Reason I don’t have river-envy #437
I used to say that I have a love-hate relationship with Georgetown- it sucks to try to get there, but it’s cool once you’re walking around.
So I headed down there today for my quarterly trip to Lush for restocking, slid into my super-sekrit rockstar parking space, and as I walked the several blocks down M Street to my destination, I realized something.
Forget love-hate. I hate Georgetown. It’s sacrilege to say so, I realize, but hear me out.
First there’s the aforementioned hassles of getting there. Traffic to turn on to M St. is routinely backed up into Rosslyn across the Key Bridge. There are buses, which always seem to break down on Water St. anyway, but no Metro. Parking is a complete bitch. The streets are narrow, the corners are blind, and dudes, there’s a reason humanity gave up cobblestones as a means of paving its infrastructure. They suck.
Once you’re out of your transportation of choice and walking around, the situation is little better. The sidewalks are narrow, and full of fashion victims in their Ugg boots who think nothing of stopping abruptly to talk to some other couple, causing you to trip over them as they take up the ENTIRE SIDEWALK as you try to sneak through their little knot of pedestrian-congestion.
And when you’re done fighting the crowds and have arrived at your destination, what is it? An overhyped eatery pushing the food fad of the day to the 47 people in line ahead of you? A store whose sales depend on your paranoia that their mannequins are SO much more super-fabulous than you? God forbid, the City Tavern Club? (How many times do I have to tell you guys to stop sending me emails? I’m not going to pay $800 a year to be your friend!)
I’m sure Georgetown has its charms, but I’m just not seeing them. Except for Lush. That’s different.
I couldn’t agree with you more. ‘Course you forgot the annoying teeny-boppers so excited to be out, G-town snobs annoyed that the riff-raff is about, and suburban gawkers who forget how to walk in crowds.
So take your monster SUV, fight traffic to park it at some soul-less suburban mall, and fight the teeny-boppers hanging out in front of the various stores and stay out of Georgetown.
Monster SUV? You mean my Beetle? Why is it that you city-dwellers assume that everyone in the suburbs drives an urban assault vehicle?
One way or the other I’m fighting traffic and teeny-boppers. But I go to the mall MAYBE twice a year. Generally I just do my shopping online for everything but clothing, but on this particular occasion, the hair care couldn’t wait for the replenishment of the Big/Veganese combo.
And that, boys and girls, is the problem with Georgetown: effete elitist assholes who make serious presumptions before speaking their small little minds.
And that, boys and girld, is what I hate about suburbanites, you bitch and complain about coming into the city, you complain about the traffic, you complain about the roads and you call us elitist assholes. The “monster SUV” thing was a joke, however the point is valid. If you don’t like coming into the city, then don’t. But don’t go complaining about it as if you don’t have a choice. Stay out at the Malls, if thats what you prefer. They have traffic, difficult parking and teeny-boppers — all the things the writer complains about in her original blog.
We like our historic cobble-stone roads. They remind us of a past where there were horse-drawn carraiges ruling the roads, or, god forbid, a surface trolley system. I mean its only two freaking streets in Georgtown that have them.
We like the pedestrain traffuic and the vibrancy that urban life has to offer. It’s not like there aren’t teeny-boppers haning out in malls, blocking the paths of pedestrians, a la the description of the sidewalks in Georgetown.
So yes, I stand by my post, and if you can’t take a snarky “presumptuous” comment in return then perhaps you shouldn’t be writing ablog which encourages open comments.
You have apparently confused “being able to take a snarky comment” with “agreeing with you.” If we couldn’t “take it,” your comment would have been deleted already. We’re just calling you out on your bullshit.
The suburbs are as economically necessary to the District as Chicago’s suburbs are to Chicago (or in any other city, for that matter). Similarly, the District is as critical to the suburbs as Chicago is to the suburbs.
And the only substantial difference between Georgetown and suburban mall is that in Georgetown, it’s the adults being inconsiderate and blocking the foot traffic.
Georgetown has this image of being all extra-fabulous, but my point is just that it’s as big of a pain in the ass, maybe more, to get there and actually get around as it is anywhere else. Georgetown is no better than a suburban mall for accessibility or uniqueness, and yet people still have this intolerable air of superiority about it. Sorry, but the emperor has no clothes. Georgetown is essentially a strip mall with the occasional cobblestone street. And remember kids, “historic charm” is just a nice way of saying, “stubborn and refuses to change.”
