DC is a _lot_ more cosmopolitan today than when I grew up in the area (N.Va.) thirty years ago; N.Va. was still pretty rural and DC was culturally provincial. It's still provincial in the way that any important self-absorbed town is, New York is about the most provincial place I know that way, but these days DC is loaded with top flight restaurants of all nationalities, lots of good music of all kinds, even pretty decent theater, movies that are not all blockbuster multiplexes (though some of the better art houses have shut down), better bookstores than anything south of 85th St. in NY. It lacks a top flight opera or many really good musical theater venues, but the NSO is really pretty good now and both the Official Stage, e.g., the JFK Center, Shady Grove, Wolftrap, and the experimental off-B-wayish theater is quite good.
Now there are real problems: most of DC outside Northwest is a high-crime slum, and my anecdotal experience is that crime is a far greater danger to DC residents even in NW neighborhoods than to people in corresponding areas in NYC, Chicago, or LA; the DC schools are a catastrophe, as bad as the Chicago Public Schools, if possible; traffic is frightful -- the Metro's pretty good for an American Metro, though -- and you don't want to think about the Beltway; the VA burbs are frightful desolate sprawl whether they are rich or poor and most of the collar counties in MD are not much better, College Park excepted.
But yeah, setting aside all the jokes, DC is getting pretty cosmopolitan. It's not efficient, but is NY efficient? Chicago? LA? Boston And it has a lot more charm than it used to, in some areas, quite a lot. Even an urban snob wouldn't mind it. I could see going back, something I never thought I'd say. Not to Virginia, though. I'm not planning on moving anywhere, but in the short list of places that I could see myself in theory, DC today is, to my surprise, on the list.
--- Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-08-12 at 14:42 -0400, Doug Henwood
> wrote:
>
> > Never a fan of Washington's more cosmopolitan
> pleasures,
>
> Washington? Cosmopolitan? Huh?
>
> John F Kennedy's only truly funny line: Washington,
> a city of Southern
> efficiency and Northern charm.
>
>
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