Is Washington DC Cool?

NO

2010-03-07T04:01:00.002-05:00

No. Washington D.C?

Live-able? Yes

Enjoyable? Potentially.

Cool? No.

Is the Capitol Building Cool?

2010-02-02T22:31:00.007-05:00

Okay, obviously a big part of this blog is detachment, trying to keep a distance from Washington D.C so that we can provide you, our loyal reader, with the best perspective possible. Unfortunately for you, this is the kind of post where I admit my deep unabashed love for one of our nation's most enduring symbols.

It’s confession time: I love the U.S Capitol Building. A lot of buildings are more important than their physical parts. Now, if you’ve ever been to Paris, everywhere you go you feel the incredible pull of the Eiffel tower; the tower is just so beautiful and iconic that each glimpse feels epic and dreamy. When I live in Paris, each morning when I walked to the metro and I could see the Eiffel Tower just before reaching the station, reminding me that I was in this incredible place and that I needed to take advantage of it.

That, as douchey as it sounds, is how I feel about U.S Capitol Building. My new job allows me to walk by a gorgeous vista of the Capitol Building down Pennsylvania Avenue, and every time I look at it I get that same little high I got those mornings in Paris. The Capitol Building is simply the grandest physical symbol of the success of the American governmental system: even if it’s filled with weak-kneed liberals, gun-totting conservatives, and maddening moderates, it’s still pretty awe inspiring. In fact, I would venture to say that the Capitol Building is one of the few buildings in the world that manages to be as important as is it gorgeous.

Basically, that's what this blog gushing about something looks like. So, just to assure you that we here at Is DC Cool are still super hip cats, here's some cool food for though- the dome of the Capitol Building looks like a giant boob. Round, hard with a pointy Indian-statue-nipple on top, the Capitol Dome is, in fact, a symbol of what most fake jugs look like. Add that to the wang that is the Washington Memorial, and democracy can titty fuck itself! God Bless America!

The U.S Capitol Building, therefore, whether you love it as an iconic symbol of democracy or still have residual trauma from being weaned, is pretty cool.

Voila! Le Boulot!

2010-01-28T16:21:00.003-05:00

BREAKING NEWS

Washington D.C----1-28-2010----4.33 p.m

Our intern, Benjamin Grinspan, has found a job! No word yet if it will lead to fame and fortune. What's that? It won't? See that people? Instant updates. That's how the news business should work!

Benjamin got a job at P&C Market, a gourmet food store on Capitol Hill's Lincoln Park. The neighborhood is an interesting one, with it's beautiful post-Civil War houses and its deeply deeply Bo-Bo residents. Hey honey! Now that the kids have moved out, let's fill the void in our souls with $4.39 half gallons of milk and $33 worth of serrano ham.

Of course, while Ben has only worked there twice, and the job is only part time, it appears that one major DC institution has worked its way into the heart of the store's business model: talking politics with random people. Now in Seattle or Boston or Atlanta you may expect your upscale grocer to have political views- heck, with all that local produce it's kind of what you're paying the 65% mark up for- but thanks to D.C's mix of chutzpah and nerdiness your grocer here feels free to ask you what you think the next step is in enacting Cap and Trade.

Indeed, at one point this girl, who was kind of dressed as an astronaut's wife (who knew "Bump-its" had their own congressional lobby), came in and chatted with everyone about her boss, Nevada Senator John Ensign. No word yet if they banged, but the whole interaction was an exercise in the D.C "oh you know this person on the Hill? Well I know this person..." game.

So come visit Ben, people. He's on the corner of 10th and East Capitol. Want a deal on eggs and Spanish cheese? Let Ben "Bottles In The Club" Grinspan hook you up...

Random Districtions #4: Our intern on FUNemployment

2010-01-14T16:25:00.003-05:00

I have just finished reading Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell’s account of nauseating poverty in post WWI Europe. Obviously I don’t have too much in common with the life of a 1920’s tramp (Were I a hobo, for instance, I would never be caught dead in a necktie and bowler hat), but I was definitely moved by Orwell’s writing. Sure 1920’s English tramp slang is about as comprehensible to me as that click language in Southern Africa, but it led me to question the way in which I describe my own joblessness.

After much thought I have decided I am not “unemployed”. The prefix “un” means “not” and, according to Dictionary.com, is “freely used as an English formative, giving negative or opposite force in adjectives and their derivative adverbs and nouns”. When it comes to describing my own situation, I think the negative and opposite aspect of “un” is particularly illuminating.

Unless you some how have found an internship with real responsibilities (and are a big enough sucker to do that without finding some way to get paid), an internship may give good experience but isn’t really “employment”. Being helpful my doing minor tasks and adding a little youth to the office may build some professional skills but I certainly wouldn’t call it “employment”.

Because most of my professional experience comes from internships I have never really been employed, and thus how can I be the opposite of “employed” when I’ve never been in that state before? Good-bye the social stigma of unemployment, hello lazy privilege.

Indeed, for all the bourgeois coddled brothers out there, I want to posit a new term: non-employed. The prefix “non” means an “absence or negation of something”, so since I have had an absence of employment in my life, I am thus “nonemployed” and not “unemployed”.

There, don’t you feel better about your existence on this planet now? Thanks, semantics!

Is D.C 1970's Nostalgia Cool?

2010-01-08T17:04:00.002-05:00

Ask almost anyone and they will tell you that the 1970’s were not kind to our nation’s capital. In the aftermath of Martin Luther King assassination riots in 1968, a lot of Washington D.C became a really really scary ghetto. The legacy of that ghetto scared the crap out of me when I moved to my nieghborhood of Columbia Heights earlier this year- you see, everyone who my parents talked to who had any vague association with Washington D.C in the 1970’s and 1980’s pegged Columbia Heights as mix between present day Mogadishu, Baghdad circa 2005, and post-laser beam of destruction Alderaan. “How could you let your child move into Murder City USA?” people kept asking my parents. How I was gonna live in a place with a 40 year old reputation of being en embarrassingly dangerous and poor neighborhood in the capital of the world's wealthiest and most power was the more important question.

