Tell me about your neighborhood that you love!
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Anonymous
| For folks who really love their neighborhood, where do you live? What is it like there? What are the people like? What do you love about it? |
Anonymous
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We live in Ashton Heights/Lyon Park and really like it. Lots of old growth trees and birds chirping make it feel like you're living in an arboretum. Still has plenty of original houses with lots of character. Neighbors are exceedingly friendly and it's easy to make friends. Big "take a walk after dinner" culture where you see people stopping to chat all the time (we've walked around neighborhoods further north by the country club and didn't experience the same - hillier neighborhoods without sidewalks). You have a mix of state department workers/teachers who bought here 20-30 years ago and higher earners in the new $2.4 million farmhouses. Tons of parks including Lyon Park with the community center you can rent out. Our kids are too young for the schools but everyone we spoke to has spoken very highly of our school pyramid and we're in the walking boundary for all three of them. Multiple high quality daycare options within the neighborhood. Easy walk to Ballston/Courthouse/Clarendon. We walk to Whole Foods and TJ's and restaurants all the time. Easy walk to same metro stations. 7-8 minutes from DCA makes picking up friends at the airport a breeze. You can literally run to Georgetown or the mall if you don't want to drive.
I'm going to be mildly snooty though and say that living in the heart of our neighborhood is really great. There are parts of our neighborhood that I don't think are as nice (looking at you section across Wash Blvd over by 10th St). |
Anonymous
What a lovely description until your last paragraph. |
Anonymous
Yeah, I should've worded it differently. That section may be just as wonderful but feels like a separate neighborhood cut off by Wash Blvd. We meet people from all over the area west of Wash Blvd but never from the area to the east. |
Anonymous
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We love Garrett Park, MD. About 350 houses, 1,000 people, incorporated 1898. We have really good sense of community, which extends to the adjacent neighborhoods of GP Estates and White Flint Park. Neighborhood membership pool (no waitlist for residents), civic events - progressive dinners, July 4 festivities, fun Halloween, wonderful holiday lights in winter, regular musicale, art displays at Penn Place, coop preschool, yoga. People get to know their neighbors.
Close to transit - MARC station in town and Grosvenor and White Flint Metro close by. Lots of green space: several municipal parks (GP and MoCo) in town and Rock Creek Park adjacent. The most restrictive residential zoning in MoCo, minimizing McMansions. Wonderful tree canopy; the Town is itself an arboretum. The temperature drops a few degrees as you enter on a hot summer afternoon. Black Market restaurant. Weekly farmers' market. Twice weekly trash pickup. Well maintained roads and landscaping. Fabulous snow removal. (Wait, what's snow?) Wonderful place live and very family friendly! |
Anonymous
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Manor Park DC.
Pros: nice mix of urban/suburban. You can have a SFH with some space but it’s also walkable and convenient to public transit, and some retail. Sooo family friendly. If you have young kids you will be in good company. Neighborhood kids play together regularly. There is a “small town” feel in that you see neighbors or families you know from school/daycare on walks, at the park, or at Main Street Takoma regularly. Feels very safe, even with the recent increase in crime in the city. Cons: could use more retail. There are still some poverty/crime/city problems, not to the point of really impacting QoL IMO but they are there. Schools are iffy after elementary. |
Anonymous
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We live in Columbia Heights and we LOVE it.
