The District

Let’s go for a drive.

2010 was a weird for me:

• I changed my career. Again.
• My best friend got married.
• I stopped talking to my best friend.
• I started hanging out with tall people. I’ve never had tall friends.
• I fell hard. For three different people. The only thing they had in common: they were all (and still hare) at very difficult times in their life.

More than anything, I formed really great relationships with people I expect to be friends with for a very long time. Two of them are Paul and Alex. We spent the majority of the last day of the year together basically just wandering from breakfast to a coffee shop to an apartment viewing to the Basilica to the waterfront to the Palisades. In just one day, we managed to visit all 6 Wards spanning all four quadrants of the city and I took pictures along the way (and Instagrammed them to death!).

Happy belated New Year. Enjoy.

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First snow of the year.

For the past few weeks, several people I’ve come into contact with have told me, “Don’t get too close. I have a cold.” Well, I got too close to someone because I’m starting to feel the first cold of the new year coming along.

I woke up this morning with a bit of a sore throat, but vowed to stick it out through the day. However, as soon as 2pm rolled around, I couldn’t take it anymore. I came home and decided to lay on the couch and let the cats take care of me. I awoke to a bit of a snow storm and decided to get some fresh air and go for a walk (as a January baby, there are few things that make me feel better than having a fresh blanket of snow on the ground).

While the walk felt good at the time, my eyes are beginning to feel sunken in again and my throat is starting to close up. This little trip might’ve been a big mistake, but at least I got these awesome Instagram photos out of it:

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Community ties.

Update #2 12/29: For those of you who’ve asked how you can get involved in bridging the digital divide (or simply learn more) in this beloved city of ours, please read the DC Office of the Chief Technology’s Digital Divide Strategy in which they lay out how they’re going to address these issues over the next few years. Also, you can email me at nmcairns at gmail dot com as I’m putting together a group of interested folks who want to work on this issue together.

Update 12/29: I’m really grateful for the response this post has gotten – positive and negative, supporting and dissenting opinions. I sincerely apologize if I offended any particular people. Unfortunately, blogging isn’t fair and you’re often forced to make blanket statements. For that, I am truly sorry. I don’t believe everyone nominated is simply “just a loud voice”. In fact, many of the people on the list are doing truly tremendous things.

Those were my points/intentions and I’m sorry if I missed a few transitional paragraphs here or there. Thank you for reading and please comment if you have any thoughts on this subject – positive or negative.

I was originally going to hold off on completing this post after some consideration last night, but after reading The Advoc8te’s blog post this morning about #DCTweeps I’m grateful I’m not the only one who feels as though the Washington Post’s contest (and the Fast Company Most Influential competition months ago… and every other social media competition) is missing the point.

I got into social media to change things. I got into web development to change things. I want to improve the lives of those around me and I think I can do that with the skills and connections that I’ve obtained in my time working tech-based jobs. I just need the ideas in my head and good people around me to actively make change happen. I don’t need awards or recognition to feel fulfilled.

This isn’t the case for everyone. Not everyone needs or wants to change the world, or even their community. And not everyone who uses Twitter needs to be changing things for the better; Twitter wasn’t built for that reason, nor should it ever completely become about advocacy. This doesn’t make me better than anyone, it just makes my role and goals for this community different.

However, we’re the leaders in this online community whether we choose to be or not. We make a living, feed ourselves and/or our families, and have an offline social network because we’re the best. People listen to what we have to say and are invested in our opinions and our lives. We’re not living up to our responsibilities as leaders through innovation, change, or betterment of our community and our neighbors; instead, we’re participating in meaningless competitions to garner an award from a print publication that does a poor job at covering/reporting the news on social media. Furthermore, we’re squandering the power we do have when we succumb to competitions like this.

I’m fully aware that people think I’m bitter because I wasn’t nominated. In fact, that’s not true at all. I easily could’ve asked one of 15-20 people who would’ve been more than willing to nominate me for something. I simply don’t need it. At the end of the day, awards like #DCTweeps don’t add any value to me or my role in this community. People listen to (or don’t listen to) what I have to say because they want to, not because I convinced a ton of people to vote for me so that I could win an award. That is what makes me a valued member of this community.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community and what it means to me, so I thought I’d share that. To me…

Community is about doing something – and doing it well – with no other intention than to better the world around us.

