Help me prepare for a neighborhood-exploring, apartment-hunting trip to Washington DC.

September 1, 2008 4:21 PM

Help me prepare for a neighborhood-exploring, apartment-hunting trip to Washington DC.

My girlfriend and I are moving to DC soon. We're visiting later this week to decide what neighborhood we want to live in and to look at apartments. We'll have four full days to wander around (Thursday-Sunday). Here are the neighborhoods we're considering:

* Dupont Circle
* Logan Circle
* Columbia Heights
* Mount Pleasant
* Clarendon (in Arlington)

Our goal is to spend a morning or afternoon wandering around in each neighborhood and hopefully get a feel for what it's like to live there. We would be very grateful for recommendations from locals: restaurants or shops to visit, specific streets to walk down, etc. Help us experience, to the extent we can in a few hours, what's unique about each neighborhood.

posted by medpt to travel & transportation (10 comments total)

To make your traveling around easier - take metro and get a smart card. Us locals hate nothing more than noobs that don't know how to ride the metro. Oh - and stand on the right, walk on the left! (you'll figure what I mean when the time comes...)

Northern Virginia - as long as you're going to consider Clarendon, also consider Rosslyn. It's closer to DC and IMHO has just as much going for it.

My favorites on your list though are Dupont Circle and Logan Circle. If you're into shopping and restaurants and nightlife DuPont probably has more going for it, but Logan Circle is SOOO close to Dupont that it's hard to really delineate between the two. But - Dupont has a Metro stop. Close to Dupont and Logan is the U St. corridor - be sure to check it out for dining and nightlife!

DC is odd in that sometimes the gentrification of the neighborhoods just isn't complete. One block can be beautiful and the next is very 'iffy'. Again in Dupont, check out P Street and the main corridor going down 14th street.

DC also now has a smart bike program, (rental bikes from automated stations - how European of us!!!!) which I think would be a great way for you to explore the neighborhoods without being underground on Metro the whole time.

Enjoy!!!!
posted by matty at 5:38 PM on September 1, 2008

Visit each neighborhood again at night. Whatever is the latest at night you ever stay out, visit each neighborhood then. Not sure where you're moving from, but I moved to DC from New York, and what struck me most about DC and NoVa was how much neighborhoods change at night. Places where I feel very safe and happy during the day feel very creepy to me at night, mostly because they become largely deserted except for odd shadows lurking in alleys. Make sure you feel just as safe in your neighborhood at night as you do during the day, because many of them are very different at night.
posted by decathecting at 5:42 PM on September 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Almost forgot... go have breakfast and do some shopping at Kramers Bookstore. It's almost a tradition! (It's in Dupont)

Another fun diversion is the Eastern Market. Although it was gutted by fire, it's temporarily housed next to it's original location and is set for completion in a year. It's also close to a Metro in a nice neighboorhood. (It's pretty much in Capitol Hill neighborhood)
posted by matty at 5:42 PM on September 1, 2008

I grew up in the Virginia suburbs of DC and worked in midtown from 1998-2004. My dad grew up in the DC area, as did his father, and *his* father... Boy, these neighborhoods have changed a lot.

Dupont Circle is not too far from the business district of midtown and the posh Georgetown riverfront. It's well established, and if you like art, check out the Phillips Collection. I remember watching a gay pride parade from a nice sushi restaurant with a guy I was dating at the time; other Fridays we'd meet up after work for a pitcher of margaritas. I can't remember specific streets or restaurants, but restaurants have a fairly high turnover in general.

Logan Circle, bordering Dupont, once marked the edge of where town started getting rough, but new construction, including a WholeFoods, has changed its feel dramatically.

Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant, closer to Maryland, are associated for me with childhood memories of crime reports, but they too have seen gentrification. Have you considered the area near the Verizon Center / Chinatown? That has become a vibrant area. Anacostia is slated for gentrification, but when and how that materializes remains in play.

The questions I'd be most concerned with as a local are commute times to work, wherever that may be, and schools if you have (or plan to have) children.

You also might want to look through the websites of local broadcasters: NBC4, Fox5, ABC7, CBS9. Good luck.
posted by woodway at 5:52 PM on September 1, 2008

Rosslyn is terrible, unless you can afford one of the really nice highrise apts there then it isnt worth it, it is dead outside of working hours, and pretty drab in general.

Also Cleveland Park and Tenleytown are pretty nice, I am assuming you can afford to live around there based on the other neighborhoods you listed.

More generally, I would suggest you take a look in Silver Spring, it is sort of like the cheaper Clarendon of MD.

