Relocating to DC...what's life like?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you will eventually leave DC for a close by suburb, but you won't be persuaded otherwise. This is NOT London, New York, etc. Not a glamorous city. It was actually a really edgy city until 15 or so years ago. I just think you will be disappointed. But surely it's got to be better than Minnesota. I'd take DC any day if those were the options.

She lives in Wisconsin. Learn some geography. And I’ve lived on both places for years, and Wisconsin wins over DC for quality of life any day. Maybe you should see more of the country you live in before making ignorant assumptions.

Ops, I admit it's all a blur to me, somewhere in flyover country near Michigan. Sounds brrr, I'm staying put here on the east coast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

Certainly more than living in a $1.8 million McLean SFH.

Do you have to live in a basement apartment in Petworth to have a real DC experience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. In my experience, Black neighborhoods are friendlier on the whole. I've heard that's because the Black population moved up here generations ago from the South. Whatever, as a White person, I learned to say hello to people on the street once I moved into a Black neighborhood.

I'm the DC near-native PP who grew up west of the Park. When I was growing up, white people also said hello to each other on the street, and when I moved back in the 2000s they didn't anymore. except the older generation. Definitely a change. I still blithely say hello to people even in my old neighborhood (and ALWAYS in my new neighborhood). In my old neighborhood I'm often ignored. Makes me kind of crazed, actually.

Where do you people come from with such stereotyping BS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love DC and I’ve lived in NYC and multiple international cities. The architecture is beautiful, the height restriction lends a tranquil quality, the access to culture for free is amazing between the museums and the embassy events, it’s much cleaner than NYC or Paris, and there are so many genuinely interesting people here. Rock Creek Park beats Central Park any day.

My personal favorite neighborhoods are Kalorama and Cleveland Park but I can’t afford them. I also absolutely love 16th Street Heights, Logan Circle, Mount Pleasant, Takoma, and Petworth. University Heights/Brookland has charming parts too. I’m not a huge fan of Dupont but to each their own.

Most people who post on this forum do not actually spend any time in DC, they do not leave northern Virginia.

This is so true. I have lived in DC for almost 20 years, my husband was born and raised in DC, and we love raising our kids here. DC has world-class amenities with a great small city feel. We love our neighborhood, our DCPS school, the metro, access to great green spaces, free museums, like-minded neighbors, etc. Most people on DCUM are afraid of cities and think downtown Clarendon is the peak of urban living, so I’d ignore the naysayers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you will eventually leave DC for a close by suburb, but you won't be persuaded otherwise. This is NOT London, New York, etc. Not a glamorous city. It was actually a really edgy city until 15 or so years ago. I just think you will be disappointed. But surely it's got to be better than Minnesota. I'd take DC any day if those were the options.

This is very true. Most of the boring NPR transplant types ruined it and gentrified absolutely everything. Sad. Such boring people

DC hasn't been anything close to 'edgy' since the late 80s.

Not sure what difference 80s vs. 90s was meaningfully. You've got to be kidding me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

Right? Talk about utterly lacking in self-awareness. "Come, live in my real world! My very, very rich, 1%er real world."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

I did have to chuckle a bit. The "real" DC experience is a modest townhouse in the suburbs because that's what most people's lives are like. Patting yourself on the back because your kid knows a few token minorities in his class while the rest of his friends are rich kids. Don't kid yourself into thinking there's serious socio-economic diversity in people's lives outside the superficial. It's starting to reminds me of New York or even London, with multi-million dollar terraces right around the corner of grimy council estates. You really think the kids in the fancy houses are going to be good friends with the kids in the subsidized housing? Maybe in a politically correct version of a Hallmark movie.

OP is affluent. She knows her tribe. The move to DC is really to be part of her tribe, affluent urban people. And that is totally fine. Just be honest when talking about wanting diversity and all that. Dupont, Kalorama, Georgetown all tick the boxes. She won't get that much for 1.8M but she'll get something. But I do wonder - if they don't *have* to be in DC, why not just go straight to New York? Brooklyn, Park Slope, Cobble Hill?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

Right? Talk about utterly lacking in self-awareness. "Come, live in my real world! My very, very rich, 1%er real world."

