An Alternate Guide to the Nation's Capitol (part I)

There are a million and one tourist guides to the city every high school student is forced to visit on a field trip at some point, but they only serve in pointing out the obvious - museums and the Mall.  Certainly there are great buildings and memorials in the Nation's capitol that everybody should be guilted into visiting once in their life, but now that D.C. is growing past it's designation as America's centralized roadside attraction with the influx of reality TV shows, movies filmed here that aren't D.C. Cab, and an upcoming residential population who haven't rotted from the inside out yet, it needs a more in-depth profile.

Most other large metropolitan cities have an alternate Flavorpill-type guide like this - your New Yorks, San Franciscos, Tokyos, and Parises - but those are also huge metropolitan behemoths with swarming populations of interesting creative types.  D.C. is a small southern town that happens to be filled with lawyers.  It's like a legal-world Burning Man taking place in Georgia.  Or as John F. Kennedy put it, "A town of Southern efficiency and Northern charm".  Sounds great!

Frustration at D.C.'s lack of joie de vivre is a common habit of people forced to move here for employment.  The flawed temptation is to compare it with New York since both are the likely destinations of post-graduate jobs.  New York is New York.  D.C. is something different and has it's own appeal once you get over the need for 24-hour disco fashion parties.  I've had my own frustrations, but in the end, any place is really what you make of it.  You may not be able to get food delivered at two in the morning, but there are certainly other things in life.

Everybody already knows about the obvious things like the Metro (clean, reliable, limited), the weather (horrid swamp summers, mild winters), crime (scary, but not so much anymore), and the people (government worker soul death), but that last one is more complex than it sounds.  Essentially there are 6 types of people in D.C.:

• Government workers - Some have families and live out in the suburbs.  Some have rotted away from the inside, some work in places like the Library of Congress and have latched on to an endless source of fascinating information.
• Hill Staff - Because of the long hours and inside nature of the jobs, they are almost invisible to the outside world.  Soul rot grade: 7/10.
• Non-profit/NGO workers - Probably the most commonly occuring.  Outgoing and the closest to what might be considered regular humanity.
• Journalists - Schlubby, loud, like to hear themselves talk.
• Lawyers - Loud, sometimes short, like to hear themselves talk.
• Black people - Actually from DC.  Angry, relatively no soul rot. 

Altogether, that might sound kind of horrifying, but there is a brighter side. D.C. also has this relatively small population of people who actually care about things.   Not just the casual, "I recycle" or "I give money to homeless people when they make me feel guilty", but the people who think that it's a crime that anybody in the modern world is poor and dedicate their lives to changing it without a hint of smug self-satisfaction.  It might sound trite, but when confronted by someone like this it can easily call into question the comedian's attitude.  Anybody to them who isn't doing something to combat the horrid conditions existing in the world is just wasting resources for their own interests.  Which sounds harsh, but it's hard to argue against.  What's scary is when it starts to bleed in with religious indignation and eventually morphs into smug self-satisfaction. Until then, it's actually quite enlightening.

The problem with that selfless personality is that it doesn't make for quality living - too many fresh-faced kids out of graduate school who aren't able to balance high-minded intent with some selfish exploitation of the world.  Which is why I fully encourage the recent hype of D.C. as a "hip place to be" whatever that might mean.  Send down some more NYC ex-pats with the promise of cheap Chinatown bus tickets.  Flood the streets with more creative types who might not realize that they're smack in the middle of an emotional "grey zone". Have them build 24 hour fashion disco parties in the dead center of this sterile landscape and integrate the pleasure principle into political discourse.  There's a Williamsburg (VA) tri-corner hat theme-rave that's just waiting to be made.

Chances are that it will all collapse financially within a year (so far it's been a boon), and in the end it may end up halfway between cynicism and hedonism.

—October 8th, 2009

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