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Where to live in MoCo for a Suburb Hater?
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zumbamama
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| Silver Spring doesn't feel very suburban around Georgia/Wayne Ave. Great places to eat, jazz festivals, shopping, metro accesible, theatres...and residential areas are walking distance. |
Anonymous
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Sumner houses are huge and go for $950k - $1.5. They are in the same league as Somerset, but maybe not as pricey as the Somerset houses off of Little Falls.
I have rented there and there are far more older people (empty nesters) than young families, but they are all very friendly. The sidewalks are minimal, but the roads are so wide, its okay for stroller/walking, etc. There are other mini-areas near Sumner but within the Mass Ave/Sangamore boundary, with houses and lot sizes similar to AU Park (5000 sf). Although there are a lot of ranches in Sumner, they are surprisingly huge and the basements often can be walk-out. The lot sizes are often 8000 - 15,000 sf. If you still want to walk to Metro, I would look at Crestwood which is above Western, in between Mass Ave and River. Getting in and out of Brookdale (I think that's the area across from Lord and Taylor and behind Geico) is really hard with the traffic. I would drive around with a relator or at least go online to longandfoster.com and search by zip code and price bracket to get familiar. Sounds like you want to be in 20816 for the Bethesda zip code. |
Anonymous
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Thanks for all the suggestions/info. It's hugely helpful, and I am grateful. Fairfax/VA won't work for logistical reasons.
16:32: I'm not clear what you refer to as Crestwood. L&F map calls those areas between Mass Ave and River Rd., going North from Western: Crestview, Westgate, Glenn Cove and Green Acres. It does look walkable to Metro. What are the schools like in that area? I think it's BCC for high school, no? |
Anonymous
I was wondering about this. Are there any caveats? What if you rented for a few months? Would your kid still be eligible to continue as an out-of-boundary student? |
Anonymous
Yes. The school could only ask your out-of-boundary child to leave for a reason like misbehavior or poor attendance. The child would then get "feeder school" preference for middle and high schools if you're no longer in-bounds for the (presumably upper NW) feeder schools. I understand that this has historically not been an impediment at preferred middle and high schools because the administrators have a close relationship with their feeder schools' principals and are eager to have students who've benefitted from DCPS's top schools. Lots of out-of-boundary admissions issues get "massaged" a little. |
Anonymous
This is what happened with us. We were in-boundaries for 3 years and when it came time to buy a house, bought across town but kept dd in her elementary out-of-boundary. I stressed about it a lot but there was no problem in her moving on to her middle school. One reason it was no problem was because Hardy 6th grade is a magnet program and you have to apply anyway. But also, I was given to understand that most of the students at Hardy were out-of-boundary so they expected students at feeder schools to matriculate there. However, caveat: These things can change and now that Hardy has been renovated (I hear it's beautiful) and the economy is going south, there may be more and more in-boundary kids taking up those spaces. But I don't really know what is going on these days. And I don't know how it would play with an elementary school principal if you rented for only a few months -- but nevertheless, they want stable, committed families in their schools so I would imagine that if you were responsible in getting your kids there on time and volunteered for the PTA and did all those things, that would all work in your favor. I know my dd's elementary principal was unhappy about the lottery when the child of a local business owner who was uncommitted to the school won a place in the lottery while families who had volunteered and supported the school even before their kids were old enough to attend were frozen out. |
Anonymous
| Just a quick couple of minor corrections to a PP, in case it matters: we have lived in Brookdale many years, and there is honestly no trouble at all getting in and out of the neighborhood, traffic-wise. Also, we have several friends in Westgate, and while I guess it would be technically possible to walk to metro from there if you were in the closest part, it would be a very long walk. HTH. |
Anonymous
| 16:32 poster - yes Crestview is correct (I just moved there). BCC is the high school, but I honestly would rather move to Sumner down the road or sooner (if the prices come down) for lot size and Whitman if we go that direction. I think all the MC schools for any of these neighborhoods are great. |
Anonymous
| We live in Sumner and it is very nice but not what I'd call urban (of course neither is Spring Valley or AU Park, which is less than a mile away). You can bike easily to downtown Bethesda on the Crescent Trail, you can walk to a couple of shopping centers, but there aren't a lot of people commuting to work by bus here. There are plenty of kids in the neighborhood and they go to a range of private, parochial and public schools. |
Anonymous
Too bad Silver Spring schools are not good. |
Anonymous
| I don't know why you're looking in MontCo - you should be looking in Arlington. |
Anonymous
I am confused. You identify yourself as a "Suburb Hater" but you...live in the suburbs? Maybe it would be helpful to figure out what you *like* about your current neighborhood that you'd like to try and replicate in the DC area. Your post seems so alarmist and dramatic on so many levels! BREATHE!!! |
Anonymous
ITA. I have no horse in this race -- I live in DC -- but Arlington/orange line is the right answer. Unless the DH works in Germantown or something. Or if Richmond / downstate politics bother you enough that you ethically cannot live in Va. Things like this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403333.html |
Anonymous
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OP here. 15:02: I ought to clarify. I hate the suburb I live in, and here's why. The vast majority of residents of this lovely, leafy suburb are complacent UMC people who are self-satisfied and not particularly politically aware, despite the Obama signs stuck in their well-manicured lawns. Most are left-leaning, but so financially insulated from what I consider the 'real world' that they engage constantly in one-upsmanship in everything from lawn care (I have the best, the cheapest, etc.) to kids (mine is three grades ahead in math, mine has taken gifted classes since preschool, mine is captain of the soccer team, etc. etc.) to book groups (we are reading Socrates, we're reading NYRB's latest..., our speaker just published a NYT op-ed, etc.) I find this endless competitiveness boring beyond belief, essentially because it's about being better, winning, being ahead of the pack, knowing something someone else don't know, etc., rather than about the thing itself. Yes, we all need our lawns cut, we all want our children to do their best, we need and want intellectual stimulation, but we don't need to WIN, and we need not justify our existences based upon the desire to feel superior to others or the fact that we can afford to buy lots of expensive things or take costly trips to exotic locales.
