Petula Dvora, Washington Post Every few months, I run into some form that simply doesn’t offer D.C. as an option in the drop-down menu.
Or at a bar outside the Beltway: “I need a real ID, like from where you live,” a befuddled bartender in Alabama told me, after I showed my D.C. driver’s license years ago, when I still looked young enough to get carded. “Washington’s not, like, a real place.”
So when folks like that take a poll, they imagine a bunch of guys in suits and white marble buildings and the collective word they spit when they want to blame someone else for their woes — “Washington” — as the supposed “swamp” that wants to become a state.
Let me help.
Washington is generations of families who’ve been going to Lee’s Flower and Card Shop since it opened in 1945 or who have been getting their children’s first shoes at Ramer’s since 1982. It’s got go-go music and mumbo sauce. It’s a place of neighborhoods that throw block parties and neighbors who battle for the best lawn.
Washington has rowhouses, ranch houses, mansions and condos. (Maybe too many condos.) It’s scout troops and swim teams, American Legion halls and corner groceries. It’s not all politicians. We have janitors and teachers, accountants and construction workers, too.
Just like the rest of America.
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