Well a lot has changed in this part of Northwest D.C since then. There's a Chipotle, the surest sign that things have turned around. Sure, one sees expensive skate board shops and organic markets mingling with soup kitchens and bullet proofed liquor stores, but for the most part the horrors of 1970’s are gone: with one gigantic exception.

You see, Columbia Heights LOVES its 1970’s pop-culture. Maybe it has to do with the mix of upwardly mobile Black residents and white bourgeois guilt, but the soundtrack of this area isn’t so much nauseating club jams like “Tik Tok” as it is straight up “Soul Train”.

The Florida Avenue Grill, a great diner right near my house that my brother endearingly called “The Blackest Place in America” is decorated with photos of prominent black celebrities-that is of course only those up until the Cosby Show Era. Although we have a fucking black president it’s easier to find a photo of Candi Staton or Bootsy Collins than it is B-Rack. Another neighborhood institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl, has been serving outstanding chili since 1958 and feels like an amazing time warp. Late one evening there I was privy to an wonderful spectacle: over the restaurants stereo came “Ain’t Nobody Love Me Better” by Chaka Khan and I got to watch every person in the restaurant, Black, White or Indonesian, GET DOWN. There was not a dry eye in the house.

So maybe, just maybe, this whole idea of post-racial America is bullshit. Gentrification has reshaped the character of my neighborhood (I'm obviously guilty as charged), but I think the thing that attracts people like me to this neighborhood is rough-and-tumble Good Times quality that a lot of places around here still have. In a city with so much soulless corporate culture and architecture, a neighborhood that wears its history on its sleeve, even if that was a painful history, can be very refreshing.

It’s certainly problematic. But if living in a bizarre contradiction means I get more Stevie Wonder in my daily life then I think that’s pretty cool.

Je retourne!

2010-01-08T16:51:00.003-05:00

Like Napoleon from Elba or Britney Spears from the Los Angeles County Psychiatric Ward I am making my triumphant return to blogging about Washington, D.C!

And since our intern Ben is current without a job we should be free to give many pleasantly hilarious updates about life in the nation's capitol.

2010 is gonna be big baby.

A casualty of the War on Christmas

2009-12-21T21:20:00.003-05:00

The war on christmas is, without a doubt, the most pressing issue facing the nation right now. Screw healthcare reform, a nuclear armed Iran, the Mexican drug war, and the official end of the celebrity of Jon and Kate Gosselin, our liberal society's attack on Christmas will surely result in the rapture. Which is good for me 'cause y'all bitchez know I'm going to heaven.

Anyway, to protest this ungodly assault on all the holiest sacrament of the American religion, consumption, we are going to take twelve days to escape Washington DC until the nation comes to its senses again.

Our intern Ben will be in Philadelphia, a city that's basically the opposite of Washington DC, and Berlin, a city that looks just like DC except the gun shot marks on the city's buildings are from 1945 and not 5 pm that day. I, Pierre Charles De L'Enfant, will be spending christmas as I always do, haunting my in-laws in New Jersey. Ugh at least when living people sit around discussing "So You Think You Can Dance" they have the option of commiting suicide: us ghosts are not so lucky.

Je vous souhaite un joyeux noël et une bonne année!

A letter from the editor: Joe Lieberman can kiss my ghostly French ass

2009-12-15T15:28:00.008-05:00

Mon cher lecture (Dear Reader),

I would like to formerly apologize to the universe for including an avenue named after the vile state of Connecticut in my plan for the city of Washington, D.C. While Connecticut Avenue's mix of fancy office buildings and expensive white people restaurants recalls life in the actual state of Connecticut, I can't help but now associate it with that tyrannical fuck face Joe Lieberman, the Independent Senator from CT.

Joe Lieberman, or as I like to call him the worst thing to happen to the Jews since Jesus’s hissy fit at the temple, is a big fat douchebag. In our last post we discussed younger DC based douches, but Joe Lieberman is truly the douchiest DC douche who was ever elected to be Senadoucher from the Douche-meg State, then lost the nomination of the Doucheocratic party and successfully won re-douchification as an Indouchependent.

In case you aren’t following, here is an article explaining why Joe Lieberman will go down with Jefferson Davis, 1950s Strom Thurmond, and Senator Satania Killpuppy-Seacrest as the worst Democrats ever. The problem with dealing with Joe Lieberman is that apparently he is not so much a senator as he is a spoiled child. He knows all too well that he is the final vote to keep the GOP from filibustering healthcare reform, and like a 8 year old he has decided to take his toys and leave. Apparently for Joe Lieberman the thousands of Americans who die every year from lack of medical coverage are not nearly as important as seeing his shit-eating grin plastered all over the nightly news. I recall that someone once said Joe Lieberman is an Orthodox Jew and a Conservative Democrat, but it would be better if he was a Conservative Jew and an Orthodox Democrat: right now I think it would just be better if he got hit by a SCUD missile.

As for those of you from Connecticut who may be reading this post, I say there is something wrong with your state. How does this man keep getting elected? What are you doing to displease God so? I think it's telling that the word "con" in French means "cunt", and is why those CONs keeping re-electing this senator from CONnecticut.

Yours,

PCDL'E

Random Districtions #3

2009-12-10T11:48:00.005-05:00

Bar Safety Tips: Keep yourself clothed and dignified at all times

Sometime in the early years of this millennium the male “douche” was invented. Oh sure douches are as old as history itself (who could forget the famous bible story Jonah and the Whale and the Anal Douche), but I am not talking about the hygienic product; Rather I am talking about the American male archetype of the douche. Otherwise known as the bro, the dude, or John Mayer, a douche tends to be an upper middle class white male who seeks to affirm their status in society by celebrating their own dominance and, for lack of a better word, douchebaggery. While every corner of the United States, from the Lower East Side to all of Southern California, has their own version of the douche (“this douche is your douche, this douche my douche…”), there is something about douches at the center of American governmental power that makes the Washingtonian subspecies particularly obnoxious and grotesque.

