Is there a difference between Chinatown bus services?

Can anyone who has more experience riding one of the several bus services that start at a Chinatown in one city and end in another tell me if one is decisively better. I have only taken New Century Travel. I first took it to Philadelphia, as it was one of two bus services that go there and the only one that had a schedule amenable to my own. It was very prompt (actually, it even left early!); however, the time that the bus left was such that we were delayed by an hour and a half or so because of awful D.C. rush hour traffic. The bus ride from Philadelphia back to D.C. was on a Sunday afternoon and encountered no problems. When I went to New York a couple months later, I stuck with New Century Travel, because of my positive first experience. However, the bus was about an hour and a half late arriving into D.C., making me an hour and a half or so late to New York. (At least the outbound rush hour traffic wasn't so bad, though).

In anticipation of my next trip to New York, I might even avoid the Chinatown bus quandry altogether. I am planning to take Vamoose! back from New York because it lets passengers off right near where I live. The website is nicer than those of the various Chinatown bus services as well, which gives me (a perhaps false) sense of faith in their timeliness and general safety. However, if I leave after work on Thursday, I will have to take the Chinatown bus, because it leaves not far from my office. My question is, do I stick with New Century Travel and risk delay (or risk a more unpleasant experience, as happened to one of my coworkers, who got stuck on a New Century bus that was overheated and had a broken toilet), or is there another more reliable Chinatown bus service?

D.C. Metro vs. Chicago El

Today's Washington Post includes a comparison between D.C.'s Metro and Chicago's El. Surprisingly, writer John Kelly warms to the El, though maybe that's because he realizes how great Chicago is in general:

Last month the entire Kelly family -- our dog, Charlie, included -- piled into the minivan so we could drive 12 1/2 hours and spend Christmas in Evanston, Ill., a gem of a town on the banks of one of the finer Great Lakes and home to My Overachieving Sister-in-Law.

There's no better way to experience a neighborhood than to be in possession of a dog. Forced to walk Charlie at least twice a day to empty him, My Lovely Wife and I drooled at the handsome houses on Orrington Avenue and across from Centennial Park.

Yes, Evanston, which neighbored my hometown and was itself my hometown for four odd years, is a "gem." Even though where I currently live in NoVa kind of reminds me of Evanston, Evanston's Victorian-style homes, eminent stone churches, concentrated downtown, and its perch on the lake makes for much more of a community feeling than the dispersed, ahistoric areas of Arlington County with extemporaneous names like "Courthouse" and "Ballston." I'm not surprised that a Washingtonian is allured by it.

Even I can't romanticize the El, though. Kelly, however, manages to do so:

In fact, when all the assorted out-of-towners took a trip en masse, one of our party was stuck, helpless, at the Transit Card machine as the train approached. He contemplated jumping the turnstile -- he's from New York -- when an amazing thing happened: The driver of the train, who could see him fumbling with his money, waited.

No subway trains are as plush as Metro's -- those carpets, that upholstery -- but I did notice that the L trains I rode were cleaner than Washington's in one way: There weren't as many newspapers. Is it possible that Chicagoans, when they carry a newspaper onto a train, actually carry it off, too? What a concept!

Does it sound like I prefer the L to Metro? Not necessarily. Those elevated platforms are cold. On the other hand, you always know where the stations are. They're perched up in the sky, not buried underground, their location marked with subtle brown monoliths.

The names of the stations are refreshingly direct, too, usually reflecting the streets they're on: Randolph, Madison, State. There's none of this New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet University-XM Radio-Bald Guy With a Hotdog Stand stuff.

Then again, the Windy City has two Chicago stations and two Washington stations. Woe to the person who says, "Meet you at the Chicago Station."

Red Line or Brown?

Just like our Metro, L trains echo with recorded announcements outlining prohibited behavior: No eating, no drinking, no gambling.

Did he say gambling? Whatever for?

I called the CTA to find out. Was this a particular problem? A spokeswoman would only tell me that there is an ordinance "to eliminate predatory types of behavior, such as shell games or sleight-of-hand or other games intended to cheat, defraud, or otherwise obtain money or other items."

You know, that's one thing I haven't seen on Washington's subway, even if it does sometimes seem as if the simple act of taking Metro is a gamble.