• We all have a lot of followers (apparently followers that will vote for us!) with a wide reach. I can send out a tweet about something DC-centric and get responses from people in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin… you name it. But what are we tweeting about? What messages are we spreading? That we organize events. That we hang out together. That we gossip and have formed clicks (bloggers, drama kids, outsiders, the pretty people) just like high school. We do all of that really well – maybe too well.

Community isn’t a place where we strive for individual recognition for personal gain.

• It’s cliche, but a community is only as good as the sum of its parts. As individuals, we can only achieve so much and if we continue to separate ourselves from the rest of the community that only leads to detrimental results. If we started working together, and then take our talents offline, the change we could achieve would be tremendous.

Community is a place where criticism and questions are valued.

• What good is a community if we’re not constantly exchanging ideas? Sometimes that can lead to difficult questions and different ideas, but that’s not a bad thing. As a community (and an individual), we learn the most when we’re tested and are forced to look within to find the answers. We shouldn’t ostracize others if they don’t agree with us on a few issues.

Community isn’t about putting ourselves above our friends and neighbors who are left behind.

• Case in point: DC broadband access. While we’re sitting here making a living off the internet, social media marketing, or whatever buzzword philosophy term you coined last month, there are parts of this city that have basically no internet access. The entire city has a broadband adoption rate of just 57% while Wards 1, 2, and 3 have adoption rates of nearly 100%. We’ve put a lot into who we are on the internet and the internet has paid us back. Shouldn’t we now try to pay it forward and advance our city?

We’re at the point where the loudest voice in the room gets heard and that’s not always good. People value number of followers over quality interactions. People value how cool a new tool is over what you can use that tool to effectively change your community or better this thing (the Internet) that has given you a career and put food on the table for your family.

We’ve allowed our leadership to morph into a constant online popularity contest where we vote for coolest nerd or floppiest butterfly instead of recognizing those who have actively sought to change the way our communities function. We’ve lost touch of what we’re supposed to be doing as leaders and I really hope we can find our way soon enough.

It’s like riding a bike.

I love bikes. They’re beautiful, elegant, economically and environmentally friendly. I love all kinds of bikes: racing bikes, vintage bikes, bikes with baskets, tandem bikes, and bikes with baby seats. Honestly, what’s not to love about bikes?

What’s been stopping me from getting a bike? Well, riding a bike is supposed to be a very easy thing you learn as a child. You know, your dad gets a pink bike with a basket, training wheels, and some streamers coming out of the handles and you ride it up and down the street. Except I grew up in a log cabin, three miles from the nearest paved road. I never understood that expression, “It’s just like riding a bike. ou never forget.” Why? Because I don’t know how to ride a bike.

That might all be changing soon…

Today, the Capital BikeShare program officially launched with 110 stations in D.C. and Arlington making it the largest bikesharing program in the U.S.

Normally, I’d wind up ignoring something like this because of the lack of convenience and my fear of possibly killing myself. That’s not going to happen this time. There are 8 stations within a mile of my apartment – one is so close I can literally see it from my window!

Sometime over the next few weekends, I’m going to buy a helmet, rent a bike, and get the help of a few friends and learn how to ride a bike. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get someone to document the inevitable hilariousness that will ensue. If not, I’ll just photograph my injuries after the fact!

Why do I want to ride a bike so badly? Aside from loving the basic aesthetic of bikes, I’ve wanted to get one for a really long time. My current commute is more than $4 a ride, plus a mile walk to my office through cobblestone roads. If I take the bus from the metro to my office (if it’s too hot or too cold outside), my one-way commute costs more than $5.

Furthermore, I love bike culture. The environmentalist in me loves the idea that we could replace one car with three or four bikes. In D.C., they’re gradually installing more and more bike lanes to encourage bicycle/vehicle safety. One day, I’d love to see D.C. end up like this:

It’s a good day to go for a walk.

