The Best Damn Coffee

[rebeccmeister]

Or, Washington, DC, Day the First.

This is not going to be entirely coherent because there are too many sensory experiences to relay all at once.

I almost cried with relief when we left my cousin's house yesterday evening to walk around and find a place for dinner: suddenly, there was architecture. There are trees, and flowers, and brick sidewalks, and tall townhouses, each with its own unique character. Instead of massive, anonymous, uniform lawns, there are tiny, well-loved, well-kept gardens surrounded by wrought-iron gates. There is actual population density to speak of. There are benches, and pedestrian-friendly walkways, and places to walk to. There are people walking around, there are people riding bicycles, there is a rapid mass-transit system.

My friend S recommended visiting a place called Murky Coffee, which is about a half mile from my cousin's place, in the Capital neighborhood. It's also around the corner from a small organic grocery store called Yes! I feel right at home. When I walked in a few minutes ago and ordered a latte, the cashier noticed my KEXP t-shirt and said he goes to school in Olympia and can't wait to go back to Washington. I feel extremely lucky to be here. I have no illusions about the rest of this city, but it gives me hope to find a place in a foreign city where I instantly feel at home.

I'm still trying to get a grasp of the social classes and norms here. There appear to be progressive hippie-types rubbing elbows with Suits (of the square-shouldered variety in Triplets of Belleville), and there are more black people here than I've seen in my entire time living in White Suburbopolis, USA. But is there integration? Is there interaction? Do people in DC avoid eye contact like Bostonians, or do they passive-aggressively glance sideways as they walk, like Seattlites? There is no social contact to speak of in Tempe, so I have no basis for comparison there.

Later today I'll revert to being a typical Tourist. I got tired of the boys after about 24 hours in their presence, and they aren't exactly the coffeeshop types, so they are off on their own at the Air and Space Museum. They have professed a disinclination to go to the Museum of the American Indian or the Library of Congress, so I suppose I will be on my own for those as well. I don't mind. I enjoy my own company, and I can only stand so much snarky talk of Star Trek and computer games.

This place is also a reminder of the East Coast-West Coast divide; while I feel at home, I also feel entirely out of place again--I just can't deal with so much formality all of the time.

Comments

[gfrancie.livejournal.com]

there are more black people here than I've seen in my entire time living in White Suburbopolis, USA. But is there integration? Is there interaction?

For the most part? no. You will mostly find that black people live in Washington D.C. and that the suits all live outside of Washington. (In Maryland and Virginia in the suburbs) In fact some of the most horrifying and scary slums you will ever see in the entire country are right in D.C. They are infamous for how damn alarming they can be. A girl I went to high school with worked in the projects and she saw things that a person would typically find in developing nations.
It is a strangely segregated place.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

But there are at least some neighborhoods within DC that are more integrated - try the Adams-Morgan area for pretty much every ethnic cuisine known to humankind.

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

We visited Dupont Circle last night, which looked to be similar. I'll have to write a little bit more about that in a new post, methinks.