The City
The highway from Baltimore snakes through cold marsh and matchstick forests until it deposits you in D.C. without announcement. Nondescript slums and neglected red brick buildings mark your entrance to our nation's capital. Almost immediately — for the city is small, barely 20 square miles — you spot an errant landmark, a lost statue, an obscure embassy. Further into the city, the architecture improves. Of the upscale, important-looking buildings there are two types: sturdy colonials built with an individual nuance that makes them look historic and still-important at once; and sharp-edged, gleaming office buildings that usually stand on a corner as if they were puffing up their chest.
Three main groups coexist in D.C. : the government, the money, and the people. There are few distinct districts in The District, but it is not without order. Imagine three drops in a pond — one at the capitol, one on K Street and one at the southern entrance — the city would be organized according to the overlap of their ripples.
The three groups have a working relationship. The lower-class workers, mostly tired- and bored-looking minorities, make the food or brew the coffee for the men who work in the glittering cubes who use their money to influence our statesmen. They live in close proximity to each other, but not in overcrowded compartmentalization, as in New York. Because the people of D.C. are not so compressed that they feel the need to band together in order to salvage some sense of individuality, and because they are not so spread out that they feel the need to reach out to their neighbor, Washington D.C. has very little sense of community and identity. The large number of commuters, immigrant workers, and white "leaders" who constantly move in and out of Washington only contribute to this pool of unfamiliarity.
Of course a city is, almost by definition, the sum of many unsimilar parts. But D.C. is unique in its lack of homogeneity — although one surely shies from calling it diverse. D.C. is less a sum of its people than a collection of niches.
On K Street the money-men come to make their fortunes. Tourists flock to the National Mall to spend their savings. The people who move and shake for a living are confined to their own hill. At the Washington Monument resides the sharp, simple symbol of a national identity that includes, but does not belong, to the city itself. Only affluent gay couples can afford to live on the street with nicer brownstones. One street is known as Embassy Row. Kriston lives on U Street, where you pass an Ethiopian restaurant literally every two blocks.
But K Street is "the most boring famous street in America," as Kriston calls it. And the National Mall is just UT's south mall writ large. The day Kriston and I visited, it wasn't particular austere or majestic, like it is on TV. It was crowded. Noisy crowds crunched on the gravel walkways, most people just kind of strolling, although some were playing soccer on the grass, some flying kites; cars were everywhere; the Washington Monument hid in a kind of smoggy haze; construction cranes hung asymmetrically over the capitol's shoulder — in short, the scene was filled with all of the clitter-clatter of the everyday life. That, more than anything, defines what D.C. is and how it functions: people doing their own thing. Those who come here are brought together not by a sense of common identity but by common ambition. Unlike New York accolytes, who seem to derive a sense of importance solely by virtue of living in New York, D.C. denizens move about the city with a self-imbued importance because they had to come here to accomplish whatever it is they want to do.
But their lives, and the tourist's invasion, revolve around monuments and symbols that most D.C. natives ignore. The real charm of the city for me lay in the communities that are jumbled up with blacks, whites, Ehthiopians, Indians, Salvadoreans, and everyone else. Kriston's brownstone sits on the crest of a wave of gentrification visibly making its way down U Street. From his corner at U and 10th, a few feet away from Joe the crack dealer's house, I scanned down the block: shoeshine parlor, tiny soul food restaurant, beauty salon ("We do braids and extensions!"), barber shop, upscale jazz restaurant, corner store, ethiopian restaurant, the famous Ben's Chili Bowl — until somewhere around 14th street you hit the unfinished, mod apartments that looks like giant cubes stacked on each other and which will obviously not be housing any crack dealers. Turning around, though, and looking toward the lower-numbered blocks, I asked Kriston: "What's that direction?"
"Crime," he said.
But I'd much rather eat at Oohs and Aahs or go to Ben's drunk at 2 a.m. than live in the rich niche of Georgetown. Admittedly, this appreciation could seem to border on a bit of, how to put it?, reverse elitism, I guess. And it's not like Kriston's neighborhood doesn't have the amenities a middle class white kid would typically want. There's a bar district very similar to 6th Street just past the mod condos and a coffe shop around the corner, across the street from a hipster clothing store. His neighborhood accomodates someone like me very nicely while also allowing access to a variety of cultures I didn't see a whole lot of growing up in San Antonio. It makes life a lot more interesting.
And this is why D.C. appeals to me. For if there is a fourth group in town, holding it all together, it is the young people. More than anyone else, their lives reach into all three spheres of the city's tenuous identity. In their decentralization, living wherever they can find the right balance of security and thrift, they are like a glue that helps give the town cohesiveness — an integral part of the city but not one that is built into the foundation. They come with their clumsy ambition, the safety net of a good education and well off parents, and they live side by side with the working classes, not exactly intermingling, but at least interacting with them in ways that extend beyond service industries. It is not an ideal relationship by any means; I saw the wave of gentrification as a shameful example of wealth displacing culture, but I had to admire the improvements in safety and standard of living it brings.
The neighborhood I saw will not be around for long. I don't know if the changes are for better or worse. But for now, what I loved about D.C. was not the rigid and defined display of Our Nation's Capital, nor was it the blue-suit culture of self-aggrandizing bureaucrats, nor was it an Orwellian desire to intimately understand people different than me. I enjoyed being able to draw from all three of these banks, to experience the best aspects of each, to hang out with intellgient, ambitious kids my age, to have a dozen great restaurants within walking distance, and to have access to all the special attractions of a tourist town. It isn't something that can be neatly capitulated. It is instead chaotic, uncertain, and exciting.