Are large swaths of DC suburban? Absolutely.

But unless PP's kids attend Dunbar, it's laughable that she's giving herself authenticity points for using "stoop" as a verb and seeing homeless tents as "exposure."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

I did have to chuckle a bit. The "real" DC experience is a modest townhouse in the suburbs because that's what most people's lives are like. Patting yourself on the back because your kid knows a few token minorities in his class while the rest of his friends are rich kids. Don't kid yourself into thinking there's serious socio-economic diversity in people's lives outside the superficial. It's starting to reminds me of New York or even London, with multi-million dollar terraces right around the corner of grimy council estates. You really think the kids in the fancy houses are going to be good friends with the kids in the subsidized housing? Maybe in a politically correct version of a Hallmark movie.

OP is affluent. She knows her tribe. The move to DC is really to be part of her tribe, affluent urban people. And that is totally fine. Just be honest when talking about wanting diversity and all that. Dupont, Kalorama, Georgetown all tick the boxes. She won't get that much for 1.8M but she'll get something. But I do wonder - if they don't *have* to be in DC, why not just go straight to New York? Brooklyn, Park Slope, Cobble Hill?

LOL. You're all so defensive in your whiteness. When I referenced "1.8 million" it was only because OP said that that was what her budget is. My point was simply that she can afford to buy anywhere in the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

I did have to chuckle a bit. The "real" DC experience is a modest townhouse in the suburbs because that's what most people's lives are like. Patting yourself on the back because your kid knows a few token minorities in his class while the rest of his friends are rich kids. Don't kid yourself into thinking there's serious socio-economic diversity in people's lives outside the superficial. It's starting to reminds me of New York or even London, with multi-million dollar terraces right around the corner of grimy council estates. You really think the kids in the fancy houses are going to be good friends with the kids in the subsidized housing? Maybe in a politically correct version of a Hallmark movie.

OP is affluent. She knows her tribe. The move to DC is really to be part of her tribe, affluent urban people. And that is totally fine. Just be honest when talking about wanting diversity and all that. Dupont, Kalorama, Georgetown all tick the boxes. She won't get that much for 1.8M but she'll get something. But I do wonder - if they don't *have* to be in DC, why not just go straight to New York? Brooklyn, Park Slope, Cobble Hill?

LOL. You're all so defensive in your whiteness. When I referenced "1.8 million" it was only because OP said that that was what her budget is. My point was simply that she can afford to buy anywhere in the city.

Logan Circle is one of the whitest and most gentrified parts of the city. I think it's time for you to retire this "defensive in your whiteness" trope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you will eventually leave DC for a close by suburb, but you won't be persuaded otherwise. This is NOT London, New York, etc. Not a glamorous city. It was actually a really edgy city until 15 or so years ago. I just think you will be disappointed. But surely it's got to be better than Minnesota. I'd take DC any day if those were the options.

She lives in Wisconsin. Learn some geography. And I’ve lived on both places for years, and Wisconsin wins over DC for quality of life any day. Maybe you should see more of the country you live in before making ignorant assumptions.

Ops, I admit it's all a blur to me, somewhere in flyover country near Michigan. Sounds brrr, I'm staying put here on the east coast.

Stay simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you will eventually leave DC for a close by suburb, but you won't be persuaded otherwise. This is NOT London, New York, etc. Not a glamorous city. It was actually a really edgy city until 15 or so years ago. I just think you will be disappointed. But surely it's got to be better than Minnesota. I'd take DC any day if those were the options.

She lives in Wisconsin. Learn some geography. And I’ve lived on both places for years, and Wisconsin wins over DC for quality of life any day. Maybe you should see more of the country you live in before making ignorant assumptions.

Ops, I admit it's all a blur to me, somewhere in flyover country near Michigan. Sounds brrr, I'm staying put here on the east coast.

Posts like this one prove that not everyone in the DMV is smart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

+1

-1 It sounds like you have a stereeotyped image of the schools in NW and not actual experience of Murch, Eaton, Hearst, and Mann.

