Mile
Zero

On Black Friday, while the rest of Virginia storms their local retailers for loss-leader merchandise, Belle and I will pile into the car with our pets and start a week-long drive across the country to our new home in Seattle. The move is the realization of a long dream of ours: to get as far away from Washington, DC as was humanly possible.

I kid! Mostly. We won't miss the political atmosphere, the terrible public transit system, or the sweltering DC summers. But we will be far away from our family and friends, and there are some parts of DC that have grown on me. Here are a few things about the city that I will, in all honesty, miss:

• Ethiopian food: I was a late starter on the joys of intercultural cuisine because I had never grown up around good ethnic restaurants. It wasn't until I got to college that I got to sample all kinds of new restaurants and cooking styles, and that's been a joy ever since. I have a soft spot for Vietnamese food, particularly those savory bahn mi sandwiches. But what DC has that few other cities in the US can offer is a vibrant set of Ethiopian restaurants offering spicy, rich stews and vegetables with a side of spongy injera bread. It's so good, and it'll be hard to match elsewhere.
• Free museums: We don't take advantage of the many museums in DC, which is a shame. It's only when we travel that we've realized just how rare museums with free admission are--especially great ones, like the National Gallery of Art or the Smithsonian. Not to mention DC's free National Zoo! It's hard to beat seeing pandas (or not seeing pandas) for free.
• Journalism: While I'm often critical of DC political journalism, this must be said: there's a lot of it, and that means a lot of opportunities. Since high school, I'd wanted to work in the news industry, and in this city there are plenty of chances. It's a bit of a shock to realize how much thinner the media industry (and, sadly, the job market in the media industry) is outside the Beltway.

A follow-up on last month's gentrification post:

My own relationship with DC has not been particularly positive over the last decade. It's not a immediately romantic city the way I wanted a city to be when I left college. The height limit means that it has no skyscrapers, and the monuments result in a swamp of annoying tourists every summer. Probably snobs in every great city have the same gripes about tourism--sacre bleu!, I imagine a poorly-stereotyped Parisian exclaiming at the horde around the Arc de Triomphe--but it doesn't make it any less frustrating, particularly since Americans are the most tasteless tourists in the world ("you'll get no argument here," sniffs my imaginary French friend, to which I can only respond that at least we're not responsible for Bernard-Henri Levy).

I'm a white, white-collar worker who moved here for school, living just across the river in Virginia. So as a result, my image of the city was (for a long time) a lot like the gentrification version--a mass of tedious political operators schmoozing at Starbucks. I didn't want to live in a place like that, and I wasn't well-positioned to see the DC underneath, or particularly inclined to change my circumstances.

What changed, of course, was taking classes on urban dance. Breaking and popping took me across the river (both literally and metaphorically). Classes and jams got me to travel to parts of the city I don't visit during my average workday. And they brought me into contact with people who lived in DC, who grew up here, who take part in the nightlife and the culture--people from a wide variety of backgrounds and economic classes. Breaking introduced me to new perspectives and let me see DC through their eyes. As someone whose Venn diagram of "worthwhile" intersects almost completely with three other circles marked "interesting," "challenging," and "disruptive," it has been immensely rewarding.

When we talk about multiculturalism, I think there's a sense to which we (and particularly "we" meaning "white people") consider it a duty. Academics do studies evaluating whether diverse neighborhoods are more stressful, or diverse workplaces are more productive, and we nod thoughtfully and probably do not change our minds, because people make most of their decisions on an emotional basis. Multiculturalism is rarely pitched as a pleasurable thing--as something that enriches our experiences. But it is! I may never love DC, but it's because of a multicultural community that I can see why I might like it, and why a gentrified DC would be a real loss.

Gentrification in DC has been the center of some discussion again, following an article in the New York Times on the changes on U St and, most recently, the H St corridor. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a pair of posts on the emotional response to this process, and another on the statistics of DC's demographic transitions:

Washington's black population peaked in 1970 at just over half a million (537,712 to be precise.) It's declined steadily ever since, with the biggest decline occurring between 1970 and 1980 when almost 100,000 black people left the city. Whites were also leaving the city by then, but at a much slower rate--the major white out-migration happened in the 50s and the 60s.

By 1990 whites had started coming back. But black people--mirroring a national trend--continued to leave. At present there are around 343,000 African-Americans in the District--a smaller number, but still the largest ethnic group in the city. I say this to point out that the idea that incoming whites are "forcing out" large number of blacks has yet to be demonstrated.

...

More likely, we are using a local matter as an inadequate substitute for a broader national situation that still plagues us. The fact is that the two parties--those blacks who remain by choice or otherwise, and those whites who are returning--are not equal. In the District, you are looking at a black population that is reeling under a cocktail of an ancient wealth gap, poor criminal justice policy, and economic instability. On the other side, you have a well-educated, and well-insulated, white population with different wants and different needs.

