Oh yes, it’s definitely D.C., now the richest metropolitan area in the U.S. And in case you were wondering, here’s the cause:
D.C.’s prosperity reflects a parasite economy that battens on wealth created by others. We live in a vast, metastasizing tick of a city, swollen on the lifeblood it drains from the body politic.
Why did I move to the D.C. area again? Oh yeah, I’m supposed to help keep this from happening. I feel so productive…
Don’t like the way a particular sector of your economy is evolving… say taxicabs in DC, for example? No problem:
What could go wrong?
If this works, I say we ban all food, then just lift the ban one government-approved cuisine at a time.
The Post on footpaths worn in the snow:
In Chevy Chase West, as one day followed another with no snowplow in sight, the footpaths running down the middle of every street became so well packed and clearly defined that visitors at times assumed a Good Samaritan with a snowblower had carved them out. That wasn’t the case, of course; the network was the collective accomplishment of hundreds of tromping neighbors, each wanting to visit the other or break out to Bethesda or Friendship Heights. There was something wonderfully mysterious about the emergence of such a well-formed network, almost as if the ghosts of pre-automotive trading trails had risen through centuries of pavement.
Hey Post, I have a book for you to read. It works for more than snow!
Here, later, is the point of their rumination:
This being Washington, many naturally were ready to draw political lessons, and divergent ones at that. The natural disaster proved, once and for all, the necessity of government and the services it provides — or it proved, once and for all, the urgency of self-reliant preparation.
Um, the goverment was closed for four days. No flights, no metro, no postal service. Everything the government has a monopoly on, DC was not able to access at any price. The government sucked this one up hard core. Does the Post reeeeally want us to pass judgment on the necessity of government based on this week?
The creators of Ray’s The Steaks expect to open this new wine bar next month in the same Arlington facility as their popular steakhouse. It’s part of a major expansion and relocation of their creatively-branded restaurants, including the following changes:
On the sandwich front, Ray’s Hell-Burger is relocating this spring from 1725 Wilson Blvd. into larger digs at 1650 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington. Landrum says the newly acquired 4,000 square-foot space solves the current problems of “over-crowded [and] over-stressed facilities.” The move will also allow him to beef up Hell-Burger’s menu with beer and wine, milkshakes and sides such as fries and onion rings. The long-promised Ray’s: The Catch, Landrum’s fish house idea, will take the place vacated by Hell-Burger around the same time.
Joining Glass next month will be Ray’s: The Game in the original, “pre-Obama” home for Hell-Burger (1713 Wilson Blvd.), with cooks grilling burgers made from custom-ground venison, wild boar, elk, antelope, wild duck and ostrich.
Can’t wait!
Ahh, it’s that time of year again — when all my favorite bars get slammed with barely-21 Miller Lite lovers, I have to start actively avoiding sidewalk vomit at night, and the popped collar enjoys its seasonal resurgence outside its normal Georgetown confines. Welcome back, season of the DC intern.
For some, intern season started two weeks ago. For my organization, however, intern season kicks off tonight with the opening talk of the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program. 82 talented young people will be descending on DC for a week of exciting lectures, with 50 of them staying here all summer to work at various think tanks.
Are you an intern? Here are a few tips for your stay in DC.
Are you an intern-hater? This blog is for you.
Despite my snarky opening, my full-time job is figuring out how to help young people make a difference, so I happen to love intern season: my relative experience level in DC rises from solid to sage at happy hours. Interns also hate spending money and therefore throw great apartment parties — likely one reason I always save money in the summer! And although interns can’t always keep up (see tip #2 above), it’s fair to say that some of my aging friends aren’t the ballers they once were, so I always enjoy hanging out with new people who don’t have pre-set appointments with Sex and the City reruns.
Here’s my single most important tip for this year’s interns: perseverance in creating your own opportunities is what separates the men from the boys. If you attend a happy hour and you just stand in the corner with your fellow interns, you are not out there meeting people. But although exchanging cards with someone might be enough to get you a job down the road (most interns don’t even do that), I’m talking about more than that. I posit that meeting prestigious people once is less important than getting to know a handful of DC professionals well. The people who close down the bar more often than not are the real movers and shakers, because sooner or later they know pretty much everyone.