None of these schools comes close to being socioeconomically diverse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

I did have to chuckle a bit. The "real" DC experience is a modest townhouse in the suburbs because that's what most people's lives are like. Patting yourself on the back because your kid knows a few token minorities in his class while the rest of his friends are rich kids. Don't kid yourself into thinking there's serious socio-economic diversity in people's lives outside the superficial. It's starting to reminds me of New York or even London, with multi-million dollar terraces right around the corner of grimy council estates. You really think the kids in the fancy houses are going to be good friends with the kids in the subsidized housing? Maybe in a politically correct version of a Hallmark movie.

OP is affluent. She knows her tribe. The move to DC is really to be part of her tribe, affluent urban people. And that is totally fine. Just be honest when talking about wanting diversity and all that. Dupont, Kalorama, Georgetown all tick the boxes. She won't get that much for 1.8M but she'll get something. But I do wonder - if they don't *have* to be in DC, why not just go straight to New York? Brooklyn, Park Slope, Cobble Hill?

LOL. You're all so defensive in your whiteness. When I referenced "1.8 million" it was only because OP said that that was what her budget is. My point was simply that she can afford to buy anywhere in the city.

Logan Circle is one of the whitest and most gentrified parts of the city. I think it's time for you to retire this "defensive in your whiteness" trope.

Not from the view from my front porch. Or the kids' public elementary school. Clearly you don't live here. How's Upper Caucasia treating you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following this thread with interest.

Not one poster so far has recommended that you move into the heart of the city and put your elementary school aged children in one of the downtown schools and give you and them any exposure to real city living and diversity. For $1.8 million you could buy a very nice rowhome in Logan Circle or Shaw or Dupont. You could walk to absolutely everything. You could stoop on your front porch and meet your neighbors. You could put your kids in schools where there's real socioeconomic and racial diversity. In short, you could have a real DC experience.

The NW neighborhoods that other posters are recommending are for all practical purposes suburbs -- and rich ones at that. There was a firestorm on this website a few months ago after a couple of researchers at Brookings studied DCUM postings and concluded that it perpetuated segregation in the DC public school system by steering parents towards the richest and whitest schools in the city. What I'm seeing here is Exhibit A.

Take a chance, OP. You're smart, educated, and being a SAHM have time to watch over things and get involved. Your kids would thrive in a more diverse environment than what these folks have been pushing on you and be so much better off for it. Don't move to DC just to wall your kids off into the vanilla experience that DCUM is pushing on you.

Yes, living in a $1.8 million Logan Circle townhouse is the “real DC experience.”

I did have to chuckle a bit. The "real" DC experience is a modest townhouse in the suburbs because that's what most people's lives are like. Patting yourself on the back because your kid knows a few token minorities in his class while the rest of his friends are rich kids. Don't kid yourself into thinking there's serious socio-economic diversity in people's lives outside the superficial. It's starting to reminds me of New York or even London, with multi-million dollar terraces right around the corner of grimy council estates. You really think the kids in the fancy houses are going to be good friends with the kids in the subsidized housing? Maybe in a politically correct version of a Hallmark movie.

OP is affluent. She knows her tribe. The move to DC is really to be part of her tribe, affluent urban people. And that is totally fine. Just be honest when talking about wanting diversity and all that. Dupont, Kalorama, Georgetown all tick the boxes. She won't get that much for 1.8M but she'll get something. But I do wonder - if they don't *have* to be in DC, why not just go straight to New York? Brooklyn, Park Slope, Cobble Hill?

LOL. You're all so defensive in your whiteness. When I referenced "1.8 million" it was only because OP said that that was what her budget is. My point was simply that she can afford to buy anywhere in the city.

Logan Circle is one of the whitest and most gentrified parts of the city. I think it's time for you to retire this "defensive in your whiteness" trope.

Not from the view from my front porch. Or the kids' public elementary school. Clearly you don't live here. How's Upper Caucasia treating you?

Not PP, but you are demonstrating that you are new here, relatively speaking.