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- Varied weather with all four seasons. Winter and summer vary from year to year. Some winters it's 60 degrees all winter, other winters are brutal where it never peeps above freezing for weeks and drops down into negative digit windchill territory at night like last winter. Some summers are relatively mild where it's a hair above 80 all summer and other summers it's hot and humid as somebody's mouth for weeks.
- Mature people. DC is not completely overrun by immature douches like NYC and SF which have huge neighborhoods completely overrun with hipsters who refuse to grow up and get a job and live in their own little world where their idealized 90's childhoods never ended. DC is not overrun by 40 year olds dressing like emo band rock stars like L.A., SoHo-esque fashion victims dressed as "street goths" or whatever is unpractically trendy in NYC at the moment or try-hard hypebeast community college students wearing Nikes made in China valued at $1000+ but still not having a car. DC doesn't have a huge douchey immature subculture like guidos in the NYC Tri-State area or trustafarians in the Bay Area. People in DC are adults and act like it.
- Museums. All of the museums on the national mall are free.
- Good pay, job security and plenty of jobs for people who are connected enough to get them.
- Interesting unique local culture in the black population. Black DC traditionally had it's own local musical genre Go-Go which was a live call-and-response subgenre of funk. I can't say I'm a Go-Go head by any stretch, but I have heard good Go-Go before. Black DC natives dress different than any other big city. DC-born national rap-star Wale has brought many facets of DC's vibrant local style to the masses.
Cons:
- You can see everything there is to see in DC in a single weekend.
- Uptight, elitist, stuck-up antisocial, unstylish, uninteresting robotic people who live to work. There is an obsession with being a "professional" in DC, as they like to call it. These people wear at least business casual at all times. When they are not wearing business causal, they are usually either extremely unstylish and frumpy wearing their old college hoodie, sweats and cheap worn-out running shoes or wear unpractical sometimes downright goofy Brooks Brothers/Ralph Lauren looks. Think black guys dressed like Fonzworth Bentley and white guys who look like Patrick Bateman wearing the goofiest things from Ralph Lauren like salmon pants and pastel colored blazers with loafers with no socks. Plenty of overgrown fratboys wearing dirty white baseball caps and Vineyard Vines and Sperry topsiders as well. Boring transplants from the Midwest making DC more boring and sterile. Generally unattractive to average looking people without the draw dropping beauty and sexiness of cities like NYC, LA and Miami.
- Extreme social stratification. Black vs. white, rich vs. poor, uneducated vs. educated, immigrant vs. non-immigrant, native vs. non-native, white collar vs. no-collar. People generally do not talk to people outside of their given social strata in DC. Blacks and whites do not intermingle at all. Even black people who make good money in DC do their best to avoid white people socially. Whites in DC are generally upper middle class to wealthy. They assume everyone else is poor, unrefined and unworthy of attention and only pretty much only accept token minorities if they are educated, upper middle class and completely whitewashed. Black people from DC refuse to associate with anyone isn't black and born and raised in DC or PG County their entire lives. Anyone who isn't black and from DC or PG County is labelled as a "bama".
- Ugly people who think they're celebrities. DC is called "Hollywood for ugly people" for a reason. DC is weird because people have the hugest egos simply because they have a steady job with an upper middle class salary and a college education. Women who are average looking to downright ugly develop huge egos while living in DC because of the extreme lack of beautiful people in the District compared to other big cities. DC's dating scene is dismal because of the sky high standards of frumpy average people.
- Alcoholic culture. DC ranked as the ninth drunkest big city in America in 2013 not far behind infamous drinking towns like Milwaukee (a beer town with an MLB called the Brewers) and Boston (an Irish college town).