Washington D.C douches are easy to spot: during the week the ones my age all are employed and make lots of money, but it’s never anywhere that anyone would want to work nor does their job require genuine qualitative analysis. During the weekends their blue and white striped oxford wearing packs (think urban zebra herds) move between DuPont Circle and Georgetown, occasionally straying into Adams Morgan to get in bar fights and use the N-word in public. Finally, on weeknights, these douches retreat to their dark wood covered apartments to watch SportCenter and think about how great it is to be a white heterosexual wealthy male, all the while protected from D.C’s others by the moats that are Rock Creek and the Potomac River.

So why am I filled with more anger than usual about this subject? Well this weekend I had quite a little run-in with some Grade A douches. It’s important to understand that the douche's larval stage begins in their university’s frat houses, and this past Saturday I went out to the DuPont Circle area to meet up with a visiting friend to experience her sorority and frat friends from college. The bar was that kind of insanely crowded where you contemplate the benefits of learning how to pick pocket, and was thus somewhat overheated. While it was steamy, what her frat douche friends did to deal with the heat was simply appalling.

Sometime between “Party in the U.S.A” and “Lean Back”, two of the douches looked longingly into each other’s eyes, perhaps recalling a long ago tryst, and seemed to telepathically tell each other that the time to express there full douchebaggery was nigh. Like a peacock unfurling its big gay tail, THESE DOUCHES PROCEDED TO TAKE OFF THEIR SHIRTS IN THE BAR, and continue grinding with drunk Jewish girls as if it was a normal acceptable thing to do. Shirtless drinking is okay on spring break (once the rohypnol kicks in), but on a cold night in D.C. As aras I can tell, there are only two reasons to remove your shirt in an establishment that sells alcohol: either you’re a stripper or your shirt was doused in flaming napalm. Unless they were somehow pole dancing with the Viet Cong, removing shirts in a bar is unacceptably douchebaggy.

So please, for the children’s sake, let’s hope for a hard winter and maybe, just maybe, these shirtless douchebags will either learn their lesson and become clothed douches or turn into beeeeeeautiful ice sculptures.

Are DC Sports Cool?

2009-12-04T10:49:00.004-05:00

No.

Succinct, right? Technically, the problem with D.C sports, as with so many other of Washington D.C's cultural issues, is that fact that few people who live in the District were born here. Sure, the Redskins have a serious following among the natives, but for the most part because Washington D.C tends to be people’s adopted hometown the area’s sports teams are treated like red headed step children.

Worse, since I have left the womb of a liberal arts college where the only discussions of sports were related to either ironic hipster softball gossip or how the rape crisis center could use the funds from the baseball teams’ phallocratic budget allocation, I am suddenly expected to have opinions about college sports as well. Did you know there were two layers of athletic competition that I couldn’t give a fuck about? I didn’t. In fact whenever I hear people on the street talking about “Indiana vs. Michigan”, and I am always surprised to find out they’re not talking about which state would drive you to suicide faster if you actually had to reside there, but rather they’re discussing field goals, free throws and rape convictions.

That said, I have decided to compile my three months of knowledge and compile a handy guide to D.C's less-than-stellar sports teams. Together, I am confident that we can work to create a world where adults do not consider jerseys acceptable clothing choices.

The Washington Redskins: The Redskins, who were originally called the “Stupid Drunk Casino-Owning Buffalo Fuckers” until they changed their name to something very slightly less offensive, are just about the only team DC residents are invested in: too bad their terrible. Local newscasters don't even feign surprise anymore when the Redskins get destroyed. Seriously being a Redskins fan is like being a Northeastern Republican in that it has become clear that God hates you.

The Nationals: Ugh. Baseball was invented in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to give Jewish people a sport to play. Plus their team only dates back to 2005, making them sort of the foreclosed downtown Cleveland condo of the National League.

The Washington Wizards: Wow, I couldn’t know less about this team, which I think says something for a sport that is dominated by black people in a town that Marion Barry once called “The Chocolate City”. I do know, however, that they were originally called “The Washington Bullets” until some pointed out, perhaps after being violently mugged, that that maybe wasn’t the best name for a sports team in a city with a ludicrously high gun violence rate.

D.C United: All nations have one iconic oxymoron, like the "Somali Government Official”, “Spanish work ethic” or “Excellent French Rock band”; in the world’s most powerful country, that oxymoron is “Popular American Soccer Team”. D.C United may have some inexplicable support from ambassadors, their extremely well dressed 8 year old children, and perhaps the occasional American citizen who wants to act like an international douche, but for all our sake soccer should stay where it belongs: as an athletic distraction for the nation’s ritalin-addicted youth.

The Washington Capitols: Ice Hockey? Canadians are meant to excel at two things: gravy covered French fry dishes and producing terrific teen-soap operas. Besides, anything so devoid of minority participation can’t be cool: Why do you think Boston sucks so hard?

These are my thoughts on D.C’s major sports teams. Of course, I did leave out the District's college teams, like the Georgetown Hoyas, the GWU Coked-up Jews, American University’s Safety Schoolers, Catholic University’s Don’t-touch-yourselves, and of course Howard University’s…eh, I don’t really feel comfortable making that joke.

In summation, let’s just say that the coolness indicator on the beer can that Washington D.C sports culture hasn’t exactly turned blue.

Are DC Molotov Cocktails cool?

2009-11-30T11:37:00.006-05:00

Ahhh zee French Turkey. No I am not talking about French rock music or french rap, rather I am speaking of the bird. It's beautiful call "le gobble gobble" has kept me away from my blog for sometime, and I would like to apologize to you, the loyal reader (singular), for withholding my bloggy goodness from your lives.

That said, here is a pretty terrific little article about something that happened about 400 feet from the door to my office. It involves a crazy person, a child molester van, some kind of banner, and a molotov cocktail. Benjamin, my faithful intern, can’t believe he missed this incident to go home and bond with his parents’ credit card.

