musings on DC living

People don't seem to understand why I don't love DC. Most folks - whether they have lived here or not - seem to love this place. It occurred to me this weekend why they love it and I don't, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they haven't lived in the DC I have lived in.

I shared a cab home Saturday night with a guy who was heading to Capitol Hill but lived in Alexandria. He worked at the US Patent and Trademark Office, and since I used to cover the USPTO for a technology pub, I was interested in what he did and what his career plans were. We chatted for a bit, and then he stopped and said: "This is why I love DC. Only here can you have a conversation like this riding home from the bar at 2 in the morning."

I will give him that. I had spent the evening at a bar where walking to the bathroom I overheard the phrase "profit margin" or some shit.

Then somehow we came back to how I live in a shady neighborhood, once again verified by my cab driver. I agreed with my backseat partner that only in DC do you find such a civic-minded, driven group of young people - but, I argued, also only here do you have such a stark dichotomy of class and race. Well-to-do, educated, affluent people sharing the city with the destitute, disaffected, isolated, angry. There seems to be little middle ground and these two opposite ends of the spectrum fuel the city's tension.

One night I ride home in a cab talking about patent fees. The night before I take the bus, listening to a man holler out nonsense like "Everybody in the bus say 'I love ya.' I love ya!" and "If you man, be a man; if you a mouse, stay in the house."

I told the guy riding with me that I actually like living in this neighborhood, that it gives me a small picture in another world and teaches me so much about race, class, politics, crime. He agreed, and said he was a minority in his apartment building in Alexandria, that there were people from all over the world, particularly Africa.

But it's different. And the cab driver articulated it the best. And his assessment seemed to sum up how many people can live in a different DC.

He said: "No, I live in Alexandria, and I am one of those people. But we are different. These people from other countries are here because they chose to be here and they are working hard or studying or making a better life. The people in this [North Capitol Hill] neighborhood are Americans. They are stuck here, and they are poor and angry and killing each other."

It's true. And my argument is that many people don't experience the latter. They may know about it - the crime rate is hard to ignore anywhere in the city - but they don't go home to it or wake up in the middle of the night to it or fear the bus ride home because of it. They experience the affluent, educated residents; the fun bars and great restaurants filled with like-minded people. They even see the racial diversity and feel the vibes of an international city. But they are missing something. They are missing what I think is the other part of the real DC. They are missing the elements that make me both love and hate this city.