Many DC professionals work all day only to spend hundreds of dollars a week eating and drinking at bars, clubs and lounges around DC literally every night of the week. Popular DC districts like U Street, H Street, Adam's Morgan and even Georgetown all revolve around bars and drinking. The infamous ubiquitous Jumbo Slice of Adam's Morgan is really something you're supposed to eat after a long night of drinking so you won't be hungover the next day. DC people don't smoke weed like Californians because weed is something they grew out of after the graduated college and became bougiefied. Ironically, many DC people never outgrew their binge drinking from their college days. After all, people who went to college are statistically more likely to drink regularly, binge drink and be alcoholic. And DC has one of the highest concentrations of college grads anywhere in America. There are DUI enforcement signs plastered all over the beltway for a reason. Spoiled upper middle class kids who grow up in the DC area grow up in a strange super-alcoholic culture where they are full-blown alcoholics by the time they are 15 years old. It is no coincidence that DC is home to one of the highest concentrations of AA, and young people AA, of anywhere in America.
- People from Maryland/Virginia suburbs who say they're "from DC" even though they've never lived in the District, proper, a day in their lives. These same people talk about Baltimore and it's suburbs like it's some place 3,000 miles away and saying "that's far", despite the fact that it's a 30-40 minute drive in light traffic.
- Traffic. Any hour can be rush hour on the beltway. People who drive like they are the only car on the road.
- High COL with nothing to justify it. Other high COL areas have a reason to be so expensive. NYC is exciting, it's the fashion capital of the world, there are literally endless options for food and entertainment, the streets are paved with beautiful women, it's extremely diverse, relative safe etc. etc. San Francisco never gets too hot or too cold even in the summer and the winter, it has some of the world's most beautiful scenery, it's generally safer than DC as a whole and most similarly sized cities, great food and has some of the best weed on the planet. DC, well, just has more high paying jobs, but nothing else to actually warrant a higher COL.
Thanks , this is very informative . Wouldnt all the political activity justify the COL? I would assume most people there are somehow involved in politics.
Also, how has all the social stratification in the city effected your social life?
- Varied weather with all four seasons. Winter and summer vary from year to year. Some winters it's 60 degrees all winter, other winters are brutal where it never peeps above freezing for weeks and drops down into negative digit windchill territory at night like last winter. Some summers are relatively mild where it's a hair above 80 all summer and other summers it's hot and humid as somebody's mouth for weeks.
- Mature people. DC is not completely overrun by immature douches like NYC and SF which have huge neighborhoods completely overrun with hipsters who refuse to grow up and get a job and live in their own little world where their idealized 90's childhoods never ended. DC is not overrun by 40 year olds dressing like emo band rock stars like L.A., SoHo-esque fashion victims dressed as "street goths" or whatever is unpractically trendy in NYC at the moment or try-hard hypebeast community college students wearing Nikes made in China valued at $1000+ but still not having a car. DC doesn't have a huge douchey immature subculture like guidos in the NYC Tri-State area or trustafarians in the Bay Area. People in DC are adults and act like it.
- Museums. All of the museums on the national mall are free.
- Good pay, job security and plenty of jobs for people who are connected enough to get them.
- Interesting unique local culture in the black population. Black DC traditionally had it's own local musical genre Go-Go which was a live call-and-response subgenre of funk. I can't say I'm a Go-Go head by any stretch, but I have heard good Go-Go before. Black DC natives dress different than any other big city. DC-born national rap-star Wale has brought many facets of DC's vibrant local style to the masses.
Cons:
- You can see everything there is to see in DC in a single weekend.
- Uptight, elitist, stuck-up antisocial, unstylish, uninteresting robotic people who live to work. There is an obsession with being a "professional" in DC, as they like to call it. These people wear at least business casual at all times. When they are not wearing business causal, they are usually either extremely unstylish and frumpy wearing their old college hoodie, sweats and cheap worn-out running shoes or wear unpractical sometimes downright goofy Brooks Brothers/Ralph Lauren looks. Think black guys dressed like Fonzworth Bentley and white guys who look like Patrick Bateman wearing the goofiest things from Ralph Lauren like salmon pants and pastel colored blazers with loafers with no socks. Plenty of overgrown fratboys wearing dirty white baseball caps and Vineyard Vines and Sperry topsiders as well. Boring transplants from the Midwest making DC more boring and sterile. Generally unattractive to average looking people without the draw dropping beauty and sexiness of cities like NYC, LA and Miami.
