It’s the tail end of a quick visit to DC. Nice to see friends, although things were a bit interrupted by becoming violently ill in the middle of the night Friday night – I think our Indian dinner was a little off and my body reacted with you “You – outta here.” Left me feeling tired and a bit weak yesterday but it seems to have passed.
That didn’t prevent me from making it to brunch on Capitol Hill yesterday. Eastern Market is fully restored from the fire, which was nice to see; the old market hall is rebuilt and looks cleaner and sturdier than ever, while still housing the same assortment of food vendors, and the outdoor market is busier than ever.
We walked around 14th Street last night trying to decide where to have dinner and my goodness – my old neighborhood has become hipster central. It was a bit strange finding myself at the corner of 14th and W, which I remember as a vaguely threatening corner populated by run-down rowhouses and fry pits, to see a giant gleaming metal and glass apartment building with an upscale restaurant at street level, and hear a bunch of giddy white kids talking about how fun it is to live in the neighborhood. Times do change, don’t they?
The trend in hipster DC dining seems to be loud, as in, so loud you cannot think, and after poking our heads in a few places to be told there was a 90 minute wait for tables, we wound up on familiar 17th Street eating at Annie’s, a neighborhood landmark. Which, despite being slammed in a recent Post review, was satisfying. I’m sure many of these new places serve delightful food but I am rarely in the mood for tragic hipness at 100 decibels, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much. I do wonder how one neighborhood can support small wine merchants with polished wood floors and carefully chosen paint colors to showcase artfully arranged bottles of wine located at 50 foot intervals on the main street, though. They seem to outnumber the CVSs.
The boys are, I am told, buzzing and outraged by the Annie’s review, but it doesn’t seem that unfair; you don’t go to Annie’s for the fine cuisine (which is why their attempt to go upscale and hike up prices was such a failure), you go because it’s where everyone’s been going for decades, and it did feel like a bit of familiar DC, even with the new airport-lounge decor in the rear dining room.
Now I’m looking out at a cool, gray morning – kind of refreshing with the onset of summery heat in Houston – and will be having lunch later with my foodie friends at an Italian restaurant near the White House. Then, off to National Airport and home!
It’s nice to be back and yes, Washington still feels like home in a way no other place does to me. It does, however, feel like a home that’s had its own life since my departure. I guess six years will do that. In a funny way, it leaves me with the same sort of mixed feelings I had when I decided to move to Texas.
I miss it, and I don’t miss it, and I am looking forward to Houston, MWK, and Teddy this evening.
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When I first moved to NYC, I lived with some roommates in Williamsburg, which at that point was mostly Italian or Eastern European immigrants. I freaked out when I went out there a few years ago–the L train is now the indie rock express. SO many NYU hipster-types. I guess it’s nice to have good Thai food available but it was a little strange, to say the least. Still, I wish I’d bought an apt!
I remember that apartment!
I think what’s happened in DC is generally good; it was really sad that great areas like U Street and 14th Street were so crime-ridden and dangerous for so long. And it was nice to see that it was not just lots of middle class post-college kids wandering the streets (though there were plenty of those) – it would really be a shame for that area to start looking like another Georgetown. It did leave me thinking that if I still lived there, I’d probably be really tired of it, though; I’m middle aged and my priorities are different and if I hadn’t left I’d probably have traded my microscopic rowhouse for a bungalow in Takoma Park or something like that. Which I guess is what I did, except an extra thousand miles or so away.
I do think the high-volume dining thing is completely irritating, though.
I think the high volume thing is exacerbated by the stark IKEA-esque design of most of these new places, with nothing to baffle or absorb sound. It’s all sharp corners and smooth surfaces, which tend to make all these places feel noisy (and they are).
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