Excuse Me, Is That Your Blog?

Turk: Washington, DC is a city about obstruction, plain and simple. Even as I try to write this post, Brian has the fucking TV turned up to 11 so I can't concentrate. For a long time, both of us have mused that virtually anything you (try to) do in DC can and will be delayed, obstructed or turned into an all-out clusterfuck. You can't just... fill in the blank. You can't just go grab some lunch on a Sunday afternoon because the fucking Red Line is single tracking. You can't just enjoy a douche-free happy hour in Dupont. And, as we found out tonight, you can't just rent a reasonable apartment.

Braixan: Indeed. The city itself is, by its very nature, a complete clusterfuck. Never in my life have I lived someplace so thoroughly overgoverned and at the same time so completely incapable of getting its act together. This coming from a native of Durham, NC, where school board meetings ending in angry gangs of parents chanting "The board is blind every time!" are considered par for the course, and where every friendly discussion of local politics is a cloak masking a dagger of race hatred. Washington, DC, a not-exactly-huge city of 580,000 people, is policed by no fewer than 114 police agencies and broken down into eight different and disparate political entities, each subdivided into its own neighborhood councils pushing each other out of the way to suckle at the Great Federal Teat--the gigantic boob in the southeast corner of town holding court over the whole abominable nightmare. As a result, you can't just own a car, can't just go to a decent school, can't just ride the Metro on the weekend and be on time to where you're going...hell, can't just live safely in a middle-class neighborhood. But you WILL be fined for eating or playing music on Metro. This is the capital of Western Civilization, after all.

Turk: Let's not forget the fact that on the rare occasion you do decide to take part in the MASSIVE BOOM in Metro ridership, you will be swarmed by unruly crowds of transient hipsters, NOVAnite d-bags and clueless tourists trying their damnedest to make some sense out of this totally confusing fucking five line transit system. But every once in a while, something catches your eye or your ear and it makes you love everything this city is. Like the dude with the giant VATICAN HIDES PEDOPHILES sign who gets on at the Brookland stop and wanders between cars each stop, happily swinging his silent, cardboard protest. Or the repeated mispronunciation of "L'Enfant" (La-FONT) by Metro drivers. Or the persistent sound of sirens somewhere in the background, whether you're sipping a latte in Georgetown or chilling out across from the Big Chair in Anacostia. These small but precious details remind you that this city is important and therefore, goddammit, so are you.

Braixan: God. I AM fucking important, aren't I? In fact, very thing that convinced me I had to live here was a bomb threat that caused the evacuation of the Library of Congress while I was working on a research paper there. I knew, right then, right there, that if this city were good enough and important enough for someone to want to attack it, then dammit, I wanted in. That varnish wore off quickly once I actually moved here and confronted the Virginia suburbs (which have scarred me for life, and which warrant a long, angry, rambling diatribe that would put Fidel Castro to shame), and then the crime and the rats and mice and other bullshit that the District of Columbia has to offer. But in spite of all the threats to my own mental and physical well-being, I've finally found that this city has begun to feel...not like home...but like a place I'm able to call my own and where I somewhat successfully made that awkward transition from college student to proper adult. No, it's not New York, and much as everyone here wants it to be, it never will be. Let's face it. This city is awful. But it has mass transit in abundance, a good nightlife, ridiculously smart people (some of whom are even worth talking to), culture, and anything else you could ask for in a large city, all compressed into a convenient 62 square miles. For a smart, single twentysomething with moxy like me, it's a better place to be than 95 percent of these United States.

Turk: Right. And even for a dumb, rustbelt-bred, single twentysomething without moxy, it's still a pretty decent place to be. I mean hey, I love my hometown but let's face it; my political science degree would be even more worthless if I had stayed in Cleveland. Besides, without DC, I'd have to make things up to bitch about. This city is like a living, breathing dartboard, and we're all just the stupid drunks shooting for the bullseye but missing, accidentally spearing our friend in the arm and then falling over as we try unsuccessfully to high-five that same friend. And I fucking love it.