Now you may read this article and think “As the DC’s government’s entire tax base comes from its high sales tax on liquor, 40s, cigarettes, cheap chinese food, and high top sneakers, who in their right mind would waste an expensive bottle of liquor on trying to blow up K street?” However, it's touching little moments like these then make me thankful that D.C is home to the United States' government, and therefore all its crazy half baked semi-terrorist protesters, which again is pretty frickin' cool.

See you with a real updated post toute suite!

Is Robert Byrd Cool?

2009-11-18T13:35:00.003-05:00

Let’s face it: the living dead are very trendy right now. There are not one, not two, but three movies coming out this fall about zombies or horrible zombie-like disease outbreaks. If someone could find a way to inject some angsty teen romance in there, zombies would truly become the hottest ticket around (it’ll be super easy because, to be fair, Robert Pattinson is about as pale and dirty as a not-that recently buried corpse).

So when it was announced today that Robert Byrd- the 92 year old senator from West Virginia- is now the longest serving member of congress ever, I got to thinking about how cool this undead senator really is. Sure, the senate is designed to be a place where members bring stability and clout to their state through long and distinguished careers (of not getting elected president), but serving for 56 years and 320 days is kind of terrifying. He was elected senator from the Mountain State was just a backwoods coal dump filled with terrifyingly obese buck-toothed incestuous rednecks! Oh how things have changed.

Robert Byrd has lived a unique life. Born in 1917, when he was one his mother died of the fucking Spanish influenza (what, too soon?). In 1942, he was elected “Exalted Cyclops” of his local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which despite how uncool most people are with the KKK, that title is, objectively, very cool. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1952 and the Senate in 1956, Byrd became the king of pork, famously getting a coast guard station for his totally landlocked and mountainous state. Again, a situation where what he did was pretty badass, but also kind of ridiculous and reprehensible. Sure it’s not KKK obnoxious, but it straddles that fine and embarrassing line.

Perhaps most terrifying of all, in his statement released today, Robert Byrd said “I look forward to serving you for the next 56 years and 320 days”. I’m not sure how the people of West Virginia would feel about having a 149 year old senator, but I’m sure that as long as he keeps bringing home the bacon- and maybe some of that good ol’ fashioned oxycontin or meth- the people of West Virginia will keep electing this guy, leaving one more undead politician to roam the streets of Capitol Hill in search of the intern blood that sustains his black and putrefying organs.

So while I’d like to extend the metaphorical corn whiskey jug of congratulations to Robert Byrd, I think I may have to label this milestone not very cool. I like a grizzled mountain coot as much as the next red-blooded American, and while I loved his vote against the Iraq war, there’s something about his advanced age kind of re-inforces the notion that Washington D.C is a city full of old not-quite-dead-yet-but-staring-the-reaper-in-the-face white men. Ben-Gay, Diagnosis Murder reruns and 4 p.m dinners aren’t exactly the hip sexy lifestyle that the District so badly needs.

I say it’s uncool, dag nabbit!

Random Districtions #2

2009-11-13T12:20:00.004-05:00

Why can’t I tell who is a celebrity in this town?

If nothing else, Washington D.C is a city full of self-important looking older white men. From K Street to Capitol Hill, all you really need to look well-connected in this town are testicles, wrinkles and a cheaply tailored suit. If you’re, say, Judith Butler, this type just confirms the phallocracy that is the United States government and you don’t find these people too extraordinary. However, if you’re like me and come from a family where “guess who I saw the other day” is the typical greeting at family get-togethers, trying to discern whether or not an older man on Connecticut Avenue is genuinely famous can be incredibly difficult.

Unlike spotting famous people in such celebrity rich places as London, LA, New York or a Celebrity Cruise, the famous people in D.C aren’t strikingly attractive. Since politics is really just show business for ugly people, no one in their right mind would want to watch a D.C celebrity in a feature length film in the way you would a hot Hollywood celebrity like Paul Giammati. The most these people can reasonably be on TV for is about 15 minutes on “Meet the Press” so despite their power their image isn’t exactly burned into the back of anyone’s mind. Sure people in politics are better looking than others, and hey, sometimes elections do come down to who has the thickest hair (that Evan Bayh is as handsome as he is fiscally moderate!), but for the most part these people just look like the crotchety dean from an 80’s college movie. Maybe I’m just a racist, but it’s seriously impossible to tell which of these mistress-fucking blackberry users is 37th in line to the presidency and who is simply a lobbyist for the rodent poison industry.

This inability to discern who is a celebrity and who isn’t can be maddening. Is that John Boehner or an Oompah Loompah? Did I really just see Dennis Kucinich or did I officially take too many shrooms? Is that glory hole guy on Craigslist really a “dirty cum slut” or is it Larry Craig (actually in that case I suppose it could be both)? It’s impossible to tell! Next thing you know I’ll think my house is haunted by a banshee that just turns out to be a very upset Michelle Bachman.

This is why I am proposing, just so we know who in this town full of ugly people is a celebrity, that famous government types must identify themselves to the public, perhaps with some kind of patch or arm band. It could be in the shape of star so that we know they’re a “Star” and maybe with a bright color, like, say, yellow. What’s that? Someone else already tried that? Damn you American Apparel! You’re always a step ahead of me!

Are DC Deer Cool?

2009-11-09T12:42:00.001-05:00

Apparently this one is.

You see, Washington DC’s Rock Creek Park, on top of being a great place to drop the dead body of an intern, extends from the District’s wealthy, bucolic deer infested suburbs into the heart of the district, just blocks from the White House. In fact in April of 1997, several deer even made it onto the south lawn of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue –INSERT MONICA LEWINKSY JOKE HERE-, and these cervine bastards remain a national security threat to this day.

