Kevin Costner's Russian's Rusty: Washington DC Metropolitan Area Thread II

weird

I dunno, I've only taken a DC cab like twice.

http://www.washington.org/UploadedImages/ImageGallery/zonemap.jpg

option 2: the authors were hobbits

option 3: DC was too cheap to buy bigger paper that would allow for the commonplace north orientation

you decide

http://www.eskimo.com/~tiktok/pics/MAP1.JPG

"The rents aren't high enough to cover their mortgage so people are selling" she said.

i haven't really posted too much on this board, although i frequently read it, but this one really hit the spot. I have been stuck in the d.c.-nyc cycle for about 7 years now. I went to school in nyc and stuck it out after a teaching fellowship.

this summer i thought i was ready to return, and i spent 10 weeks (summer break for those in the education field) working in d.c. trying to fit back in. i love d.c. i grew up there. i try to tell people in nyc how dope the chocolate city really is. i really wanted it too work. but, i can't step up and move back. i spent much of the summer in d.c. thinking about how many great free shows i was missing. i would mock d.c. fashion and dcisms (go-go, redskins, dischord) with my ex-pat buddy who was also in the district for the summer.

yet, once again i miss it. i miss pgc. i read pelecanos and i conjure up the quirks that make it such a great place. at the same time, i realize how different the city is now.

this really isn't going anywhere specific, you can't compare or argue the merits of ny vs. d.c. i'd just be repeating the many sentiments already expressed.

a few asides...

try the Big Hunt for relaxed pints with friends.

the cab map was designed so that folks tooling around capitol hill could taxi about without switching zones.

take the vamoose bus between nyc and dc (avoid the greyhound station at all costs!).

the rents are still better than nyc.

I can't remember that ever happening since the days of Gary Clark/Art Monk/Ricky Sanders. Awesome.

Anyhow we tried out the John Harvard brewpub downtown on Friday, it was way too brightly lit but the clientele wasn't annoying which was a nice bonus. Our waitress gave another thumbs up for the Black Cat downstairs, we haven't been back to U street in too long, perhaps.

Have fun at Pharmacy.

I forgot that I can't make it on Thursday because I have an extramarital date that has been in the works for months! My date is also married, but both of our spouses gave the OK. We are going to the Brickskeller for drinks and then to a sexy scientist seminar!

I have not been on a date in years WHAT SHOULD I WEAR???

I am deeply disappointed (really!) that I am missing the chance to actually meet other DC ilxors, so hopefully there will be another FAP in the near future. Like, at the ZEBRA LOUNGE.

Oh and Brian next time you are drinking at 2 Amy's give me a head's up and I will run around the corner and meet you!

Have fun at the Brickskeller...

boo!

Exurbanites Occupy an Unsettled Place in Va. Politics

Jamie and Stephan Lechner liked their house in Germantown well enough, but in recent years, they said, the neighborhood began to change in ways that made them feel less comfortable. There were some discipline problems in the school where Jamie taught. There was a shooting in a low-income area not too far from where they lived and other, smaller signs that made them think things were headed downward.

And so, with their twin boys near school age, the Lechners did what they figured anyone of means would: They packed up and moved to a place billed as a retreat from all that: Dominion Valley, a new, gated, golf course community of $700,000 homes on the rural edges of Northern Virginia, a place where the singular issue of traffic dominates and where the last memorable conflict was whether jeans would be allowed in the country club.

"We had conflict," said Jamie Lechner, referring to her old Germantown neighborhood. "And we wanted to move away from that. . . . That's why we're here -- to be sheltered."