I hadn't really given much thought to the idea before, but I have come to understand why people like chain stores - department stores, restaurants, etc - especially when they are travelling or in an unfamiliar place. You have a pretty good idea what to expect every time you walk into a Chili's, for instance. You know it will never be the best place you've ever eaten, but you also know that it won't be the microwave Mexican food from hell.
I have told many people about my experience in France. On our second day there, in our rented Renault, we were making a wide sweep from northeast of Paris to the Normandy coast to be there for the 60th Anniversary of the D-Day landing. As I recall, it was about 180 miles. We'd had our morning coffee, and it wasn't more than an hour or two before nature called. Then it dawned on us - driving along the highway we hadn't seen anything like the typical rest area in the U.S., and we couldn't understand the road signs. Our bladder pressure continued to build with each passing minute, and we had begun considering ways to... shall we say... improvise. As the situation became critical, up ahead I spotted something that looked familiar: the Golden Arches! I do not regularly patronize McDonald's, by any means, but I'd rarely been so happy to find one. I knew there would be Big Macs and Coca-Cola. And rest rooms.
So it's time I should admit that I have become a fan of Starbucks.
First of all, I don't know what they put in their coffee, but I am simply unable to brew a pot at home that tastes as good as theirs, and I appreciate it every time I have a cup. Secondly, I have now been in enough of them that I know what to expect. I know the terminology. I have caved in and begun ordering tall, grande or venti coffee rather than small, medium or large. And, at some point recently, they made it so that regular customers can have wireless access free (it was stupidly expensive before). After that, and since I embarked on my New Clothing Enterprise, I not only visit Starbucks frequently, I have come to rely on them. No matter where I am, I know I can find a place to sit, surf the web, and get a nice caffeine buzz.
Now that I'm at the point that I will be intensifying my job search - most of which can be done online - I don't want to sit in my hovel and browse. I still want to get out and see things and be around people. Starbucks lets me do that.
I searched their website this morning. There are nineteen Starbucks locations in the District. I think I'll end up visiting most of them. Earlier, I was at 1201 Maryland Ave, SW (Google Map Link HERE). I could look out the window and see the top of the Jefferson Memorial. It was busy, but it was one of those Starbucks where people just come in, get their cup, and then leave. So I had plenty of room. It wasn't one of those Starbucks where random people go in and hang out for hours. What kind of crazy person would do that anyway?
I can still count with single digits the number of nights I have spent in my new hovel. It’s only been a month since I left Gainesville. Sometimes it seems like ages, but I haven’t accomplished many of the things I need to accomplish, so I’m glad that time isn’t flying as fast as it sometimes feels it is. There is a huge learning curve here. At least several times a day, I find out something new, or have a completely embarrassing moment when I am left looking like a naïve tourist amongst a bunch of city slickers. It’s good. It’s what I wanted.
Two things I learned recently:
1) If you drive anywhere, on any day except Sunday, you need to have about ten pounds of quarters. There is no such thing as free parking. Ever.
2) During weekends, they perform maintenance on the Metro tracks. That means delays, as I discovered yesterday when “scheduled maintenance” (according to the PA announcement at the Metro Center station) meant that my Metro journey would take twice as long as usual. This caused me to miss my long-planned Potomac cruise with the DC Gators. What can you do?
I ended up exploring the departure point for the cruise, a fabulous place called Washington Harbor (Googe Map Link HERE), wandered around the streets of Georgetown (a breathtaking area of DC), and found a nice bar inside the Georgetown Inn (Link HERE) with a reasonable happy hour. Then I wandered down P Street (I will shoot a brief video of this one day soon, and post it on my blog), crossed the bridge over the Rock Creek Parkway, and climbed on a bar stool at the Brickskellar (Link HERE). From there, I wandered up to the Dupont Circle Metro station and rode home.
I wonder what it takes to make the city feel like home? A job would help, I’m sure! In the meantime, it amazes me constantly. Today, I drove down 16th Street into the city, and took a right on P Street to Dupont Circle. There are people everywhere – riding, jogging, walking, sitting, standing – just enjoying the day. An impromptu gathering of musicians is jamming in the park. There are so many different kinds of people. I went to the ATM, and, when it asks you to select your preferred language, there are SEVEN options: English, Spanish, Portugese, German, French, Polish and Italian.
Even if it gets to feel like home, I hope I never get used to it.