Okay, he has a good point about the absurdly cobbled-together names of D.C. Metro Stations. And actually, the double occurring names of El stations aren't as much trouble as Kelly supposes, as long as you're in your part of the city. For instance, if you live in Wicker Park, you'll naturally refer to the Damen Station on the Blue line, whereas if you live in Ravenswood, you consider Damen a stop on the Brown line. Most confusing I suppose are the two Chicago stations that Kelly speaks of, which both sit on Chicago Avenue, about half a mile from each other. Still, most people refer to and frequent the one further East, which is two blocks from Michigan Avenue and one of its gateways of frightening consumption: the American Girl Doll Store-Ralph Lauren Polo Store block. The westernmost Chicago Ave. train station tends to see more office workers than visitors.

D.C.'s Metrorail: Welcome to a Terry Gilliam movie

The El and Metro aren't totally comparable. They actually have somewhat different purposes. Washington, being a much smaller city, and its downtown much more concentrated, needs a fast-moving, state-of-the-art, comprehensive rail system that serves the city as well as the more-populated suburbs. Metro needs to be able to take people from the counties in Maryland and Virginia and dump hordes of them into only a few stations that serve the downtown. The El largely just serves Chicagoans and has a more dispersed downtown to work with--though the Loop is still home to a lot of the office space in the city--with the Metra serving as the regional transit. (True, D.C. has the MARC, but that's geared more for people coming in from the likes of Baltimore). Thus, El--with its frequent slow zones--is kind of a drag to take if you're coming from the suburbs. I'm surprised Kelly, who was going into Chicago from Evanston didn't comment on this, though I guess it must be more noticeable when you're by yourself than when you're with a big group.

The El, whose charm belies its inconvenience

If you want to understand the real downside of the El though, which Kelly doesn't mention at all, read today's Tribune, which illustrates just how out-dated the El really is:

Customers on the CTA Red, Brown and Purple/Evanston Express lines still may feel like they are traveling in one big slow zone until late 2009.

Expect packed trains and even worse delays than those already caused by rickety rails, crumbling viaducts and outmoded train-signaling systems. That's the message CTA president Frank Kruesi sent to riders on the three lines last week.

Commuting times will as much as double beginning in April when the most disruptive phase of the $530 million Brown Line expansion project begins, Kruesi said.

Seriously? When I took the El in from the suburbs to work and see friends, I often got stuck in run-of-the-mill delays. Now systemic delays are certain until 2009 because of this construction, without even factoring in the run-of-the mill delays. This gets to what annoyed me about the CTA and has me appreciating the Metro: The CTA is outdated, and it shouldn't be. Chicago is a world-class city, much more so than D.C., but D.C. is the only one with the world-class public transport. Both cities should have great transport. The El stations may be more charming, as Kelly suggests, than its Metro counterparts, but the frustrations of elevated transit outweigh the benefits of being treated to a constant visual reminder of the dynamic city below.

This weekend, if you travelled on the D.C. Metro, you were treated to exceptional service and information about the closing blue line, which barely, if at all, slowed transportation between Vienna at one end of the line and New Carrollton or Largo at the other, as one might have expected. Maps of the changes in line servicing were everywhere, as were helpful Metro employees. I know that the larger El must need more track work and general updates than D.C., and therefore can't manage such straightforwardness and convenience, but there is no reason why a small city like D.C. should have a monopoly on decent public transportation (it's the federal dollars, I guess).

Metro Fare Hikes are Counter-Intuitive

In this country, the gospel of the market reigns supreme, often to the detriment of smart and far-thinking policy. Witness the recent proposal by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (aka "Metro") to raise fares during rush hour or peak time to as much as 2.10 to head off a $116 million budget deficit. On the one hand, a good public transportation system is worth the money from its riders, and the Metro is one of the better public transportation systems in the country. On the other hand, it should be expected that a public transportation system is not a money maker and is often a money loser.

What Metro is losing, however, is gained back both financially and in terms of quality of life: in the form of decreased traffic, less roadwork, and less pollution. It is in drivers' as well as rail and bus commuters' interest to have a good public transportation system, even if that means paying a little extra in taxes for it. There needs to be some sort of understanding though, that Metro is not a money-maker, that it will often lose money, and that public good services such as public transportation often do lose money. The alternatives are worse. When Metro riders say that the potential fare hikes will push them to drive to work, Metro faces the vicious cycle where it has to continue to raise fares to make up for lost revenue because of commuters who no longer ride Metro because the fares got too high.

