Read some new fiction of mine in The Collagist, an excellent new online mag from Dzanc Books.
Bringing back streetcars to D.C.
What's not to love? Change we can all believe in. Or ride on. Some details here.
(Photo: streetcars in front of the Russell Senate Office Building, circa 1910. The image is part of the Library of Congress's collections. I found it here on Flickr.)
To rent or not to rent your house out for the inauguration: That's been a hot topic among capital residents the last few weeks. It's been all over my neighborhood listservs, and yesterday, at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop, guys with big signs were shilling for inauguralhomes.com, a website where Washingtonians can post their properties and out-of-towners can trawl for a place to stay. Craigslist is hopping with inaugural offers too, or so I hear.
Is the Howard household going to clear out for the inauguration and make a quick buck off our Capitol Hill rowhouse? It's only a mile and a half from the Capitol--two Metro stops, a 20-minute walk--so there might be some takers.
The land-grab mentality makes me nervous, though, and it might be worth more to me in the long run to stick around and catch a piece of history. I trawled some of the listings on inauguralhomes.com last night, just to see what my fellow citizens think they can get for their manses, and was appalled by some of the numbers. Three thousand dollars a day for a house, even a nice one in Northwest? Fifteen hundred for a one-bedroom condo downtown? Come on. Some of these properties are miles away from any of the action.
Washingtonians: Don't let greed get the better of you. This should be a chance to open the city to our fellow citizens, not make a killing off them. (Nothing wrong with a healthy profit, of course.)
Non-residents: If you're coming to town for the big day--and I hope you are--and you want to rent a place, make sure you know what you're getting for your money. Look hard at a DC map. Talk to somebody local if you can. Not all neighborhoods are equal--and very few are worth 3000 smackeroos a day.
Still, if you want to make me an offer....
The Chicago-based mag Stop Smiling has just put out a D.C. issue. I went to a party on Friday for some of the contributors and people Q&A'd in the issue (I'm neither) and got off to a good start by asking the editor who he was. At least I can't be accused of sucking up.
Anyway, it's a good-looking issue that's deliberately (I think/hope) all over the place: an analysis of presidential handwriting, a tribute to the Florida Avenue Grill, a cri de coeur about the plight of the Chesapeake Bay, a nifty look at campaign ephemera (buttons, posters, an elephant flyswatter allegedly from the 1964 Democratic convention) written by two Smithsonian curators who have spent 20 years collecting the stuff for the National Museum of American History. I talked with one of them--William L. Bird Jr.--at the party and was reminded that it's usually more fun to talk to historians than to other journos.
Profiles and interviews are the main engine of the D.C. issue, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on your appetite for profiles. Mine's limited, but I found some good stuff here as well as some head-scratchers and all-too-predictable choices. (Another profile of Christopher Buckley? I'm still regretting the time I wasted on that NYT piece about him a few weeks back.) Better bets, IMHO, include the pieces on George Pelecanos, actor and musician Big G a k a Anwan Glover, soon-to-be-ex-NEA chairman Dana Gioia, Chemical Brother Joe Reese, Frank Rich Sr., father of the NYT columnist and the last owner of Rich's Shoes, a D.C. landmark back in the day, and Ilir Zherka of DC Vote, a group dedicated to getting us capital denizens fully enfranchised at long last. (If only. Mr. Obama, are you listening?)
Here's Anwan Glover on why the homegrown go-go sound didn't catch on more outside the city:
It was so selfish here. We could have caught on. I hate to say it, but DC is a selfish city. We just try to keep so much stuff to ourselves. Really, there are a lot of haters. Crabs in a barrel. But the music is good. I performed with everybody, from Scarface to Onyx, Biggie, Pac, Busta Rhymes. Man,we done did it with everybody, and they loved the sound.
Spread the D.C. love.
Mark Athitakis, a DC-based critic and arts editor of the Washington City Paper, has put up a page of who's reading in the area over the next few months. You can find it here at his American Fiction Notes blog. Good work, Mark.
Len Downie, the Post's former executive editor, says enough already with the DC-bashing:
Large numbers of Washingtonians have dedicated much of their lives to real public service that does not involve the ego trips, trappings and hypocrisies of elective office.
Amen to that. It's not all earmarks and Gucci Gulch lobbyists, kids.
For all its partisanship and jockeying for power and influence, Washington's culture--with roots in the New Deal, World War II, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and the Reagan Revolution--is receptive to new ideas and new people. It is steadily refreshed by idealistic young professionals who come here to work and learn for low wages in the backrooms of power. And it readily assimilates waves of older hands who arrive with each new administration and member of Congress, and then stay in the public arena here.