- Extreme social stratification. Black vs. white, rich vs. poor, uneducated vs. educated, immigrant vs. non-immigrant, native vs. non-native, white collar vs. no-collar. People generally do not talk to people outside of their given social strata in DC. Blacks and whites do not intermingle at all. Even black people who make good money in DC do their best to avoid white people socially. Whites in DC are generally upper middle class to wealthy. They assume everyone else is poor, unrefined and unworthy of attention and only pretty much only accept token minorities if they are educated, upper middle class and completely whitewashed. Black people from DC refuse to associate with anyone isn't black and born and raised in DC or PG County their entire lives. Anyone who isn't black and from DC or PG County is labelled as a "bama".
- Ugly people who think they're celebrities. DC is called "Hollywood for ugly people" for a reason. DC is weird because people have the hugest egos simply because they have a steady job with an upper middle class salary and a college education. Women who are average looking to downright ugly develop huge egos while living in DC because of the extreme lack of beautiful people in the District compared to other big cities. DC's dating scene is dismal because of the sky high standards of frumpy average people.
- Alcoholic culture. DC ranked as the ninth drunkest big city in America in 2013 not far behind infamous drinking towns like Milwaukee (a beer town with an MLB called the Brewers) and Boston (an Irish college town).
Many DC professionals work all day only to spend hundreds of dollars a week eating and drinking at bars, clubs and lounges around DC literally every night of the week. Popular DC districts like U Street, H Street, Adam's Morgan and even Georgetown all revolve around bars and drinking. The infamous ubiquitous Jumbo Slice of Adam's Morgan is really something you're supposed to eat after a long night of drinking so you won't be hungover the next day. DC people don't smoke weed like Californians because weed is something they grew out of after the graduated college and became bougiefied. Ironically, many DC people never outgrew their binge drinking from their college days. After all, people who went to college are statistically more likely to drink regularly, binge drink and be alcoholic. And DC has one of the highest concentrations of college grads anywhere in America. There are DUI enforcement signs plastered all over the beltway for a reason. Spoiled upper middle class kids who grow up in the DC area grow up in a strange super-alcoholic culture where they are full-blown alcoholics by the time they are 15 years old. It is no coincidence that DC is home to one of the highest concentrations of AA, and young people AA, of anywhere in America.
- People from Maryland/Virginia suburbs who say they're "from DC" even though they've never lived in the District, proper, a day in their lives. These same people talk about Baltimore and it's suburbs like it's some place 3,000 miles away and saying "that's far", despite the fact that it's a 30-40 minute drive in light traffic.
- Traffic. Any hour can be rush hour on the beltway. People who drive like they are the only car on the road.
- High COL with nothing to justify it. Other high COL areas have a reason to be so expensive. NYC is exciting, it's the fashion capital of the world, there are literally endless options for food and entertainment, the streets are paved with beautiful women, it's extremely diverse, relative safe etc. etc. San Francisco never gets too hot or too cold even in the summer and the winter, it has some of the world's most beautiful scenery, it's generally safer than DC as a whole and most similarly sized cities, great food and has some of the best weed on the planet. DC, well, just has more high paying jobs, but nothing else to actually warrant a higher COL.
With regards to the unique local culture, other major contributions DC has done to music that have their origins in the City that most people aren't aware of are Moombahton (EDM), HarDCore (Punk), Quiet Storm (R&B/Funk), and Emo (Rock).....Yes, I was shocked as hell myself upon finding out that Emo is a DC product, it was an offshoot from the local Punk scene.
Ive heard alot of people mention D.C has a very unfriendly city. Why do you think this is?
And what do you mean that Gas stations suck? High gas prices?