Friday, I needed to go into the city for a few reasons. I am trying to establish a routine that allows me to do the things I need to do to survive here – look for a permanent job, stay in touch with my advertising clients back in Gainesville, and get some work done for Push Button Productions. I had only been in my hovel for five days when I packed up last Thursday to spend a week in Atlanta, so everything is still new to me. And, yes, I got lost again Thursday night when I drove downtown to watch the Gator girls in the first round of the College World Series, and then tried to find my way back. In the dark. In the rain. Again. It didn’t take nearly as long to get unlost as it did last time, so I guess that’s a good sign. The cable is out at our house for some reason (lightning/storm), so I needed to go somewhere to get online, and I want to get in the habit of getting out even when my goal is to sit somewhere and work. You never know who you’ll bump into on the Metro or in Starbucks or on the street. Even though it’s more distracting, it’s far more pleasant and interesting than sitting in my room. And I learn something every minute that I’m out and about.
Every city has its share of history and mystery, I suppose, but Washington DC is different. As you walk or drive around, it is difficult to not be overcome by a feeling of fascination and awe. Everywhere I go, I want to stop and look and ask questions. The familiar landmarks are there, of course; the monuments, museums and government buildings that we all recognize. But you can’t help wondering if every building has a story. Many of them do. Even if it’s a story that can’t be found in history books, I wonder about the people that built the place. Was it a family of immigrants? Freed slaves? Diplomats? Congressmen? Criminals? (I know, I repeat myself). I wonder who has been there and what has happened there. Who knows?
Let me give you a couple of examples…
1) I have discovered that 16th Street is the best way for me to go straight into the city if I am driving. Click on the link and bear in mind that I live at the very top of the map off of Layhill at Georgia Ave (Route 97). Follow Georgia Ave down through Silver Spring, under the beltway (I-495), and you’ll see (where the “A” is) that I can turn on to 16th Street near the place labeled Colonial Village. Double click there to zoom in, and you notice that 16th Street goes straight into the city from there, and ends at Lafayette Square, literally a block behind the White House.
I was driving this route yesterday – down 16th Street - and suddenly saw a building feature that looked familiar to me. A distinctive wall. Then I looked up at the building. The Washington DC Hilton. Not ringing a bell? Watch the video below (you don’t have to watch the whole thing)...
Yes. It was THAT wall. The one you see as they pin John Hinckley against it and wrench the gun from his hand. It was strange that I recognized it instantly, but how many times have you seen that video and not really thought about the location? The Washington DC Hilton. I drove right by it. Who knew?
2) I have been reading a great book called The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson. It’s the second installment of a planned trilogy about World War II. This one focuses on the Allied campaigns in Sicily and Italy. It’s a fantastic book. As I was reading the latter section of the book, I noticed a paragraph describing a high level meeting during the war. Here is the description from the book:
Before returning to Italy, Clark (General Mark Clark, commander of the Fifth Army) was whisked one evening from the basement garage of Renie’s (his wife) apartment on Connecticut Avenue to the private entrance of a nineteenth-century town house at 1806 I Street in downtown Washington. Here in the Alibi Club, the well-heeled and well-connected of Washington’s elite gathered to “cook oysters, lobsters and duck to suit themselves, play poker, and put away a lethal sort of drink based on Medford rum,” as Marshall’s (General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff) biographer wrote. To hear Clark’s progress report on the war in Italy, Marshall had assembled a dozen powerful figures, including Vice President Henry A. Wallace and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. For more than an hour, while his auditors slurped oysters around the table and tossed the shells into a bowl, Clark in his deep, mellifluous voice described campaigns past and future; the desperate fight at Salerno, the struggle at the Winter Line, the Anzio gamble, and, now, soon, the great thrust that would carry Fifth Army into Rome. None of these men, Clark concluded, had any inkling of what it was like to wage war in mountainous Italy.
I searched the location on Google maps, and the street view showed that the building is still there. --> Google Map Link HERE <--
So, when I took the Metro downtown, I decided to head there just to take a peek, and then look for a good place to sit and get some work done. Farragut West is the nearest Metro stop, and, as soon as I got off the train and rode the ascending escalator, I saw this:
The Google Map street view is accurate. It is an old-looking, but fairly nondescript building, appropriately “sandwiched” between a Subway and a copy shop with office space on the floors above. If I hadn’t read the passage in my book, I’d have no idea that this was the site of the Alibi, and a semi-clandestine gathering place for highly-placed citizens and government officials back in the day. How many of these plain old buildings have secrets like this one? Who knew?