The highway from Baltimore snakes through cold marsh and matchstick forests until it deposits you in D.C. without announcement. Nondescript slums and neglected red brick buildings mark your entrance to our nation's capital. Almost immediately — for the city is small, barely 20 square miles — you spot an errant landmark, a lost statue, an obscure embassy. Further into the city, the architecture improves. Of the upscale, important-looking buildings there are two types: sturdy colonials built with an individual nuance that makes them look historic and still-important at once; and sharp-edged, gleaming office buildings that usually stand on a corner as if they were puffing up their chest.
Three main groups coexist in D.C. : the government, the money, and the people. There are few distinct districts in The District, but it is not without order. Imagine three drops in a pond — one at the capitol, one on K Street and one at the southern entrance — the city would be organized according to the overlap of their ripples.
The three groups have a working relationship. The lower-class workers, mostly tired- and bored-looking minorities, make the food or brew the coffee for the men who work in the glittering cubes who use their money to influence our statesmen. They live in close proximity to each other, but not in overcrowded compartmentalization, as in New York. Because the people of D.C. are not so compressed that they feel the need to band together in order to salvage some sense of individuality, and because they are not so spread out that they feel the need to reach out to their neighbor, Washington D.C. has very little sense of community and identity. The large number of commuters, immigrant workers, and white "leaders" who constantly move in and out of Washington only contribute to this pool of unfamiliarity.
Of course a city is, almost by definition, the sum of many unsimilar parts. But D.C. is unique in its lack of homogeneity — although one surely shies from calling it diverse. D.C. is less a sum of its people than a collection of niches.
On K Street the money-men come to make their fortunes. Tourists flock to the National Mall to spend their savings. The people who move and shake for a living are confined to their own hill. At the Washington Monument resides the sharp, simple symbol of a national identity that includes, but does not belong, to the city itself. Only affluent gay couples can afford to live on the street with nicer brownstones. One street is known as Embassy Row. Kriston lives on U Street, where you pass an Ethiopian restaurant literally every two blocks.
But K Street is "the most boring famous street in America," as Kriston calls it. And the National Mall is just UT's south mall writ large. The day Kriston and I visited, it wasn't particular austere or majestic, like it is on TV. It was crowded. Noisy crowds crunched on the gravel walkways, most people just kind of strolling, although some were playing soccer on the grass, some flying kites; cars were everywhere; the Washington Monument hid in a kind of smoggy haze; construction cranes hung asymmetrically over the capitol's shoulder — in short, the scene was filled with all of the clitter-clatter of the everyday life. That, more than anything, defines what D.C. is and how it functions: people doing their own thing. Those who come here are brought together not by a sense of common identity but by common ambition. Unlike New York accolytes, who seem to derive a sense of importance solely by virtue of living in New York, D.C. denizens move about the city with a self-imbued importance because they had to come here to accomplish whatever it is they want to do.
But their lives, and the tourist's invasion, revolve around monuments and symbols that most D.C. natives ignore. The real charm of the city for me lay in the communities that are jumbled up with blacks, whites, Ehthiopians, Indians, Salvadoreans, and everyone else. Kriston's brownstone sits on the crest of a wave of gentrification visibly making its way down U Street. From his corner at U and 10th, a few feet away from Joe the crack dealer's house, I scanned down the block: shoeshine parlor, tiny soul food restaurant, beauty salon ("We do braids and extensions!"), barber shop, upscale jazz restaurant, corner store, ethiopian restaurant, the famous Ben's Chili Bowl — until somewhere around 14th street you hit the unfinished, mod apartments that looks like giant cubes stacked on each other and which will obviously not be housing any crack dealers. Turning around, though, and looking toward the lower-numbered blocks, I asked Kriston: "What's that direction?"
"Crime," he said.
But I'd much rather eat at Oohs and Aahs or go to Ben's drunk at 2 a.m. than live in the rich niche of Georgetown. Admittedly, this appreciation could seem to border on a bit of, how to put it?, reverse elitism, I guess. And it's not like Kriston's neighborhood doesn't have the amenities a middle class white kid would typically want. There's a bar district very similar to 6th Street just past the mod condos and a coffe shop around the corner, across the street from a hipster clothing store. His neighborhood accomodates someone like me very nicely while also allowing access to a variety of cultures I didn't see a whole lot of growing up in San Antonio. It makes life a lot more interesting.
And this is why D.C. appeals to me. For if there is a fourth group in town, holding it all together, it is the young people. More than anyone else, their lives reach into all three spheres of the city's tenuous identity. In their decentralization, living wherever they can find the right balance of security and thrift, they are like a glue that helps give the town cohesiveness — an integral part of the city but not one that is built into the foundation. They come with their clumsy ambition, the safety net of a good education and well off parents, and they live side by side with the working classes, not exactly intermingling, but at least interacting with them in ways that extend beyond service industries. It is not an ideal relationship by any means; I saw the wave of gentrification as a shameful example of wealth displacing culture, but I had to admire the improvements in safety and standard of living it brings.
The neighborhood I saw will not be around for long. I don't know if the changes are for better or worse. But for now, what I loved about D.C. was not the rigid and defined display of Our Nation's Capital, nor was it the blue-suit culture of self-aggrandizing bureaucrats, nor was it an Orwellian desire to intimately understand people different than me. I enjoyed being able to draw from all three of these banks, to experience the best aspects of each, to hang out with intellgient, ambitious kids my age, to have a dozen great restaurants within walking distance, and to have access to all the special attractions of a tourist town. It isn't something that can be neatly capitulated. It is instead chaotic, uncertain, and exciting.
posted by Matt at 12:59 PM
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