And it’s not like these deer are hapless creatures, no no, if anything the culture of the District has eaten these four legged mammals alive, both figuratively and literally. Not only are deer as ubiquitous to D.C suburbs as lobbyists are to the District’s steak and whore houses, but their flesh has received the ritzy Washingtonian style treatment as well. A year ago I was in the Dean and Deluca in Georgetown and saw that they were selling venison for $82 A POUND. If you do the math, you’ll realize that at 40 pounds of meat per deer, that would cost you $3280 for the whole animal, meaning it’d be genuinely less expensive to just go to Bethesda, run the fucking thing over, butcher it yourself and get your car fixed.

So should the nation have been shocked when on November 8th, 2009, a baby deer leapt into the lion enclosure at the National Zoo? I say no, and you want to know why? Because that deer, like every other Washington Whitetail, was BADASS. (NOTE-Apparently the video in the first link was shot by a man who was oddly named Ephraim Smethers, once again proving the Amish community’s scurrilous anti-deer bigotry)

Sure this once noble symbol of the outdoors has been corrupted by McMansions and greedy specialty food stores, but these local deer have that cut-throat spirit that makes D.C such a charming and pushy place to live. You don’t see any urban animals with this much chutzpah, do you? No instead of leaping head first into danger you only have spoiled, effeminate new money raccoons taking residence in over-priced SoHo boutiques and smarmy Los Angeles coyotes being paid off by TMZ to make Jessica Simpson’s life more miserable than it already is.

I say this deer exemplifies the American spirit in it's attempts to plunge headlong into unknown and dangerous territory for no other reason than that it wants to. Perhaps this fallen deer may even done this as an ironic protest against Obama further escalating the conflict in Afghanistan or maybe it was in celebration of the passage of Health Care reform (as it did receive mortal injuries and "being a deer" is often considered a pre-existing condition). We'll never know. And while it may have cost him his life, I think we can all agree at least one deer in Washington DC is very cool.

Is the DC Metro Cool?

2009-11-04T16:19:00.001-05:00

Part one: Getting into the capital’s biggest hole

(If you thought I was going to write a post about the DC metro system with a “hole pun” you must have lost your fucking mind.)

A city’s public transportation is usually pretty indicative of its overall character. New York, for instance, is the capital of the world’s advertising industry, so what would a visit to the subway be without defaced posters of the Real Housewives with penises drawn into their mouths? Or take Paris: it's a city for lovers, and its metro is rife with teenagers trying to fuck each other between stops. Even Philadelphia’s crime ridden subway is a good example of how the City of Brotherly Love inexplicably manages to have both an exceedingly high murder rate and a lovely and totally walkable downtown.

Of course these characterizations merely scratch the surface of those cities’ venerable and urine soaked underground transit systems. So this is the first in a three part series about Washington’s very own subway system: the metro. Today, I’ll be focusing on getting inside this beast (tehehe).

The Washington DC Metro is the second most expensive construction project in American history, and for a good reason: Washington DC’s swampy geology means that they had to dig extremely deep to get to the bedrock. The DuPont station metro stop for instance goes down 172 feet from street level, making it the deepest and steepest metro escalator in American, and for the gays who congregate around DuPont Circle every weekend it becomes a death trap when mixed with stylish but ridiculous Prada loafers and seven vodka-soda-hold-the-sodas.

So, after a harrowing dissent into Hades, there are one of two options. First you could be in one of the city’s all white or all minority residential stations, in which case there won’t be any tourists and you can walk right to the gates. However, if you’re on the Mall at, say, the Smithsonian stop, you have to elbow your way through a baffled group of Midwestern tourists who need six xanax to deal with the stresses of basic urban public transportation.

Once you’ve hurled little McKenzie and her obese grandma out of the way, it’s now time to pay for your trip. The way most Washingtonians pay for the subway is with the SmarTrip, a brilliant little metro debit card that you wave in front of censors to open up the orange gates separating you from the platform. You can easily recharge your SmarTrip and it gets billed for every use: your balance can even go into negative dollars, which just shows you how much people love deficit spending in Washington DC! (Hahaha oh my god I am too funny. I gotta submit that to Jay Leno. It’s just the edgy humor his show is known for!)

The final obstacles in getting to the platform are the moving orange gates, which they have managed to place directly at testicle height and because been hit by a subway gate in Paris, I am terrified of them. I recently realized that the reason no one in DC is actually from DC must surely stem from the fact that no one here can have kids because of the hundreds of unreported metro ball-crushings that happen every day.

So all in all the system they have set up to get into the metro, with it's steep futuristic escalators, easy to use SmarTrip, and the superiority you feel around bloated and terrified Southern tourists makes it a perfectly reasonable experience.

Random Districtions #1

2009-10-30T15:30:00.000-04:00

And now, because I see our nation’s most powerfully patriotic monuments every day, I would like to borrow from the immortal words of good old Tommy Jeff-Jeff to explain a new feature to my blog.

When in the course of a human blog, it becomes necessary for one person to dissolve the typical structure which has connected their ideas with one another, and to assume among the powers of earthly snark, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Washington D.C and of Washington D.C's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should write down these thoughts no matter how random or obnoxious. Such is Random Districtions!

Random Districtions #1: Why is everyone at my gym so ugly?

I recently joined the Washington Sports Club in Columbia Heights and I think it was a poor decision.

Let’s face it: working out sucks. Exerting yourself? Who needs it? Sweat is clearly just your body crying. In fact I am comfortable enough with myself to admit that I work out for one reason and one reason alone: vanity. No, unlike most people who exercise, I am not trying to get healthy, nor do I have a fat pre-teen past to run from, and I certainly don’t have any weird daddy-daughter issues (I think my daughter turned out just fine thank you very much); rather I work out so as to have the slightest hint of definition on my otherwise manorexic frame and so that I don’t sweat as much when I run to catch a bus/plane/train. That’s it.