Regarding DC's apparent unfriendliness, it kinda depends on where you're coming from. I find most of the locals (born and bred native Washingtonians) to be brassy but friendly and chill though some are weary of people not originally from DC/PG and this is most likely as a result of the rampant gentrification going on in most of DC. As for the transplants/transients, they either can come off as passive-aggressive, somewhat approachable, or downright uptight. Either way, the attitude and pace in DC and the DC metro area in general isn't that dissimilar to that of most East Coast cities from here to Metro Boston. I was born and raised across the City line here in PG County, MD and I've been around with as many native Washingtonians as native Prince Georgians, hell my parents are native Washingtonians themselves.
As for the high gas prices, that's a city thing in general not really DC-exclusive.
- Varied weather with all four seasons. Winter and summer vary from year to year. Some winters it's 60 degrees all winter, other winters are brutal where it never peeps above freezing for weeks and drops down into negative digit windchill territory at night like last winter. Some summers are relatively mild where it's a hair above 80 all summer and other summers it's hot and humid as somebody's mouth for weeks.
- Mature people. DC is not completely overrun by immature douches like NYC and SF which have huge neighborhoods completely overrun with hipsters who refuse to grow up and get a job and live in their own little world where their idealized 90's childhoods never ended. DC is not overrun by 40 year olds dressing like emo band rock stars like L.A., SoHo-esque fashion victims dressed as "street goths" or whatever is unpractically trendy in NYC at the moment or try-hard hypebeast community college students wearing Nikes made in China valued at $1000+ but still not having a car. DC doesn't have a huge douchey immature subculture like guidos in the NYC Tri-State area or trustafarians in the Bay Area. People in DC are adults and act like it.
- Museums. All of the museums on the national mall are free.
- Good pay, job security and plenty of jobs for people who are connected enough to get them.
- Interesting unique local culture in the black population. Black DC traditionally had it's own local musical genre Go-Go which was a live call-and-response subgenre of funk. I can't say I'm a Go-Go head by any stretch, but I have heard good Go-Go before. Black DC natives dress different than any other big city. DC-born national rap-star Wale has brought many facets of DC's vibrant local style to the masses.
Cons:
- You can see everything there is to see in DC in a single weekend.
- Uptight, elitist, stuck-up antisocial, unstylish, uninteresting robotic people who live to work. There is an obsession with being a "professional" in DC, as they like to call it. These people wear at least business casual at all times. When they are not wearing business causal, they are usually either extremely unstylish and frumpy wearing their old college hoodie, sweats and cheap worn-out running shoes or wear unpractical sometimes downright goofy Brooks Brothers/Ralph Lauren looks. Think black guys dressed like Fonzworth Bentley and white guys who look like Patrick Bateman wearing the goofiest things from Ralph Lauren like salmon pants and pastel colored blazers with loafers with no socks. Plenty of overgrown fratboys wearing dirty white baseball caps and Vineyard Vines and Sperry topsiders as well. Boring transplants from the Midwest making DC more boring and sterile. Generally unattractive to average looking people without the draw dropping beauty and sexiness of cities like NYC, LA and Miami.
- Extreme social stratification. Black vs. white, rich vs. poor, uneducated vs. educated, immigrant vs. non-immigrant, native vs. non-native, white collar vs. no-collar. People generally do not talk to people outside of their given social strata in DC. Blacks and whites do not intermingle at all. Even black people who make good money in DC do their best to avoid white people socially. Whites in DC are generally upper middle class to wealthy. They assume everyone else is poor, unrefined and unworthy of attention and only pretty much only accept token minorities if they are educated, upper middle class and completely whitewashed. Black people from DC refuse to associate with anyone isn't black and born and raised in DC or PG County their entire lives. Anyone who isn't black and from DC or PG County is labelled as a "bama".
- Ugly people who think they're celebrities. DC is called "Hollywood for ugly people" for a reason. DC is weird because people have the hugest egos simply because they have a steady job with an upper middle class salary and a college education. Women who are average looking to downright ugly develop huge egos while living in DC because of the extreme lack of beautiful people in the District compared to other big cities. DC's dating scene is dismal because of the sky high standards of frumpy average people.