Metro is applying incentives to change the nature of the demand of Metro riders by proposing to increase fares during high peak hours (5 to 9:30 am and 3 to 7 pm on weekdays) to encourage riders to travel in off-hours, but as letter writers to the Post have said, it's pretty difficult for most people to change their traveling times. Most of us have to be at work within the peak traveling times. Metro also might charge a higher fare on people who get off at heavy traffic stations like Farragut North, but again, there is little most people can do to change their destination train station. Market calculations of supply-demand and incentives are not intuitive to public transportation like the Metro. Ideally, the business district in D.C. would be more spread out and workers would have flex time, but as yet, peoples' working patterns are pretty rigid.

Edited to add: Virginia legislators need to increase the revenue they pay into the Metro, especially considering it services so much of Northern Virginia, and Virginia pays significantly less in taxes than D.C. or Maryland. (I'm willing to say this as a Virginia resident).

Cities and My Very Own D.C. Travel Guide

Because I just returned from a weekend in New York City, whose land mass could probably fit 50 D.C.s, I am feeling like an inferior city-dweller. As another friend and fellow D.C. resident told me, D.C. always seems a bit of a disappointment after a weekend in New York. The truth is, the two cities cannot be compared: they are just different in their economic and therefore general composition. D.C. is furthermore just a unique city because of its preponderance of government jobs and jobs that revolve around government jobs. This of course shapes the city's character to a great degree: where an NYC or Chicago has many longstanding cultural outposts (think jazz clubs and intimate music venues), D.C. has only a few. This is because the D.C. metropolitan area has for a longtime been more a bedroom community, populated by government employees and their family. That it now vies to be a "cool" city is a newer development.

Furthermore, as a result of it having a job market centered around careers that promise greater stability than most--law, government, consulting, D.C. is a little more conservative than somewhere like NYC. That is, people in D.C. are more risk-averse (not to say NYC doesn't have this--it does, but it also is home to people with very "risky" professions such as artists). Politically, of course, D.C. is actually more liberal (or at least more Democratic-leaning) in the District and its surroundings, but culturally it's not. I had no idea that people wear leggings with flannel shirts and flats until I saw it, many times, in NYC. The celebrity sitings are cooler in NYC too. For instance, the first celebrity I saw in D.C. was Dennis Kucinich; in NYC this past weekend, I saw Michelle Williams and (I believe Heath Ledger) in Brooklyn.

So, because I need to console myself about living in a less hip, less dynamic, less urban, more conservative city--and really, I live in NoVA, which is a city-cum-suburb, I'm going to comprise a "Weekend in D.C." travel guide to prove to someone (me?) that D.C. is still...cool...right? (At least the Metro remains superior).

Just a note about the following guide: the places below to which I have not personally visited come highly recommended by others or are generally known as beloved D.C. institutions. So without further a due...

(Note: anything denoted with a $ sign costs money; anything without that notation is free!)

Friday: Museum Day

• Morning
• National Gallery (Metro: Archives-Navy Memorial or Smithsonian)
  
• Lunch
• Walk to U.S. Senate Cafeteria, Dirksen or Russell Building ($)
  
• Afternoon
• Air and Space Museum
• Freer and Hirshorn Galleries (Metro: L'Enfant Plaza or Smithsonian)
• Evening
• Jazz club on U. Street or the Black Cat ($) (Metro: U Street-Cardozo)
  

Saturday: Monument Day

• Morning
• Arlington National Cemetery and Iwo Jima (Metro: Arlington Cemetery, Rosslyn)
  
• Afternoon
• White House (tour optional) (Metro: McPherson Square or Farragut West)
  
• Old Executive Office Building
• Renwick Gallery and/or Phillips Collection ($) (had to throw in a few more great art museums, esp. the Phillips) (Metro: DuPont Circle)
  
• Dinner
• Old Ebbit Grill (Metro: Metro Center)
  
• Evening
• Walk from Old Ebbit Grill to the Washington Monument, World War II Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and Korean War Memorial (in my opinion, doing the memorials in the evening makes them all the more striking)