And my point is, if you don’t like it, don’t go there, but bitching about it on a blog doesn’t solve the problem. The things you were complaining about are at malls and in Georgetown (and I am not defending Georgetown).
I sense an air of superiority when you denegrate the city I call home. I am just calling you on it.
I do not live in Georgetown (as indicated in my email address), but the incessant comparisons and complaining about the District and its neighborhoods are getting old. I guess your retort could be, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
I may follow my advice.
What “incessant complaining?” This blog is full of people who have chosen to live in this area for one reason or another, and the front page of Metroblogging DC is full, on any given day, of raves about what we love about it.
So take the damn chip of your shoulder, already. My deep-seated hatred of Georgetown hardly qualifies as a condemnation of the whole city, and furthermore, I don’t see why your feelings about your home require my validation.
I think the big question here, is, that for all of our fablous comments and opinions, we have the right to differ on how we toss an opinion about one section of the city or another. Some who write on the blog are city dwellers, some are not. I used to live in the city when I was younger and less substantially employed. I did the Georgetown thing, in fact I now know more peopel in Georgetown now that I don’t live in the city than when I did.
As for traffic, I have my ways of avoiding most of it if I choose to pass through that side of the city. However, there’s not much IN Georgetown that has my interest to even stop in. All the “shops” are in the ‘burbs, so those can be found elsewhere, and the “scene” is now just something that doesn’t appeal to me. I say that shift was political as it was economic (and age based).
Georgetown has it’s charm, but it’s ususally during the day and on foot. On weekends and in the evenings, it’s a pain, regardless of if you’re a ‘burbanite or a city dweller.
(I have a Mini, so any comments about parking by anybody else is mere whining :-D
I think it would be fair to say that I love DC. I am also critical of it. Does that make me a bad person? No, it does not. You can love a city and dislike a part, quite easily.
I don’t mind Georgetown on a warm, sunny Saturday or Sunday afternoon, when I can run along the river, or throw on a pair of flip flops and take a long, leisurely walk there from my apartment, do a little shopping, and enjoy the sun and fresh air between stores, which beats generic mall-corridor any day. However, I haaaaaate the night life there with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns. First of all, it’s too far to walk if dressed for going out and so transportationally inconvenient that the only other way to get there from where I live (in DC, NOT the ‘burbs) is to cab there and back, and once you get there, all the bars are incredibly crowded, and everyone inside them is either 19 or 50. Thanks, but no thanks.
BAV, you used the phrase “white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns.” I thought I was the only one who said that. Do I know you? Or are you my new hero? :)
Tiff, I don’t think I know you, so I guess I am your hero now. :) I picked up the “white hot passion of a thousand burning suns” thing from an old buddy back in Detroit (usually it came up in the context of talking about hockey).
I have a white hot passion of a thousand burning suns for DC, I even live here, and yet I hate Georgetown and refuse to go there for the annoying people and lack of anything that interests me.
I do like the brick sidewalks though.
You know what’s worse than Georgetown on a weekend evening…
Tyson’s Corner and Rockville (MD 355) any weekend afternoon…
Yes, love it, hate it, live it.. it’s DC and we’re here…
I personally hate the drive I have going the other direction every day to Owings Mills I have to take. Unfortunately, Baltimore is becoming the bedroom community that NoVa never had (mainly because the routes in to DC are better, US 50, US 29, I-95, as well as the train…). I’m pretty sure we’ll start hearing from MD’ers soon enough about how much they hate DC in general and how it’s messing up the region (but then again, there would be no “region” without DC… chicken and the egg issue)
BTW, does anybody find it a sad day in DC now that John Harvards is closing… I think the MetBlogs folks should have spent more time there….
i go away for a few days and i miss all the fun!
count me in as a marylander who loves dc but hates georgetown. why do people equate hating georgetown with hating dc? georgetown is hardly representative of dc as a whole.
by the way i also hate suburban malls, which georgetown resembles, in my view.
tiffany, i actually order Lush online. it’s worth paying shipping to avoid georgetown.
Heh, had I not already run out, I would have done that. But my scalp was in rebellion.
Also, the stuff online is a little bit cheaper than what’s on the shelves, so you end up paying about the same even with shipping. But for some reason, I can’t get the big honkin’ bottle of Veganese online. What’s up with that?