I’m not saying be “that guy” who’s always passing out business cards, and I’m definitely not saying be “that guy” who always has to be helped into a taxi. I’m saying be that guy who’s out enough that DC professionals remember your name and think you’re pretty cool to have a beer with. If you’re intelligent, a good communicator, and a good person, they’ll remember that come job search time, because those are very hard qualities to discern from a resume and cover letter. Go to happy hours. Go to events with receptions. Don’t let $5 in lunch or drink costs be the deterrent that keeps you from a new opportunity. When you’re invited, show up and hang out and introduce yourself and make friends. That’s all networking really is.
If you have any questions, let me know. I do this for a living, after all.
A few months ago I wrote an off-putting memo about people who move to DC and feel compelled to live “in the city.” Today I revisit my argument more thoughtfully.
When choosing where to live in a given metropolitan area, pretty much everyone thinks about the following factors in their cost-benefit analysis: quality of the particular deal (e.g. size, cleanliness, roommate situation), cost to rent/buy, additional costs (e.g. taxes, parking fees), crime/safety in the area, accessibility to public transit, and accessibility to useful stuff. This is not a comprehensive list of course, but I am highlighting these factors because in virtually every case one can find available housing in Maryland and Northern Virginia that beats out the comparable option in DC weighing these criteria absent other considerations.
Now, as there are other considerations, the analysis is not complete. I contend that, in addition to the above, the most common factors a prospective DC-area resident will consider include the following:
#1 is of course on everyone’s list of top considerations, and it alone may tip the scale back to DC depending on work location. But, as I argued in my previous post, this really only applies to people who live close enough to walk or within a 15-minute commute of their office. On this argument alone there is no special reason why someone who works on K Street would live in Tenleytown or Eastern Market over Rosslyn, and it goes without saying that people who live in DC and commute to a job in Arlington must have another reason for doing so.
#2 is a very important factor, I think. I’m sure plenty of people commit themselves to living on Capitol Hill or in Dupont because those areas mean something to them. And I know plenty of people who have moved to Eastern Market or U Street or Bloomingdale because something about the feel of those neighborhoods appealed to them. But I’m willing to bet that community feel isn’t the reason people are moving to Petworth, or 9th & Florida NE, or pretty much anywhere more than 6 stops from the city center and a 10+ minute walk from the metro. And I hate to break it to my Columbia Heights compadres, but right now that area “feels” pretty much like Clarendon. So there must be another reason; how about…
#3 is the intangible that I suspect most people will use to tip the scales if they haven’t come up with another defensible argument for living in DC by this point in the post. It’s perfectly legitimate, and completely immeasurable. Here’s the rub: there’s definitely a bright-line distinction between what feels urban and suburban. On one extreme, pretty much everyone who doesn’t care about #1 or #2 but cares about #3 should prefer somewhere like Dupont, which is about as urban as this city gets. On the other hand, absent #2 as a consideration the there’s probably nothing more urban about Van Ness or Eastern Market than Courthouse, much less Takoma or Deanwood (not that I know anyone who would argue with the latter). So if you’re living on the edge of what would be less urban than the nearest areas of Virginia or Maryland, think carefully about whether your choice of housing isn’t based on…
#4 is the rationale-that-shall-not-be-named. Much like Manhattan residents who buy 212 area codes to show their friends they’re true New Yorkers, some people don’t care about the tax rates or the community or the proximity and really just need to send their Christmas cards with “Washington, DC” on the return address. This argument is the uncouth cousin of the others, because most people definitely choose their location for one of the above reasons, but there are always a handful of people for whom the cost-benefit simply doesn’t tip the scales toward DC so they force the scales on these grounds but will never admit it. And I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong, because this is important to some people. What I am saying is if all the above reasons point to Virginia or Maryland and this is the one that does it for you, then I think it’s important to be comfortable with the fact that the decision is rooted in pretension.
In conclusion, I want to acknowledge that preferences are most certainly not linear. For example, I might say that community feel is less important than proximity to work, but not to the extent that I’m going to live in a high-rise surrounded by concrete as opposed to a townhouse on a tree-lined street five minutes farther away. There are lots of good reasons to live in DC; I definitely consider it every time my circumstances change. But since few people are okay with coming across as pretentious, I consider it a public service if I can help anyone to better understand the reasons they’re using to decide where to live.
That’s right: a public service. Some people fight for their country; I blog about DC living considerations. Happy Memorial Day.
I don’t know whether these are actually the 25 best pizzas, but hey, I like lists! Check this out if you live in (or plan to visit) Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Phoenix, New Haven, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, or Boston.