Sunday: D.C. Neighborhood day

• Morning
• Eastern Market: visit the market on 7th and North Carolina, stop for coffee at one of the nearby coffee shops, like Murky Coffee, and at Capitol Hill Books, then walk East on North Carolina to Lincoln Park (Metro: Eastern Market)
• Afternoon and Evening
• Dupont Circle, Kalorama, Georgetown: in Dupont, stop by Kramer Books, then walk up Connecticut Ave. until Kalorama Road, where there are beautiful homes (Metro: DuPont Circle)
• Evening
• Kennedy Center concert ($) (Metro: Foggy Bottom)

Please comment, take issue with, or offer suggestions to this itinerary. It is certainly a work in progress and furthermore reflects my own personal tastes, which tend towards art viewing and neighborhood exploring. Oh, and I definitely could use more restaurant suggestions. The D.C. restaurant scene is a little too lobbyist-oriented for me to be able to justify becoming an afficiando (i.e., I could not handle the expense).

Swarm of Type As

My biggest fear when riding the D.C. Metro on a daily basis during rush hour has to do with the crowds. I suppose people in Beijing and Tokyo are unphased by it, but when masses of people pour out of trains onto subway platforms, I get scared. Maybe this is because I've never seen people navigate a subway system with such intensity. For instance, not a day goes by where I don't see people making a mad dash from an escalator to a platform to catch a train, even when another one is a mere three minutes behind it. Not a day goes by when I don't imagine my transfer at L'Enfant Plaza from the blue or orange line to the yellow or green line to end in entrapment, with me being moved backward by the oncoming crowd of people that are trying to go the opposite direction, with little path for me to move against the crowd.

In my view there are two reasons for the intimidating D.C. subway crowds:

(1) The business and government districts are in a very compact, dense area; moreso than a larger city like New York or Chicago. Thus, more people are forced to interact in a smaller place.

(2) D.C. is the most Type A city in America.

So, one of the two above conclusions is probably a little easier to prove than the other, but I think I can make a fair case for both. D.C. is a city where a sizable amount of professionals gather: lawyers, politicians, etc. The types of people who fill these jobs tend to be overachievers. The young people who fill the jobs that assist the professionals--interns, legal assistants, consultants, etc.--also tend to be overachievers. Overachievers of course are Type A personalities. They are not known for stopping to smell the roses. I consider myself more Type A than Type B, but I like to stand on an escalator every once in awhile rather than scale it at a demon pace so I can enjoy the book or magazine I'm reading, and I don't need to run to miss a train if I know the next one is only 2 minutes away--as it almost invariably is during rush hour.

As I have found, this is not the D.C. way. People like to get from point A to point B in the least amount of time possible. The problem is, when most people have this mentality, there is no one who will yield his right of way. There is no one to pause and say, wait a minute, I'm going to let this frenzied man behind me pass me because he cares more about getting where he's going quickly. The people who yield, who think beyond shaving a few minutes down from their commute--the Type Bs--are just as useful as the Type As. Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should abide by typical subway protocol: stand on right side of escalator, walk on right; move towards the center of the train so you don't block people from getting in; have your ticket ready when you get to the turnstyles.

Perhaps the fact that I think so devotedly about train protocol makes me part of the swarm of Type As. I won't deny it. I'm just a little scared that there are so few Type Bs.

D.C. is Not Bad

I realize that my previous posts about D.C. make it look as if I hate this city. Au contraire, there are many things I actually like about the District, and it does not help my cause that I've been here for a mere two weeks.

One thing I do like about D.C. is that it reminds me of Paris a bit. The low buildings and the big boulevards of Pierre L'Enfant are of course part of it. Also, there are certain "squares," like the one between 7th and 8th on F Street (across from the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro) that are remniscent of the big squares in Paris like the ones at L'Opera and the Bourse. D.C. still seems newer than Paris, and rightly so, but it is nice to be walking along in an American city and be reminded of my favorite European one.


I also appreciate the size of D.C. One thing I got caught up in at first was feeling like I needed to live in The District, and though it is a bit more urban there, by living in Arlington, I am a mere five to ten minute train ride from D.C. nightlife and downtown D.C. In Chicago or New York, one can live within the city limits and still be a good thirty minute train ride from the downtown, if not more. With D.C.'s small size, of course, comes a lot of suburban development, but I can't say D.C. is any worse than Chicago in that regard, though I admit I haven't been out to scary places like Tyson's Corner and the Dulles-area yet.

