Misadventures in D.C.

The Watergate’s location next to the Potomac River made for some stunning views.  But what my former workplace had in cachet it utterly lacked in dining options.  Stuck on the periphery of town, businesspeople like myself had few options other than the subpar pizza shack and a smattering of standard-issue sandwich shops.

Fortunately, things are far different in Chinatown.  Folks may deride the lack of ethnic culture in this newly built part of the city, but I can’t complain about the lunchtime choices.  Which is why I continue to be stunned that my colleagues stick to a handful of entirely conservative restaurant chains – Chipotle and California Tortilla chief among them.  How unforgivably bland!

One result is that I’m determined to support the China that’s still left in the neighborhood.  Every Wednesday, I force myself beyond the walls of my building and, with a few coworkers, explore a different Chinese establishment within a four-block radius of NPR.  I’m still in the beginning stages of my D.C. Chinatown tour, but I’ve already landed upon a few bright spots.

News reports on the constant wave of violent crime in Washington tend to give the city a menacing air. This is especially true, of course, when such crime happens in majority-white neighborhoods, like in Georgetown last year, where a diplomat was killed in an attempted robbery.

So perhaps you can imagine my surprise upon stumbling into the following article in the Philadelphia Inquirer this weekend. Despite breathless reports on last summer’s “crime emergency,” it appears that in 2006 DC posted some of its lowest violent crime statistics in years. Bucking a national uptick in major cities like New York and Philly, Washington is now being looked at as one of a number of case studies in how to successfully fight urban combat.

Of course, good policing techniques are only a small part of the equation here – our police department is generally acknowledged as competent, but less than spectacular. The following quote seems to get at something more important:

"We in the District may be exporting the crime problem to our benefit," said Caterina G. Roman, a researcher on crime issues at the Urban Institute in Washington. "As it gets ever harder to find affordable housing, our crime numbers are likely to continue getting better."

Are winnowing crime numbers simply a byproduct of growing gentrification? As someone who traffics in demographics for a living, all indicators point to yes. Shockingly, in five short years, the population of 18-24 men in the city has dropped by 33%. Which means there are significantly fewer of the folks most likely to commit violent crime living within city limits.

The key question: What is one to think of this reality? Should gentrification really be looked to by other municipalities – or by our own public officials, for that matter -- as a cure-all for criminal woes?

As a parting gift, my thoughtful former boss gave me a one-year membership to the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle.  I received many great things this Christmas, but this one ranks near the top.  Access to this private museum of excellent modern art is something I had wanted to get for myself, and I’m sure I’ll be spending many a leisurely weekend there over the next year.

To start, I just got back from the Societe Anonyme exhibition, which runs until the middle of January.  And unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it immensely.  It is composed of first-rate works from artists like Kandinsky, Klee, Duchamp and Miro, and is meant to represent the vanguard in American and European modernism from 1920 to 1950.

While not every work represented made me excited – I’m not a huge fan of abstraction, for example – the exhibit on the whole presents an exciting and diverse range of work across all different media, presented in a selective, straightforward manner.