The other thing I hate about the suburbs is the isolation of spending so much time in my car, carting children from place to place, chatting with aforementioned smug parents while we wait for our kids to finish sports, music, art, etc., and climbing back into the car. The suburb I inhabit has a soul-killing (for me) lack of diversity of opinion. There are people here of different races, religions, and social backgrounds, yet most people have the attitude that their educational background and financial success makes them more worthy than those who do not share such advantages. They give lip service to doing good by writing checks to charities, or making their kids work in a soup kitchen once a year, yet they are eager to shower themselves and their children with the latest cars, electronic gadgets, trips, clothes, needless accoutrements that demonstrate privilege. So, perhaps what I hate is not the suburbs, but the people in my particular suburb. But I've lived in UMC suburbs in other parts of the country, and found the attitudes fairly similar. Of course their are such folk in abundance in urban environments, but I find they can be diluted by the existence of so many people of different circumstances living in close proximity. If you live in a Park Avenue co-op, you will at some point cross paths with a smelly homeless person if you decide to take a walk around your neighborhood. In the suburbs, you can go for years, maybe decades without ever coming face to face with abject poverty. Now, crossing paths with a smelly homeless person may not make that Park Avenue resident more compassionate to suffering, but I would like to believe that our shared humanity may allow us to be moved by the sight (and smell) of a destitute person right in front of us who has so little when we have so much. Suburban life seems to me insulated, pampered, unreal. No, I do not like the crime or noise of the city, or the bad schools, but I miss the urban folk I used to spend time with who held a more realistic sense of their place in the world, and their value as human beings than do the people I spend almost all my time with these days in my lovely suburb. We will all be dead some day, and what will matter will not be the nice new Volvo in our driveway or the fact that our kid got into Dartmouth but the way we interact with and treat other people. I do not want to spend any more of my time with the people in my town (with, ok, a couple of exceptions), and I fear moving to a lovely suburb of DC with good schools and nice houses will put me right back where I started. It's a dilemma for me because my children deserve a good education, safety, a comfortable existence so they can grow up happily. They are happy and secure in the suburbs here, and will most likely have the same existence in the DC suburbs. Of course those of you who like the suburbs with your nice stuff, smart kids, etc., will hate this post and resent everything I've written about you. But you see, I am one of you as well. I have smart kids and nice stuff. I just don't have that 'I'm better than you' attitude. That's what I hate. And I don't feel it is directed toward me. My neighbors consider me one of them. But that attitude is what I want to escape. Maybe MoCo suburbs (or parts of it) are different. (Arlington may be different, but I don't have time to explore that area, sorry.) I hope so. We will likely end up in MoCo. I'm posting on this forum in hopes I'll get some honest answers. |
Anonymous
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Sorry to burst your bubble, OP, but you sound just as insular and superior as the suburbanites you claim to detest. Go back and read your own post: Your neighbors are left-leaning but not politically aware...they give to charity but it's only lip service...they may be racially and ethnically diverse but they don't get the "real world"... The very clear implication is that you believe yourself to be oh so much better than everyone else around you, because you presumably are politically aware, genuinely charitable and truly in sync with the real world. But you're not competitive like they are, or smug either. Give me a break.
And for whatever it's worth, if the lack of dependence on cars and the capacity to avoid any contact with abject poverty is your definition of suburbia then most of NW DC definitely qualifies as suburbia. Nothing wrong with that, in my view. But if you're so insistent on separating yourself from suburbia and all its many failings, you should definitely be looking at other parts of DC, and not at any of the close-in neighborhoods of MD or VA. There are lots of transitional neighborhoods where you can feel morally superior about passing by homeless people and still engage in the time-honored Washington sport of placing your kids in some fancy private schools. Better yet, move to SE! Either way, all those of us who consider ourselves to be decent, hard-working people, who live in the suburbs or in NW so that our kids can go to decent public schools and still see us at night after our oommutes, won't miss your brand of hypocrisy for a second. |