- Alcoholic culture. DC ranked as the ninth drunkest big city in America in 2013 not far behind infamous drinking towns like Milwaukee (a beer town with an MLB called the Brewers) and Boston (an Irish college town).
Many DC professionals work all day only to spend hundreds of dollars a week eating and drinking at bars, clubs and lounges around DC literally every night of the week. Popular DC districts like U Street, H Street, Adam's Morgan and even Georgetown all revolve around bars and drinking. The infamous ubiquitous Jumbo Slice of Adam's Morgan is really something you're supposed to eat after a long night of drinking so you won't be hungover the next day. DC people don't smoke weed like Californians because weed is something they grew out of after the graduated college and became bougiefied. Ironically, many DC people never outgrew their binge drinking from their college days. After all, people who went to college are statistically more likely to drink regularly, binge drink and be alcoholic. And DC has one of the highest concentrations of college grads anywhere in America. There are DUI enforcement signs plastered all over the beltway for a reason. Spoiled upper middle class kids who grow up in the DC area grow up in a strange super-alcoholic culture where they are full-blown alcoholics by the time they are 15 years old. It is no coincidence that DC is home to one of the highest concentrations of AA, and young people AA, of anywhere in America.
- People from Maryland/Virginia suburbs who say they're "from DC" even though they've never lived in the District, proper, a day in their lives. These same people talk about Baltimore and it's suburbs like it's some place 3,000 miles away and saying "that's far", despite the fact that it's a 30-40 minute drive in light traffic.
- Traffic. Any hour can be rush hour on the beltway. People who drive like they are the only car on the road.
- High COL with nothing to justify it. Other high COL areas have a reason to be so expensive. NYC is exciting, it's the fashion capital of the world, there are literally endless options for food and entertainment, the streets are paved with beautiful women, it's extremely diverse, relative safe etc. etc. San Francisco never gets too hot or too cold even in the summer and the winter, it has some of the world's most beautiful scenery, it's generally safer than DC as a whole and most similarly sized cities, great food and has some of the best weed on the planet. DC, well, just has more high paying jobs, but nothing else to actually warrant a higher COL.
This is the funniest post I've ever read on City Data. So much detail and truth for the most part. I only disagree with you on three things:
1. DC is fully of ugly people. I would agree 10 years ago, but not really today. There are a lot of attractive people here. But I agree they don't know hot to dress compared to NYC or LA. If you want to see ugly people go to Philly. Not only are people in Philly ugly, but they dress to look ugly. Almost like they take pride in looking like they just rolled out of bed and got dressed in the dark without brushing their teeth or taking a shower. Which I find strange.
2. There is little racial integration. This is simply not true. There are some extreme people who only want to associate with "their kind" just like everywhere else in the country. But what you are talking about is more like Boston. DC is very integrated because there are people here from all over the world looking to meet new people. Its really just the locals who stay to themselves.. simply because they have already built that social group and they don't really care about meeting new people as much as new comers.
3. High COL is not justified. This is also not true. The reality is that when a high COL is not justified.. people simply don't live in that place. DC has benefits that lead to the high cost. They are just different benefits. NYC and SF have their own draw and their own identity as does DC. But here are the justifications for DC in my opinion:
-Free museums
-In the top three for best and most extensive Subway systems in the U.S.
-Walkable (this is not as common in the U.S. as many think. So demand is high
-A consistently healthy economy that is immune to normal boom and bust cycles
-Location, Location, Location. In my opinion DC has the best location on the East Coast
-3 Airports. One that is accessible by subway (and two will be by 2020)
-You are living in the nation's capital. You live in the same City as the U.S. President. Does that count for nothing?
-Plus many of the things NYC and SF also offer.. just on a smaller scale
Ive heard alot of people mention D.C has a very unfriendly city. Why do you think this is?
And what do you mean that Gas stations suck? High gas prices?
The Northern East Coast in general is unfriendly. DC is like the rest of the East Coast. However, I found Philly to be surprisingly friendly compared to the rest of the East Coast.