So the moral of this post is, I like D.C. It seems like a great place to live.

D.C. is a Foreign Land

If I had cool blogger technology that allowed me to categorize my posts, I would categorize this under "Weird Things About D.C." and make it an ongoing list. In some ways, I feel more a foreigner here than I did in France, but I believe this is in part because I was prepared to be foreign in France and also because I don't know who the natives are here, in part because there aren't many natives. Anyway, without further adue are what I find particularly odd about this city. This list will be open-ended for future updates.

• Never-ending escalators. I read on the whyhatedc blog that the Dupont Circle escalator was broken the other day. There's nothing wrong with walking up stairs, in fact it's great exercise, but try climbing this at 7:30 AM:

• Happy Hours. I thought it was just called "going out for drinks." Here, going out for a bit after work is called a happy hour.

More to come, I'm sure.

Commuters Everywhere

If someone had taken me from one of the Chicago El's Loop stations and then plunked me right down in the D.C. transportation hub, Metro Center, I would have guessed that D.C. was the city with nearly 3 million residents and Chicago the city with 580 thousand--not the other way around. On the website I referenced in an earlier blog, whyihatedc, the blog's authors complain about the brusque nature of D.C. commuters, people who they say are unconcerned about nothing but coming and going as fast as possible. This is definitely true, and I still don't understand why people here rush to catch a train if the next one is coming a mere few minutes later. However, I can understand why people would run into each other quite frequently in the hub Metro stations: because there are a ridiculous amount of us converging and transferring from one train line to another in the big stations like Metro Center, Gallery Place, and so on.

On the left is Metro Center, but one would be hard-pressed to differentiate it from every. other. subway station in this city. Tourists, service workers, and Important People bump into each other here.

In Chicago, people seemed more spread out. Even the El's Loop stations, which serve the metropolitan area's ostensible hub, do not seem terribly crowded at all. In fact, D.C. is an inverse of Chicago: as I walked down the streets today, past huge government buildings that take up whole city blocks, I saw few people. On the other hand, on any given day in the Loop at around 5:30, I would have seen many people on the streets, but not as many in the train station. This seems a weird thing to harp on, but I guess it is another thing I miss about Chicago: there is evidence of human life on the streets, evidence of people talking, laughing, and enjoying (unhealthy) food. Here in D.C., there is evidence of people rushing around from train to train. I'm a little sad that I was subjected to the Midwestern inferiority complex when I was growing up, because, besides its aged public transportation, there is a whole lot to appreciate about Chicago that is lacking in this city of Northern Charm.

D.C., Day Three

My boredom combined with exhaustian and lack of anything better to do has brought me back to this blog. I'm afraid I'm already turning into what used to annoy me about some people from Northwestern. These people, almost always from New York City or California liked to tell you what was better about their hometown compared to Chicago. Whether it was In n' Out Burger or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the weather or the cool places to go out, the native Chicagoan was left feeling a little provincial next to this type.

Being in D.C.; however, has helped me appreciate a lot about Chicago (while still maintaining that it is better than New York--L.A. and San Francisco I'm not at all familiar with). For one thing, though I've always found Chicago almost endless in its length, I miss the amount of cool neighborhoods that its large land mass accomodated. D.C. is surprisingly small for a Nation's Capital.

The size alone isn't the problem, but the size combined with the socio-economic situation makes for a difficult housing market for someone like me. I remember reading an article last year in my Sociology of Crime class about cities and crime rates, and D.C.'s crime rate which is relatively high was explained in part by the bipolar socio-economic make-up of its residents. It seemed that people were either working professionals or part of an underclass employed in very low-paying jobs like food service and custodian work. There isn't much room here, the article said, for a socially mobile class. The housing market--with either luxury condos in sought-after neighborhoods in the Northwest part of the city or older, less-maintained homes in out of the way (and sometimes unsafe) areas of the city reflects this. The thought that one can live in a nice neighborhood of Chicago for 600-700 per month is pretty exciting in comparison.