There is much more here to consider about what that means, about what people feel like they're losing. Even as I interrogate the statistics, I maintain that people are not stupid, and that it's critically important to understand why they feel as they do. Black people have not owned much in this country. And yet, in the later years of the 20th century, we felt like we felt like we owned many of America's great cities.

We didn't.

Latoya Peterson, on the other hand, has written about the changes on U St. from the perspective of a DC resident, and what gets lost in the process:

The vision of the city is essentially being dictated to longtime residents from outside interests — or, worse, from the folks who have settled here while Obama is in office, and don't see DC as home. The newer visions for the city are heavily cosmetic and heavily skewed to a younger, moneyed class — which is causing tensions.

It's not just that DC is becoming whiter, in other words, but that it's losing the flavor that made it DC in favor of a kind of generic whiteness--one that offers an easier transition for the kinds of people who move to DC for a few years for a white-collar job, stay for a few years, and then probably move right back out. It's becoming a three-ring binder kind of town.

Belle and I don't live in the city, although I've been spending more time there lately, but we can see it happening across DC. And even in Arlington, you can see the cultural shapes of neighborhoods being smoothed out as the demographics change. In Clarendon, just down the road, it's like a wave of yuppie-dom rolled eastward up Wilson Boulevard, out from the Whole Foods and the Crate and Barrel towards the row of small, slightly disreputable shops around the Metro station. Over the last three years, buildings have been torn down. Businesses have been replaced with chains and upscale eateries. Houses got bigger, and parking has been rezoned to protect property values, and to drive visitors into the garages.

It's not like Clarendon was a historic area the way that U Street is. Development there was historically driven in large part by another artificial factor: the Clarendon Metro. Like Ballston and Court House, it flourished when WMATA opened the station, which is a perfect example of how infrastructure determines destiny. And it has long been a shopping district with its fair share of large brands. But that used to be mixed in with a range of local places, including a decent selection of Vietnamese restaurants. Those are almost all gone now, replaced in part by a CVS and the largest AT&T store I've ever seen.

I am by no means comparing suburban Virginia to the systematic revision of a historically-multicultural urban center, mind you. But I'm glad we're having the conversation. It reminds me of the debate a few years back over Wal-Mart driving family businesses into bankrupty in small towns. Maybe it's just that I moved out of a small town, but I don't really hear that discussion any more, as if the pushback from communities has faded away. It would be a shame for the forces of gentrification to win the same battle of attrition. Because as far as I'm concerned, if the city doesn't challenge you--if it isn't stuffed to the gills with different textures and experiences--why bother living there at all?

Last night I went to see Evil Dead: The Musical performed by the Landless Theatre Company in DC. Verdict? Groovy.

Let's be clear: it's a production for fans of the movies. If that doesn't describe you--or indeed, if you haven't seen all three films--you probably won't get much out of the show. A lot of the fun comes from the Army of Darkness quotes scattered through the script, or the way they've adapted certain scenes from the movie (it's actually based more on Evil Dead 2) to the stage, sometimes breaking the fourth wall in the process ("That does seem a bit inconsistent," Ash admits during one particularly transparent plot point).

But given that it's a for-the-fans production, I was pleasantly surprised. I don't usually enjoy musical theatre, but the songs are kept mostly short and snappy. The direction makes good use of the single set, and the script abandons the horror aspects of the movie completely, while amping up the campy humor (Karissa Swanigan is particularly good as Cheryl, Ash's sister, who spends much of the show providing snarky undead commentary from the cellar). And while there's no way to provide the kind of over-the-top gore that Sam Raimi delighted in, they did manage to spray red "blood" all over the audience whenever possible (protective ponchos were $1 at the entrance).

I could nitpick a few things: Clay Comer can't quite pull off Bruce Campbell's swagger as Ash, and the closing scene (ripped from the end of Army of Darkness) comes off a bit abrupt. There's probably a bit too much milked from the "S-Mart employee" gag overall, come to think about it. But hey: if you wanted serious theater criticism, you'd be watching serious theater, and this isn't it. ED:TM's a fun romp for cult movie aficionados, and on that level it's a success. It's playing through November 1, with tickets available from Landless Theatre.

The entrepreneurs in DC work fast: they've actually had these for a week. For my money, though, these aren't nearly as eye-popping as the post-election shirts with Obama's grinning mug superimposed onto the famous Ali-over-Liston photo--a surreal, hilarious juxtaposition.

The carpenter's union in DC is very active, with regular protests around the Golden Triangle, but you don't see them bring The Rat out much. Maybe it's hard to find parking for him.

