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Originally Posted by destroycreate
It's one of my favorite East Coast cities. It's walkable, dense, historic, has excellent public transit, and the low-rise density gives it a European feel. There's so much great architecture. I don't feel like the city is talked about much beyond politics and internationally it's not as big a destination compared to NYC, LA, Miami etc. But I think it should get a lot more love and hype.
Thoughts?
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DC has both strong points and weak points, and is neither under- nor over-rated. The city has good public transit and is walkable in large part, but the monumental scale can be alienating. The residential and mixed neighborhoods have great scale and charming architecture, but many of the business and government areas are sterile and offer nothing to the casual tourist. It has great institutions, parks, and plazas but there is also a ton of car-centric infrastructure. Culturally, it is very buttoned-up and the social scene seemed to be organized around work (e.g., coworkers drinking scotch together at dark, expensive bars). The museums are top-notch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
DC was a major hub of hardcore punk rock activity in the 1980s, but creative things dried up by 2000 when the city went from being 75% a run-down ghetto to being wall-to-wall boring yuppies.
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I spent a week in DC in early 1993, and had a lot of time to kill after dark. I scoured the bookstores and record shops for flyers to rave parties, like I would find in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, etc. I found none. Maybe there were underground parties going on in DC at that time, but if so, they were inaccessible to tourists like me. I spent my nights in bars in DuPont Circle and Georgetown, which is okay, but . . . yeah. There was no alternative to the mainstream.