Halloween in Pgh: it’s real real

Halloween in Pittsburgh was everything that I missed about Halloween in real cities.  (Note: DC is not a real city.)  Starting at the beginning of October, people tossed the orange lights and the spiderwebs onto their porches and trees.  They carved pumpkins and hung little ghosts — our neighbor across the street even hung a life-size grim reaper.  So spooky!  As the 31st got closer, the newspapers and stations announced official hours for trick-or-treating.  Hallelujah!  Last year Jon and I didn’t have any hope for trick-or-treaters coming to our door because we lived in a 80-unit apartment building.  But we took a walk around our residential DC neighborhood on Halloween night, and I think we saw a total of five kids dressed up and looking for candy.  Pitiful.

So we were determined to do it right this year in Pittsburgh, jack-o-lantern and candy and all.  Kids came to our door and said “trick-or-treat!” and although that was adorable, it made me very confused about my childhood.  In St. Louis, we didn’t get candy unless we told a joke!  Knock knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo who? Why are you crying? Is St. Louis really the only place this happens?  Please, if you are reading this and you are from anywhere other than St. Louis, tell me what you did as a kid to earn candy on Halloween!

on my porch with the lil' jack-o-lantern

I just wanted to wear my pink wig this year!

i am a piece of bubble gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. barbora is a bumble bee. both of us have awesome headgear.

And Jon just wanted to wear his hat from China…

jon is white trash, so i guess i am stuck to him?

I survived D.C.

I never thought this day would come.  GOODBYE DC! Goodbye to the ‘doors closing’ chimes on the Metro.  Goodbye to people standing thirty feet away from the ATM while waiting in line.  Goodbye to all the people talking to themselves.  Goodbye to the wind that knocks me over.  Goodbye to the pedestrians who walk on red and the cars who are willing to hit them.  Goodbye to business cards and blackberries and expensive happy hours and acronyms and shrivelled zucchini and people who won’t let me pet their dogs.

And hello adventure.  From here on out, I’m not really sure what to expect.  I have no where to be, but plenty of places to go.  Today is my last day of employment.  Tomorrow is my first day of a four-month vacation.  I’ve applied to five grad schools for the fall and so far got a phone call from one of them congratulating me on my acceptance.  It’s all up in the air, and I love it.  I’m going to miss all of you in DC so very much, but I know I’ll see you again soon.  I’m flying to the opposite side of the planet to visit friends, so you know I’m willing and enthusiastic about traveling to see you!  So tonight, I’m headed west…

This is why you’re all miserable

Why is it so hard to get into a decent relationship in DC?  This e-mail I received from a DC listserv today explains it perfectly:

“Minutes into a conversation with the smartest, funniest person you’ve ever met, he asks your opinion on the policies of some two-bit congressman from a fly-over state. What do you do?”

What do I do?  I say “I have no idea who you are talking about.  Can we talk about something interesting now?”  But according to this e-mail, women who come upon this tricky situation (ugh, gag me) are supposed to use a new text messaging service that answers questions quickly so you can impress the guy.  So when this hilarious and brilliant man asks you a question about politics or something else you’re too girlie to know about, you’re supposed to freeze time, consult a text message, and then express your “opinion.” 

Beyond the fact that this e-mail used the incredibly annoying phrase “fly-over state” (I mean come on. Why advertise that you know nothing about a majority of the country?), the problem here is that 20-somethings in DC have an expectation of shallow conversation and fake connections.  In very few other cities will people ask you where you work as quickly as in DC.  Same with giving out business cards.  If I were single and interested in meeting guys in bars, I would call the first guy who offered to scribble his number on my hand, and I would chuck the business card into the trash.  I’m not sure who started these pitifully low expectations for meeting people, but they clearly aren’t working.

The land of 10,000 Dementors, or why DC pains my soul

“Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself…soul-less and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.“  –Remus Lupin to Harry Potter

Now read that sentence to yourself and replace “Dementor” with “DC.” Now you know what I feel. According to Harry Potter Wiki, “Dementors hold no loyalty except to whomever will provide them with the most souls to consume.” Yup, sounds just about right.

Dementor sucks out the soul of Harry's cousin

I’ve lived in DC for over 5 years now. I didn’t hate it during college; in fact, I felt pretty awesome living here, because we not only had pandas, but also like, the White House and stuff. I had a thousand internships, people always came to visit, and I could venture out of my bubble of a campus to great restaurants and concert venues. What more could I ask for? But when I graduated and moved into the real world (just three miles away from my campus apartment) I realized DC is completely unlivable for me. I’ve been to cities that are traditionally referred to as the “cold” and “unfriendly” cities — New York, Paris, London — but those are like southern charmers compared to my daily life in Washington, where having someone say “thank you” after I hold the door for them is cause for celebration.

I judge cities by their personalities. DC’s personality? Stuck-up and sterile. DC is a place where you will meet people from every state and country, but no one ends up staying here very long; jobs depend on the politics of the day. With people coming and going so often, DC has absolutely no sense of community. Instead, the city makes you think of everyone else as your competitor. “Which congressman do you work for? Here, take my card. Oh, you live in Northeast? Isn’t that dangerous?” Most of these people are complete losers who steal your softball and throw it into the duck pond on the Mall because they’d rather kick around a large red ball to make up for the fact that they were never chosen in gym class (yes, this really happened to my softball team). As for the rest of us, once you’re here for a few months, your soul starts to wilt, and you’re forced to conform to the asshole attitudes in order to survive.

Dementors live under the Arlington Bridge

I have brilliant, happy friends who don’t appear brilliant or happy until they are about 30 miles outside of the District of Columbia. The same goes for me. The moment I’m far enough away, I feel like I can breathe normally and be myself. DC stunts personalities and sucks creativity and joy out of everyone who enters. Correction: not everyone. Some people survive. Those brave people who do stay here and enjoy it are just so passionate about their work that they are oblivious to what goes on around them. Bless them. Others stay because their souls have already been sucked dry, like bureaucratic robots, so they may as well stick around and play the game.

I want to live in a city where strangers don’t automatically hate your guts, where I can skip down the street singing and wearing a hot pink wig without people looking at me like I’m holding a birthday cake made of poop. I’m done with the awful wardrobes, the click of the BlackBerries on the silent Metro, and the cars that honk at pedestrians as they’re walking in the crosswalk when the light tells them to. No matter which of my four cities I end up in next summer, I know it will be a happier place than this. The New York Times recently said that if you are around happy people, even — or especially — if they are strangers, you too will be happy. I can’t wait.

Quotes from friends (who have recently moved or are planning to move) about our dreadful town:

“You think I want to be some chooch tool networking up the asshole in Georgetown with all the other overly competitive pretty girls, trying to vie for some position at a big marketing firm? Yeah, let me work on my cardio and run up and down the steps of Rayburn.”

“People take themselves too seriously. Everyone on the Metro looks fucking miserable. Either they look angry, or they’re making out. Two things I cannot handle.”

“DC is, to me, a city completely devoid of character. With a population mostly composed of out-of-towners and diplomats, it’s understandable that the city wouldn’t have a distinct feeling to it, but what is inexcusable is the lack of warmth. If it weren’t for my lovely college friends (most of whom have now either left or considering that option) I would have left a long time ago.”

“Ugh I’m sure I don’t have anything that unique to say about this shithole.”