2015 in Washington DC: orange sky, aurora borealis, rainbow White House, and more

[Cirrus]

These are loose photos from Washington, DC in 2015. They're a mix of cellphone pictures and DSLR pictures, mostly taken while I was just out on normal day-to-day business. Enjoy.


Mount Olivet Cemetery:




New Hampshire Avenue:




Venus shines over Dupont Circle:




Actual auroral borealis visible over Cheapeake Bay. One day in March during a solar storm we heard aurora could be visible this far south. It was a clear night, so we got a zipcar at 1:00 am and drove out to the clearest northerly view we could think of: the northern tip of Kent Island. This is what we saw:




The view from Anacostia:










This is an unphotoshopped & unfiltered cellphone picture. June was the rainiest month in DC I can remember. It was a constant never-ending drizzle, punctuated by one of the strongest thunderstorms in recent memory. 15 minutes after the rain stopped on that peak June thunderstorm, this is what the sky looked like.




I used to live in Dupont Circle. This was my neighborhood park.




In late 2014 I bought a rowhouse in Northeast DC. These are in my neighborhood, but aren't mine. Grey paint is a dead giveaway that a house has been flipped. Mine isn't flipped.




If you go to a transitioning neighborhood on a Saturday during a warm month, you *will* see a flipper crew painting.




Desire.




A different kind of desire.




Downtown.




Farragut Square.




Clarendon Square, Arlington.




Brookland, CSX, Metro.




One shop, shared space.





Mount Pleasant Street.




Van Ness, Upper Northwest DC.




Rhode Island Avenue Metro.




Downtown.




Thomas Circle, Mass Ave, and 14th Street.






Vermont Ave.




Rainbow rowhouses.




Diagonal.




Modern flatiron:




Modern flatiron #2:




I-395, a middle school, and the Potomac River. Southwest DC.




Not grey! Rejoice!




Downtown.




The H Street streetcar is still not open. It's been in testing mode for two years. Don't ask.






Weekend Metro track maintenance is the bane of Washingtonian's existence.




Annapolis.




Trinidad, my neighborhood. There's no Tobago.




Rosslyn, Virginia:




Urban Target.






The National Arboretum.






The Pope!




The basilica where the Pope gave his mass, on a different day:



Crystal City - Potomac Yard BRT under construction:




Gallery Place.








Virginia.




NoMa Metro.




Houses on Capitol Hill:








Independence Avenue.




The back side garden of the Smithsonian Castle:








One new dome, one old dome, Brookland.




The grand finale: Equality.

[Centropolis]

why grey? and what is with the painted brick? it seems like a crime against masonry.

nice shots, i always like seeing DC. even though it's the east coast, the climate and some other things feel very familiar and comfortable to me.

[Cirrus]

Painted brick is the style in DC. When it's colorful, it looks great and I love it. It adds a lot of individuality and visual interest to blocks that would otherwise be repetitive dull brown. Here are some examples:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/5633301543/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/11958396385/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/24560591742/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/6929606662/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/5578574444/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/3380504257/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/inked78/6852182/

As for why flippers pick gray: It's the same reason new houses are always white on the inside. It's attractive but neutral. Here's a more detailed explainer.

Actually I think the grey looks OK. It's not ugly. My problem with it is that it's too ubiquitous. The whole point of painting rowhouses is to add variety, so if too many are painted the same color, that defeats the purpose.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Painted brick is the style in DC. When it's colorful, it looks great and I love it. It adds a lot of individuality and visual interest to blocks that would otherwise be repetitive dull brown. Here are some examples:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/5633301543/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/11958396385/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/24560591742/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beyonddc/6929606662/

As for why flippers pick gray: It's the same reason new houses are always white on the inside. It's attractive but neutral. Here's a more detailed explainer.

Actually I think the grey looks OK. It's an attractive color. My problem with it is that it's too ubiquitous. The whole point of painting rowhouses is to add variety, so if too many are painted the same color, that defeats the purpose.

hmm...painting brick is verboten as a matter of course here, and would assume that the flipper is covering up a bad tuckpointing job. i would be more apt to strip paint from a house, and then detail the trim of course with color and make sure all of the tuckpointing was good. people have a thought that brick needs to breathe a bit to prevent spalling, and you are in essense "suffocating" the brick in this climate of hot/cold extremes (not unlike DC).

i will say that it doesn't look bad when done right, and solid red brick neighborhoods aren't probably as inviting to a lot of people. obviously it's a sort of signifier there.

[Ex-Ithacan]

That was one helluva great DC tour. Such a range of neighborhoods/locales. That shot of G St. NW (with the Spy Museum mid-block) is 1 1/2 blocks from my old building.
As far as the streetcar fiasco, somone got some splainin' to do.

Thanks for sharing the pics Cirrus.

[ColDayMan]

Good stuff.

[Murphy de la Sucre]

The long-distance view of Arlington skyline from Anacostia is impressive. Never seen it before. Nice shot.

[fflint]

Great tour, good variety.

[Driver8]

Nice mix of pics and I enjoyed the captions.

[xzmattzx]

Nice pictures! But I don't see anything unusual in the aurora borealis picture from Kent Island. Where are the northern lights?

[Eightball]

Wow, you made me miss DC truly superb photos, writing and curation.

How I miss Anacostia. And living in NE DC. I'm an avid GGW reader (and occasional commenter) and I noticed on a recent story you implied you had moved to NE DC. I lived at 8th and I NE on and off for a combined 5 years. We even had our son in Logan for PreK3 (for free) but we still decided to move. I miss Congress Heights too, the most recent vid of mine (link in sig) was shot there. EOTR views are underrated.

The DC rowhouses (esp the taller ones) sure are beautiful.

It was cold as hell when I went to DC for the vid shoot in Nov tho lol. and the Pug now actually had cocktails up on their beer chalkboard. I was shocked and saddened. what can u do. still haven't been to Maketto

[Danny]

Washington DC is always looking very good! Thanks for your pictures, Cirrus.

Enjoyed this thread.

Congrats and greetings from Madrid, Spain.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

But I don't see anything unusual in the aurora borealis picture from Kent Island. Where are the northern lights?

The green haze immediately above the horizon is the aurora. It lacks the dramatic verticality of aurora as seen further north because you're seeing the sides of aurora bands from far away, as opposed to the bottom of aurora bands from directly below. But in person that green haze moved in waves left and right across the horizon such that it was unmistakably aurora.

On the left side of the image where the haze on the horizon has a more yellowish tint, that's Baltimore. But on the right where it's green, that's aurora.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

The green haze immediately above the horizon is the aurora. It lacks the dramatic verticality of aurora as seen further north because you're seeing the sides of aurora bands from far away, as opposed to the bottom of aurora bands from directly below. But in person that green haze moved in waves left and right across the horizon such that it was unmistakably aurora.

On the left side of the image where the haze on the horizon has a more yellowish tint, that's Baltimore. But on the right where it's green, that's aurora.

Thanks. I remember when they said there would be aurora borealis, but I looked for it up above. I'll have to remember to look for it on a horizon.

[JMKeynes]

I usually take a trip to DC around this time of year. Since I can’t go this year, I’m enjoying all these photos.