This is the funniest post I've ever read on City Data. So much detail and truth for the most part. I only disagree with you on three things:
1. DC is fully of ugly people. I would agree 10 years ago, but not really today. There are a lot of attractive people here. But I agree they don't know hot to dress compared to NYC or LA. If you want to see ugly people go to Philly. Not only are people in Philly ugly, but they dress to look ugly. Almost like they take pride in looking like they just rolled out of bed and got dressed in the dark without brushing their teeth or taking a shower. Which I find strange.
2. There is little racial integration. This is simply not true. There are some extreme people who only want to associate with "their kind" just like everywhere else in the country. But what you are talking about is more like Boston. DC is very integrated because there are people here from all over the world looking to meet new people. Its really just the locals who stay to themselves.. simply because they have already built that social group and they don't really care about meeting new people as much as new comers.
3. High COL is not justified. This is also not true. The reality is that when a high COL is not justified.. people simply don't live in that place. DC has benefits that lead to the high cost. They are just different benefits. NYC and SF have their own draw and their own identity as does DC. But here are the justifications for DC in my opinion:
-Free museums
-In the top three for best and most extensive Subway systems in the U.S.
-Walkable (this is not as common in the U.S. as many think. So demand is high
-A consistently healthy economy that is immune to normal boom and bust cycles
-Location, Location, Location. In my opinion DC has the best location on the East Coast
-3 Airports. One that is accessible by subway (and two will be by 2020)
-You are living in the nation's capital. You live in the same City as the U.S. President. Does that count for nothing?
-Plus many of the things NYC and SF also offer.. just on a smaller scale
So DC has good reason to be expensive.
How come no one lists all the political activity as a plus? As a resident you must get so many chances to go to political ralleys/events.
How come no one lists all the political activity as a plus? As a resident you must get so many chances to go to political ralleys/events.
Because that is a huge negative for the 98% of the population here who aren't political nerds. Not everyone cares about your partisan pet political project.
Because that is a huge negative for the 98% of the population here who aren't political nerds. Not everyone cares about your partisan pet political project.
This is the funniest post I've ever read on City Data. So much detail and truth for the most part. I only disagree with you on three things:
1. DC is fully of ugly people. I would agree 10 years ago, but not really today. There are a lot of attractive people here. But I agree they don't know hot to dress compared to NYC or LA. If you want to see ugly people go to Philly. Not only are people in Philly ugly, but they dress to look ugly. Almost like they take pride in looking like they just rolled out of bed and got dressed in the dark without brushing their teeth or taking a shower. Which I find strange.
2. There is little racial integration. This is simply not true. There are some extreme people who only want to associate with "their kind" just like everywhere else in the country. But what you are talking about is more like Boston. DC is very integrated because there are people here from all over the world looking to meet new people. Its really just the locals who stay to themselves.. simply because they have already built that social group and they don't really care about meeting new people as much as new comers.
3. High COL is not justified. This is also not true. The reality is that when a high COL is not justified.. people simply don't live in that place. DC has benefits that lead to the high cost. They are just different benefits. NYC and SF have their own draw and their own identity as does DC. But here are the justifications for DC in my opinion:
-Free museums
-In the top three for best and most extensive Subway systems in the U.S.
-Walkable (this is not as common in the U.S. as many think. So demand is high
-A consistently healthy economy that is immune to normal boom and bust cycles
-Location, Location, Location. In my opinion DC has the best location on the East Coast
-3 Airports. One that is accessible by subway (and two will be by 2020)
-You are living in the nation's capital. You live in the same City as the U.S. President. Does that count for nothing?
-Plus many of the things NYC and SF also offer.. just on a smaller scale
So DC has good reason to be expensive.
This is probably one of the VERY few occasions I actually agree with you.
You can't go around assuming that just because someone's living in DC, they're into politics especially since you're not even from here. I'm born and raised just outside of DC here in PG County and I would love to move into the City. I'm more interested in the urban aspect and getting out of the suburbs, I couldn't care less about the political industry. There's more to DC than politics.
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