a tale of two cities

first, an old article from slate magazine. it was written in 1993 when the clintons were moving to the district. they updated a few things, but their primer of the city for president-elect obama seems pretty accurate to me.

done? ok, good. it's funny to me how the article references some in the city that come here for political jobs or financial jobs or just the hell of it that never venture outside of their safe little enclave. this is a two city kind of town. i love the diversity. i'm glad that some of my friends live in columbia heights and shaw and the u street corridor. i'd never have ventured to chinatown or black cat or artomatic in the east side of town without them to guide me along the way. sure, there's the hip, trendy parts on the east side, and i've hit them up too. this city is far too diverse to not try to breathe in all of its uniqueness. i find more in common with the eastsiders than the northwesters in mentality and personality than i do with the yanks that populate most of the rest of the city.

it's that slower, southern speech that makes me feel at home. it's not name dropping. it's weather talking. gonna be a cold one today. it's not work work work. it's gotta get home to sunday dinner with the family. working enough to get by, but not enough to get ahead.

life is more than just work. it's football in the fall and laughing children at the park and singing in the rain and listening to street music and eating ethnic foods and listening to different points of view and reading in the sunshine and laughing at tourists and....