The Neighborhood

“Are y’all my new white neighbors?”

This is the greeting we received upon meeting our neighbor Tootie (not from The Facts of Life) when we moved into the Shaw neighborhood of DC in the spring of 2008. In fact, we were the new white neighbors, and it was becoming increasingly clear that we were just another young white couple squatting in this neighborhood that was, and still is, on the border of Trendy Street and Shady Lane.

But there was comfort in that. We felt used to the culture of DC by that point, and in a town as transitional as this one, we were relative natives.

There are things that I like about DC: 100-year old rowhouses, beautiful little lawns, walking or metro to everything, proximity to Eritrean and Ethiopian restaurants, wine bars, art museums…but most of all, for us, proximity to our friends.

Several weeks ago, when our landlords unceremoniously booted us from our outrageously expensive rowhouse in Shaw, we began looking for a place in the area. No more “English basements” please, needs to be on the green/yellow metro line, 2 bedroom (since I essentially work from home), close to a metro stop, and you know, cute. So that ought to just be about $3000/month or so. All this with the real possibility for violent crime.

So we did the unthinkable: looked at a place in Northern Virginia. And put a deposit down on the first place we saw.

For those of you who don’t live in DC, I will tell you that “NoVa” has a certain stigma attached to it, at least for DC-ites. For example, I felt the need to ‘break’ the news to our friends, and we got responses like “Oh, it will be ok”, and “I’m sorry.”

But it’s cheaper! And safer! And closer to Tim’s workplace! And we have a yard. Erm, and some people may have little fences. Some of them are white. And picket.

This sudden transition into what really feels like a foreign country was a bit of a crisis for me. We just got married, we’re moving out to the ‘burbs, and we have a set of 12 matching silverware and plates.

I miss Living in Sin, and the chipped plates and mismatched forks acquired from years of roommates, garage sales, and stealing (my favorite fork used to be the one with the black handle, now I prefer the flowery one). The new silverware are all the matching, the same, neatly lined up in our wooden storage-for-silverware thingy; it's creepy.

And this Saturday, August 1, we are moving to NoVa. This week my gracious mother has been helping us paint, weed the yard, and generally clean up the place (it needed it). I’ve never really had a yard before, and yesterday when we were cleaning up, I met a few of the new neighbors.

Corey, who was also cleaning the yard, walked over and said, “Are y’all my new white neighbors?”

Just kidding.

I introduced myself, and he said, “That will be easy to remember, my wife’s name is Heather.” I said, “If your name is Tim then things just got really weird.”

Corey and Heather have lived there about a year, they moved in after they got married, he went to the University of Maryland, she is an art historian….not really. Actually all of that is true except for the art historian part.

Ugh. Confronted with superficially “who we are,” I am disgusted. How boring. How regular. Of course her name is Heather. Corey and Heather.

“We’d love to go to the gay rights protest on the National Mall, but I think we’re just going to hang with Corey and Heather.”

“Dinner party in Columbia Heights? Nah, Corey and Heather are making meatloaf tonight.”

I know that location doesn’t change who you are, fundamentally. And I also know that I am unfairly judging Corey and Heather. But all this to say that I am scared of becoming boring and losing touch with my favorite things about living in this area.

On the other side of us in NoVa is an older couple named Audrey and Cliff. When I asked her how long they had lived there, she said “Well, these houses were built in 1950, we moved in in 1951 thinking it was a starter home, and we never left!” They are as sweet as can be, and when I asked if this was a safe neighborhood, she said she had never heard of any break-ins around there. In almost 60 years.

And since when I arrive home in Shaw, I generally expect the front door to be flapping open and all our stuff strewn in the streets, I can see that there are good things about moving to NoVa.

But even though we are only moving about 10 miles away, the culture shock is jarring. Some days, I may need to take the metro into the city to hang out and smoke in front of a liquor store, just for old time’s sake.