So as I think about D.C., with its lack of a lake, its unbearable heat (though that is many places in the country right now), its bear of a housing market, and its hyper-yuppie neighborhoods, I have to respect my hometown. I'm afraid I will be a Chicago snob, if there is such thing. I feel like people out East have a hard time believing happiness can be found in the Midwest. It's just as well, it will keep the housing market sane.

There are no Blue States or Red States, only Purple States

Analysis by abstraction has turned into an ordinary habit of thought. It governs not only the newspaper graphics and all the studies of everything under the sun, but also the stock market, conversation, political debate, advertising, the Olympics, education, literary criticism--nothing has escaped it.-Jacques Barzun in From Dawn to Decadence

David Brooks sounds an awful lot like novelist Sinclair Lewis when describing what he calls the "Sprinkler City," located in "the fast-growing suburbs mostly in the South and West that are the homes of the new-style American dream." Problem is, Brooks purports to write non-fiction.

Brooks has indeed carved out a niche as a pop sociologist who makes jabs at an elite "blue state" culture filled with "NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing" while suggesting that such blue staters are in turn woefully out-of-touch with how red staters enjoy life, with "QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting." To help illustrate the stark contrasts he sees between red state and blue state culture, Brooks took a trip to Franklin County, Pennsylvania, soon after the 2000 election was decided in favor of Bush and around the time that pundits were opining on a cultural divide that was magically delineated by the squiggly boundaries of states.

Funnily enough, Brooks himself is the blue American he describes. A resident in the Democratic Montgomery County in Maryland, among the country's upper middle class, a writer for the New York Times editorial page, and a frequent contributor to NPR, Brooks' own life must be pretty free of the "meatloaf platters" that he claims is the standard entree in typical "red" county restaurants--perhaps a satisfying midday repast for the red-blooded hunter who hasn't shot any buffalo that morning or the antsy housewife who has had enough Susanne Somers for the day.

Or maybe Brooks doesn't have much of an idea of what he is talking about. That is what was suggested by Sasha Issenberg back in an April 2004 article in PhillyMag. According to Issenberg, Brooks' socio-cultural analysis is self-contradicting and misguided. As Issenberg explains, Brooks "takes [contemporary sociological] findings and, regardless of origin, applies to them what one might call the Brooks Consumer Taste Fallacy, which suggests that people are best understood by where they shop and what they buy." Issenberg points out that although
"there are salient cultural divides in the United States and, in fact, different values and practices among residents of Montgomery and Franklin counties..consumerr life is the place where they are most rapidly converging." Indeed, one could just as easily sip a Sulawesi blend coffee at a Starbucks in Montgomery County as they could in the Starbucks in the Borough of Chambersburg in Franklin County.

The reason I even bring up Brooks is because it is he and his colleagues who insist on defining their version of our nation on the pages of their mainstream newspapers and journals. (Also, Brooks has recently proven himself a hyperbolic fool in his most recent Times column). As Issenberg demonstrates by disproving much of what Brooks described in his visit to Franklin County, Brooks may well be seeing what he wants to see. So often in their demographic analysis of the Democratic party, public figures like John Kerry and Howard Dean, and in their depiction of the American people, the Washington-based media are quick to apply a simplistic divide that paints every Democrat as a Barbara Streisand and every Republican as a Joe Q. Taxpayer.

The sad part is, some in the Democratic party are complicit in this portrayal. In particular, many Democrats in D.C. have fallen into the media's trap of equating being outspoken with appearing too liberal, and thus too "blue." If Democrats are outspoken, they become the latte-sipping, hybrid-driving, New York Times-reading caricature that America supposedly doesn't want...except that lattes are available all over the place, hybrids are becoming increasingly popular, and plenty a Democrat has become disgusted with the NYT. My suggestion to Democrats who want to lead our party to victory in November: don't listen to what the people in D.C. say they know about flyover country too much, unless they're familiar with places like Franklin County, Pennsylvania (and David Brooks doesn't count).

The Seventies: When Americans became dumb?