What, no St. Louis-style pizza? (That was a joke.)
By the way, I checked to see if DC claims to have a unique pizza “style” and sure enough, Post dining guide guru Tom Sietsema interviews a local pizza parlor owner who thinks it does:
The restaurateur believes there’s a Washington-style of pizza parlor, the recipe for which involves a small scale, local ownership, artisanal ingredients and skillful technique….
No. No. No. I do not accept that the manner in which business operations are conducted constitutes a regional style. If several barbecue restaurants open in DC that are owned by Swiss families and have stained glass windows, they did not just invent a “DC-Style BBQ restaurant.” And claiming that employing expert chefs is unique to a particular region is probably insulting to pretty much every other pizza parlor in the world.
Nice try, DC… actually, no, not even a nice try really.
I’ve read about 20 blog posts now about the president and vice president being all regular-Joe-like visiting Ray’s Hell-Burger for lunch yesterday, and I have a handful of comments about this.
First, I would love nothing more than for the president to just be perceived as a regular guy — a small-R republican, if you will. President Obama is not perceived as a regular guy, nor is he trying to be, and he knows it. To be fair, showing up at a local burger joint with the VP and the entire press corps wouldn’t be quite so abnormal for him if the last ten presidents had done it more often, but my point stands nonetheless.
Second, all the local events blogs chose to highlight Obama’s not-so-normal $5 tip. Know any regular guys who tip $5 at the register for a burger? I don’t, but I do know a guy who tips $5 when he knows it will show up in every “the president is a regular guy” news story for the rest of the news cycle.
Third, it doesn’t cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars every time a regular guy leaves the house to go for a burger. Yeah, it’s great that the president and vice president bought their own burgers, but that’s sort of like making $100 million in budget cuts to save the taxpayers. Although I should add that I’d screw the taxpayers in a heartbeat if every time I left the house one of these came with me.
Finally, it’s a real bummer that now one of the best burger joints in my area is going to be packed to the gills for the next few weeks thanks to a visit by just another regular guy.
(In case you didn’t realize: this is for the most part a rant on the press, not the president. From a regular president, I wouldn’t expect anything less.)
You know something has run afoul of common sense when the Post and a Cato Institute policy scholar find themselves bedfellows — in this case, in their opposition to the new Department of Education’s fairly obvious suppression of evidence that would support a continued DC school voucher program.
A brief history: an amendment sunsetting the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program was tacked onto the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, which was signed into law by President Obama on March 11. A report by the Institute of Education Sciences (the Education Department’s research arm) shows positive results of the program. This report was completed in November 2008 but not released until the afternoon of Friday April 3.
Cato’s Neal McCluskey questions the value of the IES in light of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s failure (whether intentional or not) to release the report in advance of the congressional vote:
Clearly, it had the results well in advance of congressional action on the program. That leaves only a few reasons why it wouldn’t have released the findings — or even something characterized as “expedited” or “preliminary” — in time to inform congressional debate:
- IES employees hadn’t sufficiently scrutinized — or perhaps even looked at — the report several months after they had received it.
- IES had scrutinized the report and couldn’t push out the results because of strict adherence to rigid bureaucratic procedures.
- For political or other reasons, IES purposely sat on the results.
None of those, quite simply, are acceptable answers given the job of IES as stated clearly on the Department of Education’s website: “The mission of IES is to provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy.”
The Post takes Secretary Duncan to task directly for his decision to revoke 200 voucher scholarships for the 2009-10 year and admit no new students to the voucher program in light of its likely elimination. The editorial is worth quoting at length:
No doubt Mr. Duncan is right about possible disruption for new students if the program were to end. But scholarship officials have been upfront with parents about the risks, and the decision really should be theirs. Let them decide whether they want to chance at least one year in a high-quality private school versus the crapshoot of D.C. public schools.That, after all, is what this program is about: giving poor families the choice that others, with higher salaries and more resources, take for granted. It’s a choice President Obama made when he enrolled his two children in the elite Sidwell Friends School. It’s a choice Mr. Duncan had when, after looking at the D.C. schools, he ended up buying a house in Arlington, where good schools are assumed. And it’s a choice taken away this week from LaTasha Bennett, a single mother who had planned to start her daughter in the same private school that her son attends and where he is excelling. Her desperation is heartbreaking as she talks about her daughter not getting the same opportunities her son has and of the hardship of having to shuttle between two schools.