We don't have a car and we can walk to so many places - friends houses, several playgrounds and splash pads, grocery store (though we get the bulk of our groceries delivered), Target, restaurants, coffee shops, church, library, school, the zoo. We also have the metro nearby and about a million bus lines. We love walking, and since we're on the southern end of Columbia Heights, we can also walk to our downtown offices (we're both on a hybrid schedule) in about 35 minutes. We thought with two kids we'd need a car, but the idea of getting one right now is laughable to us - totally not needed. Our neighbors are great - there are at least six families with kids our kids ages (toddler and preschooler) within 2-3 blocks. We run into families we know on walks and at the playground all the time. Everyone is friendly, laid back, and fun. There are older kids as well, though fewer and we don't know as many of them well, and a lot of babies. But I know most of the neighbors - if I needed a cup of sugar or something, there are probably 12 doors I could knock on. Some of the older kids had a very well-attended lemonade stand on the corner a few weeks ago. Just delightful. The broader neighborhood is very diverse, racially and socio-economically, which we really like, though most of the families that are super nearby are white. We're meeting more diverse families now that our kid is in school, which is nice. I know, statistically, there has been a lot more crime in DC, but honestly, a lot of that seems like carjackings which obviously don't affect us. I feel perfectly safe walking around with my kids after dark (well, in the winter, in the summer they're in bed before dark!) and I walk to and from the metro at all hours by myself without a second thought. |
Anonymous
| We’re really liking our part of Silver Spring near downtown and just outside TKPK. Very walkable but we also have a spacious SFH. Great friendly neighbors. Most neighbors are using the public schools. The neighborhood is very diverse especially since we’re very near a lot of apartment complexes. Personally I’m feeling optimistic about property values as well, although we bought the house because we liked it. I know crime can be an issue in DTSS but we are close but not that close, so I don’t have concerns about this. |
Anonymous
| I love our neighborhood in North Potomac. It's quiet, full of trees, and has plenty of cul-de-sacs for young kids to play safely in. We're about 2 mi away from Kentlands, which has great shopping and dining options. The one downside is the long commute to DC, but I WFH 100% and DH WFH 3 days a week (goes into northern VA the other 2), so that's not really a factor at the moment. If I'm looking for better retail, the Clarksburg outlets and Pike & Rose are only a short drive away. |
Anonymous
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We love our neighborhood in Central Frederick County. There are many young families here and it's relatively diverse; more so than our old neighborhood in NW DC at least. The schools are solid with a lot of resources. The kids in our neighborhood are super nice to each other and very respectful.
Downtown Frederick is about 15 minutes away and it has great restaurants and a lovely area to walk around near Carroll Creek. Baker's Park is beautiful and well maintained. Our offices are based in Rockville but we work remotely; I work 100% remote and DH goes in once a week. It's about a 45 minute drive one way. Under 1.5 hours at its absolute worst which doesn't happen too often. This area is getting more an more built up by the years so I know more god things are to come. We've been here for almost 5 years with no complaints outside of a lot of family and friends still living closer in so usually when we want to be more social it's about an hour to 1.5 hours drive. We are effectively an hour away from Baltimore, DC, and Dulles airport. About 1.5 hours away from Philly. |
Anonymous
+1 for close-in Silver Spring Ranked by Fortune as #3 best places for families in US. (Alexandria VA is #18) https://fortune.com/well/ranking/best-places-families/ |
Anonymous
Awww +1 neighbor! |
Anonymous
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We love Fort Hunt. It's a very pretty part of the area, with lots of access to trails, parks, the river, etc. The neighborhoods are older so big trees, sidewalks, mature landscaping. Lots of kids on bikes and basketball hoops in the street.
It has a great community feel. People are friendly and there are lots of opportunities to get involved, be it in youth sports, community theater, churches, the schools. Most neighborhoods have active pools, which are a lot of fun in the summer. The people we have met are generally very nice, low key, social, and not super competitive, which is not what we experienced in other parts of this area. We love the proximity to Old Town and my commute into DC is truly not bad. It's also a pretty drive up the park way. Some of the often-cited negatives have been fine for us. The Rt. 1 corridor is not the prettiest but it has the stores we need and all are accessible. Some people on here pan the schools but we have had a fantastic experience in elementary and our neighbors are happy with the middle or high school. My friends in other schools that are better scored on Great Schools actually seem to have had worse experiences. The housing stock is on the older side but we find it charming and love our house and neighbors. |
Anonymous
Lol it’s not “North Potomac.” It’s Gathersburg. |
Anonymous
| Love it in Glover Park. Green quiet neighborhood with great access to downtown and everything else in DC. Excellent public schools (Stoddert-Hardy-MacArthur, plus several good charter options). Walkable neighborhood for almost all of our everyday needs (Whole Foods, CVS, restaurants, etc). And so close-knit and friendly! |