The funny thing about Washington DC is that I assumed everyone, in their desperate attempt to get elected President of the United States, would be fit. It's common knowledge that if one wants to appear presidential, one must attain a certain level of executive fitness. We haven’t had a fat president since Taft in 1912 for Christ’s sake! Sure, Hoover was pudgy, but compared to the people standing in the check out line at Wal-Mart he was a GREEK GOD. Indeed, since World War One we’ve seen every single president engaged in some kind of exercise (Well maybe not that lazy bastard FDR. How come you never saw photos him jogging? Or playing soccer? Or tap-dancing?)

Thus people in Washington DC should be fit. But not at the WSC in Columbia Heights. No no. Everyone there looks like a fun house mirror/nightmare version of normal people with gym membership. There’s a big fat guy in tiny little clothing and then a little shrimpy guy in hugely baggy clothing! The elliptical machines are filled with mouth breathing Jewish girls and older women with camel toes so bad you’d think you were in Saudi Arabia! There’s even a 5’1 Mexican body lifter with a shoe polish black comb-over and a mustache and accent straight out of a racist 1950s Speedy Gonzalez cartoon (is there any other kind?).

So what am I to do? Alea, my housemate, has encouraged me to go work out at the WSC gym in DuPont circle. Unfortunately, that’s the gayest gym in town, and I just don’t think I can handle all the judging or the fact that I’ll be the most out of shape person by far. I could maybe work my congressional connections and try to use one of their stellar gyms, but the security’s tight and the chance of running into Larry Craig in the shvitz are much too high.

The sad truth is I’ll probably keep going because I am too cheap to waste the money (happy mom? I did learn one thing in Hebrew school...). So, after wrestling with this problem for many days, I have decided to do the other, sure fire way of making a group of sweaty ugly people look good: next time I head to the gym, I should get blindingly drunk like I’m going to a club!

Who wants a tricep press-tini?

Bon Halloween!

2009-10-27T14:34:00.000-04:00

Bonjour mes cheres ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and germans,

As you may have guessed, these four characters above are the scariest things to a Frenchman like myself. Indeed, we Frenchmen do not celebrate Halloween, as we prefer to not dress like monsters, but rather find them in the the duality of man. Plus the government would totally subsidize trick-or-treat candy and I am just not sure I could not in good conscious give out that much Toblerone.

Anyway, as my intern Ben Grinspan prepares our site's next thrilling post, here are some jolie Washington DC-themed Halloween costume ideas to keep you amused until then.

1. Death Panel

Get a bunch of friends together, dress as Marx, Lenin, Mao, Obama or any other famous pinkos and have them send Granny to the great workers' paradise in the sky

2. Birthers

I'm gonna say you should dress up like a baby and hand out racially tinged literature on Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution. Because really dressing like a racist toddler can not possibly be more embarrassing than being an actual Birther.

3. Town Hall Member

First place, I wouldn't try this outfit unless you are white. So if you are, dress up like a 70 year old and then gain 100 pounds. This Halloween costume works best if you have a party to attend on Capitol Hill or perhaps the National Mall, that way your ranting about how brown people are scary can get you on Fox News!

4. The Public Option

Dress like a slutty doctor. Done.

She's the public option baby- everyone's been insured by her!

5. Capitol Hill Intern

Hey Mom and Dad didn't max out on their donations to the DNC for nothing! Grab your Blackberry and your most poorly fitting business suit and count down the hours until you go to law school or move to New York.

Finally...CONGRESSIONAL ZOMBIES!

Are the living? Are they dead? Did they get re-elected for a 15th time or are they merely return from the grave to vote on non-binding resolutions honoring the American Tulip industry? Who cares! Just get some creepy make-up and see let the Huffington Post come to you.

Bon Halloween, y'all!

Are DC Killer Police Robot Tricycles Cool?

2009-10-16T12:12:00.000-04:00

Historical eras tend assume the title of their most important technology: think of the Bronze age, the Iron age, the Industrial revolution and the Nuclear age. Ask any historian nowadays and they’ll tell you we live in the Segway age. When was the last time you saw someone using their “feet” or a “car” to get somewhere? No, we are the Segway generation because it’s what has truly separated us from the animals: obviously it's not so much our mastery of industry and electronics part, but the fact that many higher forms of intelligence (dogs, cats, whales) can feel shame, yet we as humans have accepted how completely stupid we look on Segways and have simply moved on.

This is why I think the T-3 is so exciting. Pictured above, this new police caliber Segway-type vehicle is the thin blue line separating the Washington DC area between civilization and chaos. Built to keep thieves from breaking into cars at suburban metro stations, the T-3 is the new parking lot Panzer tank. I even saw one the other day at Union Station, warding off potential criminals with its threatening yet modern design that's reminiscent of an angry salt shaker.

And remember this isn’t just a single use technology, there are all kinds of things the DC police department could do with such a handsome three wheeled killing machine. What if you need to reach products at the top of the grocery aisle or the library stacks at 20 mph? Or maybe the DC government, who probably barely has the money to cover the cost of the new T3s, could make money by organizing some sort of Roman style chariot race, where police officers hurl spears at each other as Marion Barry, Arianna Huffington or George Stephanopoulos give the thumbs down to the roars of a crowd of blood thirsty but Segway loving spectators? The possibilities are endless!

So I am going to give the T3 a big fat “cool” seal of approval, because Robocop ain’t got shit on this.

Welcome to yet another pointless blog!

2009-10-12T12:35:00.000-04:00

Cheres amis,

How good of you to join us at Is Washington DC Cool? I, Pierre Charles De L'Enfant, shall be your host for the next year, in this epic quest to answer the question of whether or not the city that I designed is truly the nation's capitol, or merely a series of maddening traffic circles and located inside the grid lock of the I-95 Beltway.

So, I invite you to luxuriate a little, explore this blog and consider the certain je ne sais quoi of the District of Columbia's finer and lamer points. Feel free to start at the beginning of this blog to really see how my unpaid assistant Ben Grinspan avoided his minor responsibilities at his equally unpaid internship and began writing this, comment dit-on?, blog.

With Sexy French Kisses,
CPDL

Are DC Pumpkins Cool?