It’s clear, though, from how the destruction of the program is being orchestrated, that issues such as parents’ needs, student performance and program effectiveness don’t matter next to the political demands of teachers’ unions. Congressional Democrats who receive ample campaign contributions from the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers laid the trap with budget language that placed the program on the block. And now comes Mr. Duncan with the sword.
Despite President Obama’s continued rhetoric about taking politics out of executive decision making — which, to be fair, no reasonable person from any side actually believes — it’s hard to see any reason other than politics for canceling a statistically successful voucher program over the objections of the parents who are lining up to enroll their children in it. And that’s a truly lamentable victory of politics over both student opportunity and parental choice.
It’s finally happening: CW will air six episodes of Blonde Charity Mafia, the “docu-series” about a group of young DC socialites that seems to have been inspired by the controversial Georgetown social community Late Night Shots. Mark your calendars for July 7!
Sounds like coverage for cell phone services other than just Verizon may be available in some DC metro stations by year’s end. It’s about damn time!
So the House and Senate have now both passed versions of the DC Voting Rights Act, which regular readers of my blog are well aware that I oppose for being a politically expedient constitutional end-around.
Wayan at We Love DC thinks the bill doesn’t go far enough, but more interestingly, makes a compelling case for Puerto Rico status:
Give us Statehood or give us Puerto Rico!
Personally, I’m all for Puerto Rico. They get full governmental benefits but are exempt from Federal income taxes. If DC were to have the same setup, our standard of living would jump waaay up. All those tax-avoidance diehards who lurk in NoVA would jump the Potomoc overnight, sending property values, population density, and economic activity into the sky. Oh and I would save up to $14,000 on my tax bill.
By the way, before my DC-loving friends get all bent out of shape, go back and read my arguments against the DC Voting Rights Act. Basically, I find any of the following more ethically compelling than this cheap, constitutionally dubious, end-justifies-the-means political compromise: eliminating federal income taxes for DC residents, retrocession, subsidizing residents who want to move out of the District, amending the Constitution, or admitting DC as the 51st state.
But we will do none of these things, because they are hard. And proponents of DC voting rights will cheer nonetheless, because why care about the sanctity of process or the rule of law when you have the opportunity to score a political victory?
I’m not really an insider so I can’t speak to the details, but even if you just take into account what can be casually observed or read in the newspaper, seems like it’s been a pretty strange year for my favorite local coffee shop, Murky Coffee.
-On February 26, Murky’s Eastern Market location (which I understood to be the more profitable of the two) was closed by the DC government due to tax complications. It would not reopen.
-On July 13, owner Nick Cho defended his barista in an argument with a customer over the house rules barring espresso over ice, and the odd squabble ended up in the news.
-This fall, the upstairs seating area of the Arlington facility was suddenly closed to the public. As I understand it, Nick was informed that his business permit only allows him to operate on the lower level… and that to get a permit just to have seating upstairs he first has to bring the entire building up to code, which includes installing an elevator for disabled access.
To be honest, as an Arlington-based customer who won’t ever drink espresso over ice, this last issue is perhaps the least consequential for Murky but has the greatest impact on me. Murky is now absolutely packed virtually anytime I visit — so much so that I rarely head over anymore without a backup destination in mind. And because Nick has added seating to the main room, it’s now difficult to even get into the ordering line when it’s full. I used to arrange to meet friends at Murky, but now I don’t for fear that I can’t secure a seat for my guests.
If the law really requires disabled access to the second level seating area when there’s already universally-accessible seating downstairs, then this law is idiotic and surely this application is in violation of its intent. Still, if it is legal to do so, I hope Nick considers moving his private training and cupping lab upstairs and converts that valuable space back into seating.
It’s one thing to be slowly driven from one’s favorite coffee shop because of its increasing popularity; it’s another entirely to be driven away by government intervention and crappy interior design. I hope Murky gets it together in 2009.
In a few weeks we’ll have a presidential administration and congressional representation that is likely to be far more favorable to the proposed DC House Voting Rights Act, which I oppose for reasons I outlined in a post last year.
This week Matt pointed out a fairly obvious alternative that I failed to include for some reason: we could always admit DC as the 51st state. I suppose I would even support this option over the dumb and patently unconstitutional compromise bill — although I still prefer retrocession!
