| Washington DC
 By Peter Burris
I've grown up and lived in Washington, DC, since 1970. My parents moved here from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I was born. Given the close-knit neighbourhoods, the free museums, and the flow of folks in and out of Washington on a constant basis, I have found it exceedingly hard to resettle elsewhere. However, my two trips to Ireland have lead me to believe I could live there (especially in the West and the South) with ease and comfort. I have enjoyed Dublin, and I even felt comfortable enough there that people asked me for directions before hearing my voice and realizing I was American, not a Dubliner born and bred. For all that, I found Galway and Cork more my type of town.
Introduction:
As the Capital of the United States and the home to seven major universities, Washington sees a lot of turnover. The transients, the climate, and the swinging pendulum of political fashion coalesce in a bit of identity confusion for the city -- we can't agree whether it's a Southern town, a Northern metropolis with fickle weather, or a frontier of no fixed geographic significance.
Climate:
As the climate in the summer tends to be swampy, those hills can take a toll on one's energy. We rarely have genuinely severe weather of any sort, but the winds in winter make the city feel colder than it is. Spring and fall alternate between excessive rain and glorious, sparkling days in which one wants to be outside for hours untold.
Getting Around:
While we have a nationally renowned rail system (MetroRail), the bus system tends to be the most cost-effective and dependable system. MetroRail has clean and sleek cars, but
the stations lack architectural flair or grace, and there are never enough trains to accommodate the ever ballooning ridership. They run too rarely, as well. Taxi cabs are zoned not metered,
so the imprecise cost system confuses natives and visitors.
Living Accommodation:
We have a couple sites like Apartmentsforrent.com which allow people to search apartments, houses, and other accommodations free of charge -- the property owners pay for the listings. Housing is expensive in Washington unless one doesn't mind living in a group house. Single one-bedroom apartments can go for a thousand US dollars. I'm hard pressed to offer any advice other than look for group houses in the Mount Pleasant, Tenley Park, or Brookland areas of town. In this town, renting one's own place means throwing away money better spent buying a condominium.
Standard of Living:
Like Dublin, Washington DC can be rather dear if one likes nightlife and fine dining. Petrol can be expensive as well, and the Metro system keeps raising the prices of the rail portion of public transit. However, most museums are free, and restaurants and galleries band together to give discounts for a week out of the month or year, and there are a lot of hidden gems for food enthusiasts.
Working:
I lack hard data for the income differential between Washington and Dublin. I can say that the high earners tend to work in law, psychiatry, or corporations with government contracts. Information Technology tends to fare strongly, as well, but not all the great opportunities lie in the city proper, and a car may be necessary for many of the jobs that rely on Government contracts. That said, the hospitality and service industries thrive in this town, given how many conventions and political events demand rooms, catering, and associated services. The tipping culture means that service personnel don't make a lot of cash, and must hustle to make a living wage. A number of Europeans I've talked to find the pay structures for service-type jobs appalling here.
Banking:
We use the American dollar, and taxes tend to be higher in the district than the suburbs, but unlike the Commonwealth of Virginia, which abuts the district to the West, we have no car tax. Most of the District's revenue tends to come from parking enforcement, which rivals Dublin for the enthusiasm with which cars get clamped. Property taxes can also be more than a little ridiculous and disproportionate.
Healthcare:
Corporate employers, i.e. bigger than a family store or restaurant, tend to provide insurance for employees, but at the best of times, nobody enjoys an ideal coverage. One can see a private consultant faster and with more ease than those living under a Nationalized Health system, but the cost is prohibitive, and millions of people never see a doctor until they end up in the emergency room for a crisis.
Education:
Washington DC's school system has been problematic for decades. I attribute this fact to the deprivation of genuine status in our legislature -- before we had a mayor and a city council (1973), the highest office anyone could attain was a seat on the school board. Consequently, the school system became a hobby horse for the political opportunists, even well after Home Rule in seventy-three created higher offices on the council. This doesn't mean there aren't talented and dedicated educators in the DC school system -- just that they get trampled by their top-heavy bureaucracy and lost in the
clamour of the President's hollow propaganda campaign ("No Child Left Behind.") There is hope, however our mayor commandeered the school system and appointed a radical reformer, so the school system could improve shortly.
Personal Safety:
For decades, most of Washington was a ghost town after dark. This was a result of the riots that followed Dr. ML King's assassination in 1968, which laid waste to Florida Avenue and the formerly prosperous H street corridor. Now, these areas have been rehabilitated, but there are expanses along both streets which can be dicey. Also, housing projects near major bridges (i.e., Anacostia and the far South of Capitol Hill) thrive as open-air drug markets,
untrammelled by effective police disruption. The greatest crime in the region, however, tends to be white collar, and it kills in the millions, not on the street in the shadows.
Leisure and Culture:
There are three enclaves of Irish socialising Cleveland Park, Capitol Hill (near Union Station the train depot), and Brookland/Catholic University. Two to four pubs offering live music can be found in each area, in some cases next to or across the street from each other. Our principal social hot-spots continue to be sports bars, ethnic restaurants, and nightclubs, offering live music of a louder sort. A lot of the social activities which occur and I suspect where a lot of Irish ex-pats or descendants might meet are informal sports clubs and the after-game drinks and pizza.
Other tips and Thoughts:
Dublin and Washington DC feel very similar -- the emotional attachments to one's neighbourhood, combined with a need to go downtown and rip it up struck me as identical in each town, and Temple Bar feels a lot like Adams Morgan, just West of Columbia Heights. Like Dublin, we also have a weird duality between heavy religious presences (we have a lot of churches, which occupy untaxed real estate) and desperate alcoholism. Several homeless shelters dot the landscape,
artefacts of President Reagan's decision to open the mental institutions and refuse treatment and housing to thousands of folk who can't take care of themselves. Also, Washington has a great number of immigrants working in the hospitality and blue collar, unskilled
labour markets, people the city residents depend on, but don't seem to welcome or like, let alone respect. On the plus side, because of the higher than average median incomes which dominate Washington's core areas, we have a high regard for educated patrons and plenty of theatre, art, and cultural events running year-round. We have film festivals, major international retrospectives of great artists, and some of the best food to be found in any country. The high incomes and concentrated intelligentsia also manifest in a rather left-leaning voter base, a positive atmosphere which leaves the rest of the country griping about liberal bias while we protect their civil liberties, privacy, and reproductive freedoms. All told, Washington tends to feel more congenial than the impressions I might have furnished in my individual responses. A couple weeks ago, I lost my wallet and someone picked it up in the street, made phone calls, and had it back to me in twenty-four hours. I think that testifies to the overall character of people in Washington, DC.
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