Two months ago, I started working on a client site between Logan and Dupont Circles. I thought this would be a great move because it was closer to home and, on nice days, I’d be able to walk. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been really hot in D.C.

Last Thursday was the first day since I began working there that it wasn’t disgustingly humid outside and I was able to walk all the way home, so I took advantage of the situation.

I walked all the way up 16th to U Street and turned right on 17th. An immediate left turn dropped me off onto my favorite street in all of D.C.: Seaton Street, NW.

Why do I love Seaton Street so much? Take a look for yourself:

When I walk down Seaton Street, I feel completely and totally removed from the city despite being in between three of the busiest residential neighborhoods – Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, and the U Street Corridor. The noises from U Street and the busy 18th/Florida/U intersection are entirely drowned out from the trees. Everyone on the street maintains their tiny “front yard” with modest, yet beautiful landscaping. My stress washes away the every time I step onto the street.

I turned up the street and headed through Adams Morgan. There was a slight bump in the road when I saw this sign out in front of Crooked Beat records, a store I have a close personal past with but haven’t been in since moving back into the District. Thankfully, a quick Google search showed that the store is not going out of business, just moving due to increased rent by the landlord.

Days and walks like these really pull me more towards the “loving” part of my love/hate relationship with D.C.

New favorites in an old city.

When I moved back to D.C. from Brooklyn, I was worried I’d quickly be bored by the slower pace of life and lack of things to do. Instead, I feel like D.C. is a lot like Brooklyn/New York in that I’m constantly discovering things – good and bad. As you know, I have a love/hate relationship with D.C. and we’re currently on bad terms. Why? I’m not sure actually; we’re just kind of in a funk. We both need the other to make some changes, but neither one of us are budging at the moment.

Two weekends ago, however, two new friends of mine (@alexpriest and @ptklein) set out for an afternoon of “working” in a coffee shop, followed by dinner and drinks. The first thing Alex did: send out a tweet to his 3,000 followers on Twitter asking for recommendations for coffee shops in the Friendship Heights neighborhood. Within a few minutes, suggestions from his followers came pouring in, including one from a local food blogger we both follow:

That was it. The plan was set. We were going to meet up at the @TynanCoffeeTea the next day at 2pm.

We met up on Saturday, and, after a few hours in the coffee shop, we quickly grew hungry and remembered there was a pizza shop that just opened about a mile away that recently followed both of us on Twitter. My friend DMed (direct messaged) @petes_newhaven and asked if there was a discount for Twitter followers. Even though there wasn’t an actual deal for the Twitter followers, the administrator of the account quickly replied and offered us a free round of beer with our pizza (The Edge of the Woods: eggplant, ricotta, caramelized onions, and spinach) and we needed no further convincing.

Being the social media nerds that we are, we all instantly checked in on Foursquare after being greeted by the incredibly friendly staff. We told the manager about the Twitter special we were offered and they happily obliged.

When our pizza came, we took pictures and then took a bite. We were all hooked. Impressed with the quality of ingredients and excellent flavors, we all instantly tweeted pictures and reviews of our experience.

With each new bite, we became bigger and bigger fans. Although we only tried the Edge of the Woods pizza, everything that passed by looked incredibly delicious, even the spaghetti (I hate spaghetti). We were all also impressed with their social media efforts to get us all into the store. Once we were there, the amazing customer service and outstanding product made us fall in love even more.

For the social media/small business angle of this story, check out my original post on the Carousel30 Interactive blog.

LocaLOVE.

Have you ever had one of those bipolar relationships? You know, the ones where you’re equally repulsed and equally turned on by the other?

That’s how I feel about the District. He and I have had an off-and-on, love-hate relationship for the past seven years.

It started out great; everything was exciting and new and nothing he did could let me down. Ahh, those were the days. Not even aching hips from walking on concrete all day or getting take out for every meal could ruin my idyllic fantasy of city life.

The honeymoon lasted more than three years until we had our first breakup.

I met someone else.

I was lured to New York for the summer with the promises of bright lights, new adventures, and … important internships. I immediately fell in love with my new city and moved on. For awhile.