Conveniently, there was a Starbucks almost directly across the street. I got a cup of coffee and sat down with my laptop to get some work done. A couple of hours later, I looked up and saw this:
A gigantic limo. Could it be? Is it STILL a semi-clandestine gathering place for highly-placed citizens and government officials? I Googled “the Alibi, Washington DC, “and look what I found. Wikipedia Link HEREWho knew?
How many secret meeting places are there that nobody knows about? Many buildings in Washington DC have a story to tell. I want to know them all!
I went to get a haircut Thursday. The couple on the sidewalk was speaking Portugese (I am assuming. It was Hispanic, but I have heard enough straight-up Spanish to know it wasn’t that). The lady that cut my hair was a lovely Italian lady named Maria (“You wanta da haircut? Sitta downa. Alla be right dare.”). Afterward, I got a sandwich from the Subway nearby. The lady behind the counter was Indian. The guy behind me in line was black. The guy behind him had an English accent. The guy talking on the phone in the corner was speaking some kind of Arabic. There was a Mexican restaurant next door with some very Mexican looking people standing in front of it. The bitch that cut me off in traffic on the way home was Asian, driving a Toyota. It’s awesome.
After finally getting (somewhat) settled in my hovel, I rode the Metro to the airport, and hopped a flight to Atlanta to enjoy my niece's high school graduation and visit with family.
It will be interesting to see if my "home" feels like home when I get back!
In our downtime here, I have been reading about the history of Washington, DC, and I think I have found a couple of new and interesting ways to continue to explore the city:
Boundary Markers - The original legislation creating the nation's capital (in 1790) called for an area "not exceeding ten miles square." When the boundaries of the new capital city were surveyed and marked, sandstone monuments were placed "at each mile of the original diamond shape." Surprisingly, almost all of the markers are still there. With help from this website --> www.boundarystones.org/ <-- I think it might be fun to track down each of the markers, and, thus, eventually work my way around the entire original boundary of the city (the boundary changed in 1846, when the portion that had originally been part of Virginia was "retroceded" to the state).
The Capital Crescent Trail - This is a terrific walking/running/biking trail that follows the old railbed of the Georgetown branch of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. The trail is scenic, and provides a great way to combine exercise and exploration.
Expect progress reports on these two projects.
Also, I just ordered an Annual Pass from the National Park Service. It's $80, but I'd expect to spend at least that much in park entrance fees over the next year - it's $15 just to get on to Skyline Drive, so just a few visits there in the next year, and the pass will have paid for itself.
Yesterday, with my fantastic cinematography, I brought you into the neighborhood where I am now living. Today I will bring you in the front door and into My Hovel! It's been a LONG time since I lived in a place with a handful of roommates, and it takes some getting used to, but it's not bad. Again, you get back to the very basics; what do I really need to be safe and comfortable?
Parking Lot to the Front Door
This is a bit unusual because it is, literally, like being a long-term guest in some one's home. So you do, to a large degree, live amongst their furniture and clutter, but, at the same time you aren't moving into a sterile, white-walled apartment. The place has character, and immediately seems a bit like home. This is a big place. I rarely see the people who live upstairs. There is one girl I've never seen at all.
Upstairs
My room is small, and enclosed, but, for right now, I like it that way. Every time I leave the neighborhood I have only a vague idea where I am. Most of the time I am lost. That is by design. I love the challenge. But, after a day of disorientation, it's nice to be able to crawl into my cave and feel secure.
Tuesday, May 19th – I have to admit, when I began this whole Enterprise, I wondered if I would end up living in some kind of miserable hovel. That still may be the case, eventually, but, for right now, I think I did reasonably well – especially when you consider that this is a short-term, no lease kind of arrangement.
When I first started sharing my moving plans with friends, that was always the strangest look I got – when people asked me where I was going to live, and I would say, “Oh, I don’t know…” I think the fact that I was so casual about it alarmed people, and caused them to wonder if I might, indeed, be an idiot. I often wondered that myself. In moments of panic or insecurity, I would jump on my computer and scour Craigslist to verify that there were, in fact, bunches of short term rental options in the DC area. Upon my arrival here, it didn’t take me too long to find one.
So, for now, I live in the downstairs area of a large townhouse in a neighborhood called Middlebridge Village. I decided I would add a couple of video clips for those of you who have a hard time picturing my living situation (or think I am full of crap!). I spent the afternoon in downtown Silver Spring – mostly re-working a Push Button Productions proposal at a Starbucks there. It was early evening by the time I returned home, but I think the light was sufficient. At the risk of sounding like Mr. Rogers… welcome to my neighborhood...
