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DC still has a great connection to that great culture that came from the south, the new orleans jazz/southern blues and country gospel culture , DC gave the world great blues and jazz artists like Duke Ellington, jelly roll morton was a huge presence here. We have some of the country's greatest jazz clubs around the district. There is the amazing Jazz/southern brunch at Georgia Browns, bohemian caverns is one of the premier clubs in the whole country for Jazz. DC hasnt been dominated by mtv/tmz culture and the whole celebrity Manhattan/Hollywood media like so much of the country has been. Blues and bluegrass clubs like madams organ and gypsy sallys, rock clubs like like 9:30. Irregardless of all the gentrification and homogenization , DC has a vibrant music and food and bar culture here. One of the best music scenes in the country in my opinion
Repped.
DC also had a heavy hand in R&B, Funk, Punk, and even Electronic music. It also has its own distinct homegrown music genres such as Go-Go, Quiet Storm, HarDCore, and Moombahton. Plus its Hip Hop scene has been getting bigger and has slowly but surely been gaining outside recognition over the past decade
I don't consider DC Northeastern at all, but I also don't consider it southern.
And just because you have rowhouses doesn't mean you're a northern city. Savannah is a good stock of rowhouses and it's not northern. It's just a product of being a really old American city. Atlanta's excuse for not having a huge stock of rowhouses is simply not being a big city during a time when rowhouses were popular.
My dad was born in georgetown and my grandparent grew up around here and they always said it was just a quiet southern city but this thread is about 21st century so who knows and maybe you are right, maybe young urban people identify with urban north ? if people want to see themselves and DC as more like urban north eastern cities like nyc, wilmington,buffalo,newark,detroit, philly, camden, etc, I guess, but DC is nothing like those cities, Dc is a district basically, the traffic wouldnt be this awful if maryland and virginia worked with DC on solving it. No skyscrapers in DC like NYC.
DC is very transient, and I bet alot of people moving here never heard of chuck brown or what go go music is, chuck was from north carolina. Read the history of Duke ellington ,jelly roll morton, all the jazz and blues and bluegrass like seldom scene, great music and the great nightclubs the pre and post war 20th century, all of it was very southern. Maybe in the 21st century rap and mtv has replaced jazz and blues and blugrass and everything and rap and mtv are considered more northeastern, I dont know
While I respect you for presenting your opinion in such a polite manner and apologize if my original response was rude the other hand, you yourself just highlighted some the arguments for it being Northeast.
A lot of your post is based on history, it's already been covered here many times and I won't go into it anymore but here is a good post that sums up my feelings:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Happiness-is-close
Places change all the time. What something's foundation was has no bearing on what it is today. Florida was similar to the Deep South a hundred years ago. Now it is vastly different. Texas too. Michigan and New York were nearly identical in the 1800s, now they are both noticeably different.
And one more thing, there being no skyscrapers has nothing to do with it being southern, there are skyscrappers in southern cities so that doesn't mean anything. It has to do with it being the nation's capital.
I don't consider DC Northeastern at all, but I also don't consider it southern.
And just because you have rowhouses doesn't mean you're a northern city. Savannah is a good stock of rowhouses and it's not northern. It's just a product of being a really old American city. Atlanta's excuse for not having a huge stock of rowhouses is simply not being a big city during a time when rowhouses were popular.
On row houses, it's still an anomaly in the South for the most part outside of Savannah, Richmond, and Norfolk. DC, Baltimore, Maryland's Eastern Shore, Wilmington (DE), Philly, and some South Jersey towns have houses with wrap-around porches (largely and iconically affiliated with the South) in some parts, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're heavily common north of Virginia.
Didn't the Verizon center take up most of the real estate in DC's Chinatown?
Probably, the blocks that the Verizon Center (MCI Center back in the day) occupies was largely open-air. Pretty similar to the same way the Georgia Ave Metro station in the Petworth neighborhood was prior to that huge development that has been built on top of it.
Eye also found this interesting piece on a more local take on Chinatown from one of the remaining Chinese residents:
On row houses, it's still an anomaly in the South for the most part outside of Savannah, Richmond, and Norfolk. DC, Baltimore, Maryland's Eastern Shore, Wilmington (DE), Philly, and some South Jersey towns have houses with wrap-around porches (largely and iconically affiliated with the South) in some parts, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're heavily common north of Virginia.
Pretty much every town of decent size in Virginia has row houses. Petersburg, Fredericksburg, Staunton, Newport News, Portsmouth, Winchester (probably Danville too) all have row houses (in addition to Richmond, Norfolk and Alexandria). They aren't a North or South thing. They are housing from a particular time. That's all.
A place's geographic location doesn't change because of a demographic shift. The definition of a geographic area changes with said demographic shift. Washington is a Southern city. Cosmopolitan isn't at odds with the South. Wealth and education attainment isn't either. Washington is an urban, world class city full of diversity located in the American South.
I am from DC, and I am struggling to come up with, internally within myself or a written definition, what it means to be southern. What does being southern really even mean?
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