I like that he seems to have jumped up onto the hybrid in his rage, causing the hood and hatchback to fly open as he crushes it under his massive, scabby feet. It's like a scene from Michael Bay's remake of The Rats of N.I.M.H.

The late Mitch Hedberg used to have a joke: "I love escalators," he said, "because an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs."

With apologies to Mr. Hedberg, above is a picture of some broken escalators. DC has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it is a good idea to repair all its escalators at the same time--ALL the escalators, over the entire system. Also, it rained today, and you know what that means: all trains are 45 minutes late and stuffed until the doors can't close. If the engineers of the DC Metro had worked on public transit in, say, Seattle or London, commuters would be starving to death underground on a daily basis, unable to escape due to stationary trains and blocked exits.

The problem with the Metro, I often say, is that its deficiencies are completely invisible to anyone who does not commute to the city every day, and apparently those people just don't count. When tourists visit the city, they usually don't travel at rush hour, so they don't see the way the system breaks under load. Instead, they have a much more comfortable experience: big, padded seats, leisurely escalators, and spacious stations. They don't see how those oversized seats take up room needed for standing passengers, or how the escalators under repair force everyone into a stairway that's too small for two-way traffic. To a tourist, compared to something like the NYC subway, Metro must seem like a dream come true.

Just don't try to use it for anything important. Good thing there's nothing like that in our nation's capital.

Updated: Oh, even better--Metro will begin a bag inspection program. WMATA's new motto is apparently "bringing all the joy of slow, cramped, expensive air travel to your daily commute."

Next week Belle and I are taking a mini-roadtrip vacation on the West coast and up into Canada. It'll be my first time in Canada, and the fifth or sixth trip I've taken out of the country. And that means I've started rethinking the dilemmas of packing.

I have packing issues, although I hope I manage to seem more laid-back these days. But it's taken a lot of practice to beat down my pack-rat tendencies, and more specifically, my paranoid phobia of boredom. On my first international trip (to Mexico, during high school), I was terrified of ending up somewhere in the Yucatan without anything to do. I ended up with a backpack filled with books, games, and random amusements, apparently on the assumption that I was being marooned in Siberia instead of a gorgeous tropical peninsula. Two weeks of dragging all that crap on and off of chicken busses drove my mistake home.

So a few years later, on a trip to China for college, I tried to do something different. A lot of it was just the logistics: it might be possible to pack enough books for a two-week trip to Mexico, but it's not feasible for a month-long journey abroad. So I brought a lot fewer commodities, and only about a week's worth of clothing. When I ran out of clothes, I washed them in the dorm washing machine, or the sink if there wasn't a free laundry room, and dried them by hanging them over a lampshade. And without lugging a bunch of junk around, it was not just easier to travel from place to place, but it was a lot easier to get out of the room when I got bored--even if it was just to wander the streets asking people for directions in a language I barely spoke, leading to wacky hijinks and good humor for all concerned. That line about how the things you own end up owning you? When traveling, it's definitely true. I had a better trip, and it was partly because I had less stuff with me.

To be fair, it's gotten easier to pack light these days now that I've got extra income, and as gadgetry converges. I don't typically pack books when I can take the Kindle, for example. My cell phone is capable of doing almost anything I would have used a laptop for a few years back, including WiFi access, especially if I carry a folding keyboard. And if the phone has a camera, it's twice as useful--I'm not much of a shutterbug, but instead of carrying notes and maps, I try to take pictures of them for reference. Traveling with fewer devices and fewer clothes is not only easier, it's greener--it takes less energy to ship a lighter package from one point to another.

But frankly, if you're going to start thinking about traveling light, it starts to inspire thoughts of living the same way. Especially since I tend to have the same kinds of acquisition issues that led to my over-packing: a tendency to purchase shiny objects that's led to an overflowing home studio and a collection of old electronics that practically has its own gravity well. The same principles hold true: use as little energy as possible, reuse resources whenever possible, exploit multifunction devices, and rely on open-ended methods of entertainment.

The difficulty with learning to travel light, much less learning to live the same way, is probably that it fits an image of hostels and scruffy backpackers instead of vacationing. I find it helps to think of it not in terms of lost luggage, but gained freedom--appealing to the greenpunk set of aesthetics. Likewise, a big part of the problem with frugal living in the West is its association with poverty, as opposed to respect for the creativity and resourcefulness it might signal. But it doesn't have to be that way. Maybe the first step to a less crowded home is to leave it, and its baggage, behind.

It really is "too weird for the Wire" that, according to Washington Monthly, black defendents in Baltimore courts are trying to use a legal defense first proposed and popularized by white supremacists, including Terry Nichols. But it's also a tribute to the lasting appeal of conspiracy theories, which tend to resurrect themselves whenever people feel like their lives are out of control, and to the suspicion with which many city residents hold the government.