One hint I have for using the DC metro system as a form of commuting is that you get a place on the same line that you work on, nothing gets me more riled up in the morning and coming home then transferring at Metro Center, so many stupid smelly people...
posted by BobbyDigital at 7:28 PM on September 1, 2008

It depends of what kind of lifestyle and living space you're looking for, and what you can afford rent-wise. A house -- either whole or subdivided into apartments -- is a different beast than a condo or an apartment building, and most of the neighborhoods you mention have all of those types of housing, but the cost will naturally be different between them.
But the neighborhoods in general, including a couple that you may not have considered: Dupont Circle, Penn Quarter / Chinatown, and Georgetown are pricier, but with lots of restaurants and shopping. Cleveland Park and Eastern Market / Capitol Hill are nice, but have fewer of those "upscale" amenities in the immediate area and are also kind of pricey. When I lived in DC, I lived first in Columbia Heights, and then in the Logan Circle / Shaw / Cardozo area, and had friends who lived in Mt. Pleasant. All three of those areas have a fair amount of stuff going on, and you can still find pretty nice places at decent rent. Though since I left a year ago, a huge Clarendon-like shopping area opened up on Columbia Heights, so I'll bet rents have gone up there.
If you don't mind a little bit more of a commute, Arlington and Alexandria might do it for you on the Virginia side, or Takoma Park, Silver Spring, Chevy Chase, or Bethesda on the Maryland side. I lived right between Silver Spring and Takoma Park before I moved to DC proper, and it was nice and quiet, covered in trees with Sligo Creek Park right there for walking/jogging/biking, and the newish Silver Spring downtown area close by for movies, shopping, etc.
If you end up trolling Craigslist for places, WalkScore is a useful tool to see what kinds of amenities are near any given address. If you need to live someplace where stuff is walkable, it can be useful in preemptively eliminating places that don't fit that bill.
Let me know if you have any other questions! (Can you tell that A. I've moved a lot, and B. I kinda miss DC?)
posted by D.Billy at 7:51 PM on September 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

I like housingmaps.com for organizing your craigslist search listings by neighborhood. A lot of listings "stretch" the truth and claim the next neighborhood over. Also helpful is entering the address into the trip planner at wmata.com to confirm a reasonable commute.
If you are looking at large apartment buildings I'd spend some time emailing or calling ahead of time to ask if they have any deals.
posted by hokie409 at 10:02 PM on September 1, 2008 [3 favorites]

The WaPo crime map is good for a gander, but don't let it freak you out too much.

In Mt Pleasant, have breakfast at Heller's, or grab a drink at the Raven. Looks like a regular dive bar, but it's the oldest bar in DC! Duck into the Bestway to get a sense of the Latino influence of the neighborhood. Walk over west on Lamont to see the pretty rowhouses. Take the 42 to see if you like it - it's the Mt Pleasant lifeline!
posted by lunasol at 10:15 PM on September 1, 2008

To provide a bit more info: we'll be renting an apartment and we don't have kids.

Thanks for the answers everyone, keep 'em coming.
posted by medpt at 7:31 AM on September 2, 2008

Great idea about spending a morning/evening in each neighborhood.

For Columbia Heights/Mt. P I second eating breakfast at Heller's bakery. Mt. P is my old hood and one of the best places I've ever lived. Go down Mount Pleasant St on a Saturday afternoon and see the vibrant hispanic culture cross with yuppies in a way that... works. It's really great. Columbia Heights is meh... I left right before the Target opened up, so god knows what that place is like now.

Check out Adams Morgan at night. It's the biggest strip in DC for bars, clubs, frat boy puke your brains out goodness. Not really my kind of scene and it was really irritating to live near 18th street and walk down there on a sunday morning dodging piles of vomit and wadded up plates from jumbo slice, but it was worth it to be within walking distance of Tryst and The Diner.

Dupont is great. Nothing more to say about that. Logan is ok, better if you're into theatre and don't need quick access to public transportation (neither Mt. P nor Adams Morgan have train stops either). Woodley Park is nice, if a bit posh and upscale. Tenelytown is full of AU kids and established couples. Capitol Hill is what it is. Chinatown should be avoided at all costs and the rest of DC isn't really worth it in my mind.

Bethesda, parts of Silver Spring and a chunk of Alexandria are all decent, but you really miss something living in the burbs as opposed to the city. If you're going to make a go of it in DC, you'll eventualy need to move out there anyway when you have kids for the schools and the lower rates of stabitude, so why start now?

Good luck.
posted by willie11 at 4:22 PM on September 2, 2008