2009-10-12T12:20:00.000-04:00

Now I know I have mostly written about hobos, French ghosts and luggage, but I feel in the spirit of First Lady Michele Obama that it is my duty to put on a cardigan, wrap a couple of snazzy belts around my torso, and start discussing local produce.

I wish I was coming to you today to discuss a happier subject: sadly, I must report to you that DC is in the grip of a pumpkin crisis. Terror reigns on the street, and crazed mobs of middle aged women have held up every single one of the nine Starbucks on my block, stealing pumpkin spice lattes at gun point. Even the normally calm and collected Glenn Beck has declared the pumpkin crisis is a sign of the gay-socialist-Muslim apocalypse.

The Great Pumpkin Crisis of 2009 stems from a major shortage of pumpkins all over the Mid-Atlantic. On October 12th the Washington Times reported that Washington DC area pumpkin brokers are seeing supplies down 50-70% (side note: how exactly does one become a pumpkin broker? Does it require a master’s degree or can anyone do it?), and this is when our world began collapsing around itself. The cause of this crisis is as sad as the devastation it has wreaked on the families of our nation's capitol: as we all know, DC area pumpkin varieties need the humid blast furnace that is the Washington summer to grow and prosper, and the cool rainy summer has seriously affected these hardy but deeply mutated orange ambassadors of the fall.

The question is now will the Obama administration be willing to give Big Pumpkin yet another bailout? With pumpkins exploding in New England, it’s only a matter of time before Congress wades in on the matter. The basics of pumpkin economics suggest that as supply goes down, demand and prices go up. I’m not sure if I want my precious tax dollars being spent to prop up an industry that only makes profits in the month of October (I suppose being profitable 1/12th of the year is still far better than GM is doing).

So I am going to put my foot down here. DC pumpkins, with their high falutin’ organic attitude, pretentious scarcity and constant government scandals are not cool.

I can’t believe I ate you in a pie last night.

Hipster stalking

2009-10-02T11:08:00.000-04:00

If DC was a magical forest, and it isn’t unless you’re on a healthy dose of shrooms, then full fledged urban hipsters would be its unicorn. It’s chain-smoking ghetto-residing Grizzly-Bear-is-the-only-pop-music-I-listen-too Unicorn.

I have no desire to be a hipster; I just don’t have the energy to disdain as many things as they do (I guess that’s why they snort all that adderall). I do however aspire to dress as well as some of them do. When I am in Philly or New York I feel the need to dress myself stylishly, but in DC I think as long as you’re not one of those sad drooling nerds wearing a NASA swipe card on a lanyard around you’re neck then you’re pretty much in the clear. Indeed, just this morning on the metro I saw a well dressed European guy with a shaved head who, surrounded by all those ill-fitting grey tweed suits and frumpy cardigans, looked like he was from the future.

Of course now when I walk around the district and I see a guy about my age wearing slim jeans, cool sneakers and a neat top, I stare at them as though they were a magical Unicorn. Sometimes they notice and get creeped out, and while it is kind of spooky to do that, I just want to go up to them and say “Dude who I will see at the Dirty Projectors concert: I am not cruising you, you just have a single grand swirling horn sticking out of your forehead and it’s hard not to stare at. What? No I can’t sell you any peyote. Stop trying to buy drugs from me: Don’t you have a think tank that seeks to make art less accessible to the general public to get to?”

I thought it was time to air this confession to the warm understanding embrace of the internet: because at least this way when I am charged with a federal crime for stalking (remember: all felonies in the District are federal!) you’ll have a better sense of why I need to borrow bail money, dude.

We're not gonna protest!

2009-09-25T10:21:00.000-04:00

These are troubled times we live in. From Joe Wilson to Kanye West and to those delightful tea-baggers, our nation has been enthralled lately with the power of loud mouth morons to get their voices heard. Now in a simpler time, say, 2008, the idea that anyone would want to watch Glenn Beck or that people would spend all summer screaming at their congress person about socialist conspiracies seemed unimaginable; but I can tell you that there is one city in this country where standing on the street corner and declaring your mental problems is considered a sacred act of patriotism.

You see, every American has the right to petition their government for a readdressing of grievances (that is from the bill of rights, a historical footnote between 2001-2008 but a damn riveting read), and many of them, especially those who like a good graphic photo of a dismembered fetus, love to come to the District of Columbia and make their voices heard. This may sound irritating/nauseating, and it definitely is. However, these crazy protests also make D.C pretty darn cool to be in!

Two weeks ago I attended one such gathering of the clinically ignorant called the “9/12 Taxpayers March On Washington”. Apparently, white people of a certain age and waist line don’t like paying taxes to a President who doesn’t look like them, and they came to the capitol to make their voices heard! These people showed up with wonderfully camp signs saying things like “Bury ObamaCare with Ted Kennedy” and “There is a Muslim-Communist conspiracy in the White House” (hold on to those placards grandma and grandpa! They are gonna make hilariously retro souvenirs for your grandchildren some day), and while these protesters were the most numerous, they couldn't top their political allies and DC's most popular protest group: Christian zealots. They showed up to this event driving a van that had pictures of 9/11, an American flag, Terri Schaivo, and, yup, you guessed it, a dismembered fetus! What fun for the children.

Now you liberal pinkos out there may find these kind of protests nauseating, but to be fair, DC is also over run with protests from the other side of the political divide, with such popular themes as “A bunch of Jews get together to yell about Iran”, “Gays run the wedding design business, why not let them marry?” and of course “Old hippies put on their finest floppy hats, sandals and cargo pants and protest about something on a Wednesday afternoon when everyone who isn’t a community college professor or a wealthy yoga instructor is at work”. The beautiful reality is that everyone, no matter their political views, can walk down the streets of Washington and find at least one group of fucktards who publically express the extreme political views we all have but are bound by polite society and reason not to openly discuss.

So, Are these protests smart? Almost never. Do they accomplish something? Unless you sell advertising time on Fox News, no. But America’s founding principle, the idea that if anything in your life is wrong you have the right, nay, the duty, to make offensive signs and stand on street corners yelling stuff until you end up on the evening News, is clearly alive and well in this city, and that I think is pretty cool.