One of the great paradoxes of our age is how the US can be so dimly complacent and so sharply fearful in the same breath.--James Wolcott

On my flight home from Orlando, Florida last night (I was visiting a friend), as I was opening my airplane reading, historian Bruce Schulman's The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, the woman in the seat next to me opened a Rush Limbaugh newsletter. Not fully believing my eyes, I glanced over surreptitiously at the articles every so often, only making myself more disgusted as I saw headlines like "Why Joe Wilson is Wrong" and clearly made-up quotes attributed to Bill Clinton and Al Gore (when will Rush get over his obsession with Clinton, anyway?). As a result of forces that have polarized our society, such as commentators like Rush, Bill O'Reilly, and Ann Coulter who get what seems like unlimited airtime to spew their usually unsubstantiated invective, people like me have tuned out of much of what passes for debate within the mainstream media. In a way, I live in a state of denial: I flip past Fox News as fast as possible, I live in a college town where even (most) Republicans scoff at O'Reilly, and I certainly don't meet a "dittohead," a person who listens to Rush and unquestionably accepts what he says as the truth, very often.

As I sat staring at The Seventies, I wondered how the United States has become a land within which two separate worlds exist: an educated, socially liberal world with faith in science and the less educated, socially conservative world with faith in religion. More importantly, how has the latter world become the more influential in politics and culture? In Schulman's book, I found part of my answer. In The Seventies, it is argued that as a result of frustration with the lack of progress of integrationist movements like Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Leadership Conference (SLC) and traditional feminist movements like the National Organization for Women (NOW), activits increasingly agitated against American social and political structures that they had once used to try to win equality. As an example, compare then-lawyer Thurgood Marshall's successful efforts in Brown v. Board of Education to prove that legally separate institutions could by definition never be equal circa 1954 to Stokely Carmichael's "black power"movement where he urged "a complete rejection of American society." With this distrust in the ability of America's public structures to achieve equality came a larger distrust in a government that had up to then been relatively successful at achieving its aims since the 1930s: aims of fighting depression, winning a war, and creating prosperity. In the late '60s and early '70s, however, the war in Vietnam and finally Watergate fomented distrust of government not only among minorities and women but among Americans who hadn't felt as disaffected during the civil rights era.

This, however is where things get muddled. Why, for instance, didn't Americans connect Watergate more directly with its perpetrators rather than with the entire federal government, and why didn't it become a lesson against invasvive government and the accumulation of executive power? Well, I believe it was a lesson against these things for awhile, but soon became a justification for Republican power in a contradictory sense: Republicans claimed they were the party against government and therefore were able to accumulate governmental power and do very corrupt things with it. In the meantime, as The Seventies suggests, Americans were looking to individualist experiences to define their being, their meaning. Schulman suggests that with public institutions in question, traditional organizations that fostered civic belonging waned in membership while membership in New Age movements and evangelist religions took off. This is also where Rush Limbaugh, in my view, could gain his following: from a bunch of people desirous to distrust government, to blame all of their problems on forces far from them, and to try and understand societal upheavals today.

In a recently published book called Retro vs. Metro by John Sperling, et al., the thesis is in part that the U.S. is currentlymade up of two distinct, polarized regional political mindsets (the former being the South, Midwest, and Mountain states, the latter the more populous East and West coasts and Great Lakes states): "one traditional and rooted in the past, and one modern and focused on the future." However, there are a few attributes of so-called "Retro" or red-state, suburban sprawl America that are nothing if not anti-traditional. The almost hedonistic belief in doing everything first and foremost to please oneself, the yes, liberal attitude towards our natural resources that come with driving SUVs and H2s and living in areas that are un-walkable, the unhealthy diets that lead to Type 2 diabetes and obesity: this is a red-state America. I'm not saying there aren't Democrats of this lifestyle or Republicans not of it, but that it is almost synonomous with the ideals of the New Right, which are in a nutshell: me, me me. Distrust of education based on an uninformed cynicism towards scientific reason is a fundamental attribute of the New Right and is in part behind our country's low achievement rankings in education (for instance, in 2003, 15-year olds in America finished 24th out of 29th in math and problem solving abilities).

Religion has become the "opiate of the masses" only because there are large segements of the population today who are unwilling to believe anything else. These are the same people who criticize the ideal of diversity, but when they argue that creationism should be taught in schools, they are employing the exact principles that they are purportedly against by suggesting a diversity of "views" must be taught. By appeasing this group of people and shying away from criticizing their lifestyle in fear of being called "elitist" or "liberal" can only lead to further decline in the direction of our country.

Crazy El Ride

No Saturday night would be complete without a crazy El story. I've posted mine on CTA Tattler right here.