Port of Entry

Living in DC these past couple of weeks has truly been eye opening. Take for instance the neighborhood in Virginia I am living in; the demographics are really very interesting. Around the Metro stop I go to to get into the city, there are upscale restaurants, apartment complexes, and all other manner of bourgeois business establishments. As you move toward my house, a sort of melange develops. There are white and black residents living side by side, and some interesting immigrant communities as well. On the one hand are my neighbors, recent immigrants from Honduras. They have treated me with nothing but warmness and friendliness (when I was locked out for a bit, they hung out with me). On the other hand is a sizable Bangladeshi population. Going up the road one finds Halal meat markets, all manner of Indian movie stores, and signs written in Bangla. Really fascinating coming from a college environment that is fairly homogeneous.

Another point of interest is the sort of culture in some parts of DC, mingled with the absolute lack in others. The Capitol and its environs are clean and offer wide vistas, but it is fairly sterile and all of the Congressional office buildings seemed to meld into a marble blob. Going a few blocks away to the Eastern Market area, one finds lots of idiosyncratic coffee shops, restaurants, and people. Take for instance a man who runs a street stand that sells incense, while upbeat Gospel music resonates from his boombox. I am currently at Busboys and Poets, a coffee shop which is an homage to that great black poet Langston Hughes. The other day, I saw a group of street performers arranged as an entire Jazz band (French horn and all). DC has turned out to be very exciting so far, and I can’t wait to make more discoveries.