Three months and two Life Moments later, I returned back to the District. The next year, we pretended that we were still right for each other. Both of us had grown and changed, but we weren’t able to recognize that it wasn’t a good fit. I tried doing all my “normal” things – going to my favorite theater, eating at my favorite places, studying for exams under my favorite tree on the mall. He greeted me with soupy summer days followed by beautiful autumnal nights. We were both trying to make it work.

We spent another year hating each other, resenting everything the other did. The hard, concrete sidewalks made me throw my back out and I moved to Arlington only visiting to go to work.

I moved back to New York the next summer where I thought I was fulfilling my every dream — working in the music industry, being broke and happy in Brooklyn, and doing that whole “growing as a person” thing. Until it all came crashing down.

All that time, the District was still there. Waiting for me. While I was gone, the city remained constant. Instead of rejecting the District as an option for the Next Phase of my life, I’d matured. I realized I’d gained the patience to cope with the finickiness of the city.

So, I moved back. One last time.

Last weekend, I officially fell back in love with the city. After weeks of going back and forth because of the weather, my job, or metro dysfunctions, I finally did what I used to do every time I needed to clear my head and get in touch with the city again: I went for a walk.

In 3.5 miles (from Woodley Park, down the bridge into Dupont, and onward to Georgetown), I was able to find the clarity I’d been lacking for awhile and realized that no matter what I do, who I meet, or where I go, the District’s home. How could I turn my back on him now?

Seven years in, I think things between us are only just getting started…

The four worst metro passengers.

Riding the metro in the morning is one of the most somber experiences I’ve had. No one makes eye contact, no one smiles, no one talks. You don’t want to be that guy who has the sniffles because the few people who are awake, will look up from their books or newspapers to give you a dirty look. Other times of the day, some passengers seem to think there are no rules applicable to them.

If there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s people who willfully break the unspoken rules of general politeness. I’m not a always stickler for rules (unless it involves board games) and have a lot of different parts of my style and personality that contradict each other (i.e. having a ton of tattoos while also owning practically the entire Ann Taylor Loft collection), but there are certain ways you must behave in public, especially if there are others around.

I never seem to have an exceptionally good or bad metro experience; they all seem to be equally infuriating. I’m not one of those people who is an impatient traveler and commuter, so it takes a lot to ruffle my feathers. It seems like every trip I take on metro I get put in the direct path of the few types of people that really get my blood boiling.

So, here are the four worst metro passengers I come across every day:

• Parents with strollers: I’m not a horrible person; I understand that you need to bring your kid on the metro. I will probably do the same. But let me ask you a question: would you bring your double-wide stroller on the escalator at the mall? No, you’d take an elevator. Why can’t mall-etiquette/safety be applied to the metro? Not only is it frustrating for the people who like to walk up or down the escalator, but it’s extremely dangerous.

  I once watched a woman pushing an empty stroller on the escalator while holding her very young baby in her arms. After two steps, the escalator jolted slightly causing the stroller and the woman (who was still holding the baby) to fall backwards. People behind her fell like dominoes and the escalator jammed. This is still the worst, and most terrifying experience I’ve had on the metro.

• The Seat Hoarder: I loathe anyone who thinks their bag deserves a seat more than my tiny self. I also think it’s pretty selfish to sit so you’re purposefully taking up just the teeniest amount (so it looks like you’re not purposefully doing it) of the seat next to you so someone won’t sit there. Look, I get it. I don’t want to sit next to you either, but as my dad reminded me so frequently when I was sick in high school, you have to do a lot of things in life you don’t like.
• Tall People (yes, all of you, I’m sorry): It’s not that I have anything against tall people, they just can’t understand the plight of the short person on public transportation. You really shouldn’t lean against the entire vertical rail just because you can. There may be people, like me, that would appreciate being able to hold on to the vertical rail because we can’t reach the ones more than a foot above our heads.
• The Important Guy: This is the guy who thinks he’s more important than everyone else on the train either because he’s wearing an expensive suit, has a lot of messages to check on his BlackBerry, or has a messenger bag with a defense contracting company’s logo on it. Everyone in DC is important (or at least they think they are) and has somewhere to be, you’re not the only one on this halted 8 car train that’s annoyed. Take a cab.