And did we mention it's also a nice place to live?
As much as it has changed, Washington remains a pleasantly unique city, with its low skyline, monumental architecture, preserved history and green open spaces. Despite the serious dedication to work of so many of its residents, their lifestyle is generally unpretentious..
Damn straight, Len. Thanks for saying so.
D.C. Noir 2: The Classics got a nice write-up in the Post yesterday. For obvious reasons I'm predisposed to like the book, and it sounds like there's plenty to like:
Two of the finest stories rely on a collision of cultures. Edward P. Jones's masterful "A Rich Man" follows a womanizing senior citizen's descent into a maelstrom of trouble with a younger generation that he fails, tragically, to understand. Elizabeth Hand's "Wonderwall" captures with visceral immediacy the landscape of Southwest Washington in the 1970s as experienced by artsy college students from suburban Maryland: "gunshots, sirens, the faint bass throb from funk bands at the Washington Coliseum, the ceaseless boom and echo of trains uncoupling in the railyards that extended from Union Station."
That sounds like D.C., baby.
Bored already by the Booker shortlist? I am. The Guardian (though no stranger to Booker coverage) has some literary relief. They asked naturalist Esther Woolfson for a personal list of "Top 10 birds in fact and fiction." In fiction, she says, she likes "a hint of birds: a bird as subsidiary character, as metaphor or symbol."
Number one on her list is a D.C. book--nonfiction--that I'm sorry I haven't known about: Spring in Washington, by Louis J. Halle. Wollfson describes him as "an extraordinary man, a naturalist and a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department"--one of those quiet enthusiasts you find here.
Spring in Washington, written about the spring of 1945, is an appreciation of the minutiae of life after the end of war, what Halle describes as "snatching the passing moment and examining it for signs of eternity"...
"This again is fresh earth and fresh sky. Look up when you reach Washington's home at Mount Vernon and, like as not, you will see one or several American eagles soaring against the blue. They do duty for bronze eagles over Washington's tomb"....
Reading this book makes me wonder what has changed in the natural landscape of Washington, what has been lost over the 60 odd years, what has diminished.
I wonder too. I am going to buy a copy of Halle's book and find out.
The Magnetic Fields got it right. D.C. is more than just the grand old seat (or a swamp of iniquity) to some of us. As I probably tell people too often, I grew up in Washington, and I feel obliged to remind people from time to time that "inside the Beltway" means something very different to those of us who actually live here.
So, in this election season, when politicians say "Washington" the way others say "child molester," I'd like to point out a few of my favorite things about this town. I've added a section of D.C. links to the site--mostly literary, cultural, and historical--and I'll add more as they occur to me. Suggestions welcome.
Sure, we've got SmartBikes here in D.C. (See previous post.) But can we really be a world-class city, as our fine mayor wants us to be, if we can't sustain our independent bookstores? Chad Post over at Three Percent has got me nervous:
A few years ago, Chapters: A Literary Bookstore in Washington, D.C. decided to become an nonprofit as well, in part by making the store part of a larger 501(3) organization called Wordfest that directed an international poetry festival. For a variety of reasons I don't even fully know, this relationship didn't work out, and Chapters was eventually forced to close. The remarkable Terri Merz is still looking for a space to reopen, which will hopefully happen soon, since D.C. needs a great indie store, especially since Olsson's is struggling.
I knew about Chapters, but the news about Olsson's is, yes, news to me. Like Politics and Prose--which, as far as I know, is doing just fine--Olsson's hosts some excellent readings, and it would be a real shame if they faded away. Get out there and shop indy, people.
Yup, right here in D.C. I'm so proud.
"Declare the District's urban-cool inferiority complex officially over," the WaPo reported on Aug. 13, the day SmartBike D.C. went live. "Today the city joins the ranks of Paris and Barcelona with the launch of the first high-tech public bike-sharing program in the United States, forcing such cities as San Francisco and Chicago to look here to see chic alternative transportation in action in America.
I walk by a SmartBike stand on my way to work and it looks pretty cool--Zipcar for cyclists.
If you're a local or happen to be in town, you can catch George Pelecanos reading from his new novel this evening at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose. I can't make it tonight, so if you go, clap wildly and cheer loudly.
I'm hoping to make it to at least one of these readings in September, though, when D.C. Noir 2: The Classics appears.