Is DC Luggage Cool?

2009-09-17T13:24:00.000-04:00

What the fuck is with all the luggage people tote around in this city?

Okay, I know DC has this reputation for being a city where everyone is a temporary resident, but come on! For the freshly arrived, it can be shocking to see so many people wheeling suitcases behind them. Seriously Ellis Island didn’t have this much baggage; a fat girl whose bulimia just isn’t working don’t even have this much baggage.

It’s not typical baggage either: normally, people don’t like moving around suitcases all day. In normal cities, people have luggage on public transportation to airports and train stations, and some suit cases have those baggage stickers they put on at the airport, but not in DC. Here luggage abounds on street corners far from the nearest metro stop, because, apparently everyone needs to bring a week’s worth of clothing to work in case, I don’t know, they get so drunk at happy hour they puke on their new Vineyard Vines tie. Or perhaps the bags are filled with the many business cards people hand out here like acid at a Phish concert. Or maybe, just maybe, because D.C can inspire patriotic feelings in all of us, this bizarre amount of luggage is filled with the hopes and dreams of America! Or at least it was when Bush was in office; now it’s probably socialist propaganda and illegal immigrants.

The weirdest thing about it too is that no one looks good with those wheelie suit cases. Sure they make transporting stuff easier, but they are kind of embarrassing. When have you ever looked at someone in the airport and gone “Wow, look at that rough stallion of a man. The fact that it looks like he’s medically unable to carry normal luggage makes him too masculine and irresistible for words.” Back in my day (circa 2004), it was clear that the kids at school with wheelie suit cases had overbearing Jewish mother who fretted they’d hurt their back, and analysts who decided since that these kids already are developing sexual problems a la Portnoy’s Complaint, why not tote around a Samsonite chastity belt while you’re at it?

So DC, I say no. Bad DC! Bad! Weirdly high amounts of luggage on the street IS NOT COOL.

The Cool Formula

2009-09-12T13:51:00.001-04:00

As we live in a post-Enlightenment world (Pop, Locke and Drop it!), I feel that it’s important to address the fundamental question of D.C’s coolness with a sober, scientific mind. Unfortunately, D.C is a boozy town, so this whole sobriety thing just isn’t going to happen. That said I believe that I have come up with a decent scientific formula to determine whether or not a city can be generally deemed “cool” or “loserville”.

My formula is derived from my love the Travel section of the New York Times. As it comes out every Sunday, the Travel section is the perfect thing to nurse a hangover with (“Wow, these photos of mod Swedish hotel rooms are a perfect escape from the clothing, empty liquor bottles and dead strippers that litter my floor!”). The section’s single best feature is the series called “36 hours”, in which writers pick a city anywhere in the world and tell you such goodies as where the best organic muffins, post-soviet flea market, and poshest cemeteries are.

The thing about the 36 hours is that it’s not an unbiased institution: at least once a month they pick boring American cities, mostly because it will send all the Jews, Divorced women, and Homosexuals (the New York Times main demographics) who live there into an email frenzy and help the Grey Lady’s financial bottom line. For instance, in the recent 36 hours: Cincinnati, the article starts off by saying “With the quiet momentum of a work in progress, Cincinnati is finding an artsy swagger”. Now let’s look at a 36 hours for a city that, unlike Cincinnati, we all accept as cool: London. That article begins with “There are many different Londons, and they appeal to people with many different passions: museum lovers, theatergoers, opera buffs, devotees of royalty, students of history, people who like to walk in the rain.”

The critical difference between 36 hours: Cincinnati and 36 hours: London is that while the Cincinnati article starts by trying to prove to its readers that Cincinnati is cool, the London article already assumes that the readers know London has a lot of things to do and it therefore cool. As anyone in the highly dysfunctional world of Public Relations will tell you, London has clearly done a better job branding itself than Cincinnati, unless of course you’re a devotee to 21^st century race riots and the works of hometown hero Nick Lachey. Thus my formula is as follows: Coolness=Generally held assumption of coolness. If a city is truly cool, then it needs no explanation as to its coolness.

The question now is, how does 36 hours: Washington D.C begin? The Times writes, “Washington, in many ways, is an unsurprising place to visit — an expanse of monuments, symbols and sites familiar to any American who watches the evening news (or, at least, "West Wing"). Which is not to say that Washington can't be, with a little effort, a city of surprises and unfamiliar delights.” So, while it is assumed that the audience knows there’s a lot to do in DC (indicating it’s at least interesting/cool enough to visit), it’s also assumed that the audience doesn’t know D.C is more than a government town. Essentially, D.C breaks my formula and flouts the logic and reason of the Enlightenment.

With those maddening parameters set, I now feel that I can blog away.

A message from Pierre Charles De L'Enfant

2009-09-09T18:18:00.000-04:00

Chers amis,

Bonjour. Today I speak to you from beyond the grave.

Haunted by a Frenchman? What a rich, bold, vanilla scented pleasure for you. As you know, we Frenchmen love a good existential question, and not even the sweet embrace of la morte could keep this Gaul from, like so many of his national brethren before him, telling you exactly what he thinks no matter how much you don't want to hear it.

As you know, I presented my original city of Washington in the District of Columbia to George Washington on August 19th, 1791. 218 years, 42 Presidents (over 2% of whom were NOT wealthy white christian males!) and one crack smoking mayor later, I have decided to readdress my master work.

On this blog, I intend to undertake a year long study of the district's culture, physical structure and social behavior to determine the northeast corridor's most vexing question: IS WASHINGTON DC COOL?

My intern, Benjamin Grinspan (wooo another unpaid internship notch on his bed post of shame) will be assisting me in worldly, vivant matters. Oui, this project may kill me, but hey, I'm already dead, and if the unbelievably long acting career of Gerard Depardieu proves anything: the French never know when to quit.

Vive le blog!