Talkin’ Bottom-of-the-Northeast-Corridor Blues
This is what happens when Washingtonians visit New York: we check out MOMA, we eat some bagels, and we tolerate the constant drone from New Yorkers about how much better/hipper/sexier and altogether “more relevant” NYC is than our modest District. I've even heard these cosmopolitan personalities declare that “in the City, all the women are beautiful,” their eyes gazing wistfully past the buildings that extend high above them, free of the chains of a 10-story height limit.
Last weekend, I hopped on a Chinatown bus to go get demeaned for a few days. “The City,” as they call it, has been exacting a thorough Northeastern sucking motion over my group of friends for several years now. It’s also trained them to ask, in a droll and eventual tone, “And when are you moving to the City?”
Don’t get me wrong, I like New York City. I can admit that the grass is greener on the Central Park side of the National Mall. I can accept that the MOMA trumps the NGA (perhaps that’s why it costs to get in). But when, on this particular trip, these New Yorkers went so far as to off-handedly insult my neighborhood, I got a little defensive. “I went down to D.C. a few months ago,” a friend of mine told me. “I ended up at some place called Adam’s Morgan. It was very...college.”
I’ll be the first to admit that my neighborhood’s known to get overloaded with pizza-chucking, flip-cupping assholes on a nightly basis. Still, it’s where I call home, and I’m not going to sit idly by as some self-important City-dwellers peer down on it from their ivory Empire State Building.
So, help me out here: what parts of D.C. are better/hipper/sexier and altogether “more relevant”?
Or, alternately: When are you moving to the City?
Comments
Leave a Reply
You can follow any responses to this entry through its comments RSS feed.
3:55 pm
NY is great until gets destroyed by terrorists or its own crumbling infrastructure.DC is ok too for a city built in a swamp that also has its terrorist scares.
In terms of culture, I guess I feel the same way about DC that you feel about NY- yeah it has more amenities, but its not exactly on the front lines of the 'culture wars'.
Yeah, I am still in Richmond, "flinging shit from my hovel" at the local aristocracy in a stinky Southern city. But it has its own urban charms and I have good neighbors and a partial view of river rapids.
3:58 pm
Hey...I had a good time in D.C. To answer your question, D.C. is more relevant in that it's not New York, proving that New York is an alien colony. It's just that some of us happen to be aliens.
4:40 pm
NY is a great city, sure. But to my eyes, it's become so expensive and whitebread as result, a lot of the night life feels like penn quarter these days. Sure, there are still plenty of fun places, after all, it's New York. But I think that DC has a much more diverse and interesting bohemian set than NYC does -- and a hell of a lot less pretentious -- even if we're not at nearly the same scale. DC is real, New York is basically a playground for people with too much money. We are far more relevant.
4:50 pm
I lived in dc now I live in nyc. People always fail to realize how fucking enormous this place is. Adams Morgan gets owned by williamsburg. It's twice the size, and much cooler (and cheaper). Brooklyn is where it's hat. Those manhattan cats move to fast at night for me. Queens is also really awesome.
5:08 pm
My wife and I just moved to Manhattan after living in the DC area (NOVA) all her life and for several years, respectively. Neither of us has any interest in hipness--Adams Morgan to me is hell on earth--but we both vastly prefer the DC area. Here's why.
1. Bags of garbage are piled high on the sidewalks of NYC, stinking up the place and attracting the notorious rats that infest the city.
2. Rents and home prices in NYC are ridiculously high. Most cities that are expensive are also nice--e.g., near the ocean (or at least a large lake) or near mountains. Not so here. Here you pay a ton of money to live in a squalid, cramped apartment. And as far as I can tell, no one sails on either river. At least in DC you have actual single-family homes in the city--and you don't have to be a millionaire to even think of owning a condo.
3. Because of high costs, New Yorkers--at least the ones in Manhattan--seem to live a sort of extended adolescence. They never buy homes and don't own cars. So you end up with a city of young people who don't mind living this way for a while, super-rich people who can afford the high prices, and very poor people who work in Manhattan but live in other boroughs. If you're in your 20s, NY is great. But if you're in your 30s and at all thinking about settling down, forget it. Unless you have money to burn.
4. It's really loud and crowded here. There seems to always be a siren blaring or a car honking. And people still walk too slow. I thought this would be the one part of the world where I don't have to walk around other people on the sidewalk. Not so.
5. NY is unbelievably unfriendly to disabled people and those with luggage. Try getting out of the subway system in either case, and you'll find yourself struggling up a flight of steps; there are no elevators or escalators that I could see. I don't know how the city government has been able to violate the ADA Act so flagrantly.
6. Everyone smokes here. And that includes outside. It just contributes to the whole gritty, low-rent feel of New York.
7. The cabs don't take credit cards. Oh, they have a little scan-slot thing in them, but just try using it.
8. For a city where everyone walks, I have never seen cars that come so close to running over pedestrians. Oh, sure--several have been run over trying to cross route 50 in Falls Church--but I'm talking about people in a crosswalk, with the light on their side! The cabs come at you and miss by inches. And if you cross against the light, and a cab is blocks away, they'll speed up.
9. Did I mention the prices? I went to a supermarket here last night. Nothing was on sale. All the cereal was about $5 per box. A 100-count box of regular Tylenol was $10.
Of course there are nice aspects of New York. But I, too, get tired of hearing its citizens refer to it as the "Greatest city on earth." (In what way? Size? That would be Sao Paolo, I think. Historical importance? Try Rome or Athens. Current power on the world stage? DC, of course. Cleanliness and efficiency? Probably Geneva or Victoria, BC. Importance to American culture? Definitely New Orleans, with Chicago and LA next.)
New York is the financial and musical-theater capital of the world. But I find it to be an egomaniacal version of Milwaukee. I find the suburbs of DC a far nicer place to live.
6:09 pm
New York is far superior to DC in every category.
The sad fact is, DC has very little to offer compared to say Boston, Chicago, Denver, LA or New York.
DC is a Black & White city with little or no ethnic diversity and has wall to wall idiots who think they are smarter than everybody else.
While DC is sort of a quiet place, it use to be a stop over for most gards to better.
7:27 pm
People dress better in NYC. That's about it. Oh, they'll also drown first when the polar ice caps accelerate their melting.
10:31 am
DC has little to offer compared to Denver or LA? Those are both overgrown suburbs. I can take the criticism vs. NYC or Boston, but Denver? I used to like Denver before I had lived in real cities. Denver is like Potomac Mills clone-stamped across an entire metro area, with a fake downtown filled with Pottery Barns and Lane Bryants. And talking about diversity, Boston and Denver have nothing on DC. I don't understand why black folks don't count for diversity in your opinion, but if you have to have more than two main ethnic groups, Denver and LA don't offer much either. DC has probably the largest population of Salvadorans per capita anywhere in the country, not to mention disproportionate numbers of Ethiopians and other Africans. But it is the unique interchange of black and white Americans in DC that really makes for an interesting place, provided you are open to it. The DC area is home to the most prosperous majority-black county in the country, and traditional black culture finds expressions in DC that are missing from most places not exclusively African American.
5:02 pm
This is the most asinine conversation in history. Which city is better? And people are getting offeneded? It's kind of like what high school is better? Oh did I just insinuate something? Proof of the mob mentality that rules America and our super commercialized view of ourselves. Where can I go to the trendiest spot? Buy the hippest clothes? Where can I go that will make me feel better about myself because I am so vapid and empty and all I really want is to be able to say something interesting about myself at cocktail parties where everyone is smarter than me?