Snowpocalypse 2010: The Food Edition

When you’re gearing up for certain death and the impending apocalypse, there are two things that immediately come to mind: food and sex. So, maybe certain death wasn’t approaching, but everyone in the DC metro area sure as hell acted like it was. People all across the area stocked up on food and condoms, like never seen before.

I didn’t succumb to the fear of impending starvation or a few days without sex. Instead, I headed out to Arlington to get snowed in with two friends with a well-stocked pantry. They had plenty of food to keep the three of us alive (and very full) for several days without having to go to the grocery store. On my way, I stopped at a vegan bakery to get some delicious cupcakes, but the next day, we really started cooking… literally.

A few weeks back, a friend invited  me out to the Peacock Cafe in Georgetown where I had the best breakfast I’ve had in my 6 years in DC and I’d been wanting to recreate it ever since. My friends had all the ingredients – pancake mix, bananas, walnut, and maple syrup – to recreate this magnificent concoction and it was almost as good as the restaurant.

Not too long after breakfast, we gathered more ingredients to make some slow-cooked chili. If you don’t know me personally, you wouldn’t know that I’ve never consumed an entire burger in my life, and have only attempted to eat ground meat three to four times. We added a package of cooked, ground turkey, kidney beans, six cloves of grated garlic, spices galore, and onions. My lack of experience with ground meat excluded many other things from my diet including chili, but I was bound and determined to give it a try and see how much I hated it.

This was actually my second bowl of chili that evening. Immediately afterwards, I told my friends I felt I’d been cheated by parents who always told me I didn’t like things before I had a chance to try them.

Throughout the course of the weekend, we spent most of our time eating, playing board games, and watching people shovel out their cars too early. I was so moved by my chili experience that, before the second storm, I decided to brave the storm and get ingredients to make my own chili. I have a new affinity for black beans so I found a recipe that was more suiting to my taste. Not only was it my first time making chili, but it was also my first time cooking ground meat. I was surprised at how much moisture the turkey had, so I strained all the juices out of my tomatoes – big beginner’s mistake. Instead of coming out as a chili-type thing, it’s more like a ground turkey stew (but delicious nonetheless).

While all this food was delicious, I don’t know if my stomach – or my waistline – can take any more back-to-back snowstorms like this for awhile.

Unexpected reactions.

I’ve lived in a large, urban city for quite a while, and few things really have the power to surprise me. Also, as a single woman, I do my best to take all precautions to protect myself and be safe at all times.

There are still those moments when your guard is completely down and urban life comes back and smacks you in the face… or puts its hands on you unexpectedly.

Last weekend, after a long night of board games and pumpkin cheesecake, I left my friend’s house in Crystal City and made the late-night journey back to Woodley Park, via Gallery-Place Chinatown.

While this is one of the more lively metro stations late at night, I still feel quite comfortable sitting on a bench, with my headphones on, drowning out the world at 1:30 AM. Most people on the metro respect the headphones and don’t attempt to talk to you, but there are always those who go against the norms.

The 17-minute wait for the next Red Line train acquainted me with nearly every type of Washingtonian: the underage drinkers stumbling their way back to American, the preppy kids wearing their brown flip-flops and North Face jackets in December, the hipsters on their way to Adams Morgan (I guess I’m included in that group), the out-of-towners who should’ve been back at their hotel much earlier, and the homeless man betting on the odds that one of them will be generous and help him with a dollar or two.

Eight minutes to go and the homeless man approached my bench. Neither of my two bench mates obliged the homeless man. He stepped away for a few seconds and I thought I was in the clear so I nuzzled into my scarf a little more. At that moment, the man decided that, if I couldn’t hear him over my headphones, he was going to put both his hands on my shoulders to get my attention. Boy, did it ever.

I’ve been riding the metro late at night for years and have never had this happen to me. For some reason, the only startled reaction I had was to shot out, “NO!”

What are you supposed to do in that situation? If I didn’t have headphones in, I would’ve politely said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything on me,” and my night would’ve been completely unmemorable. Instead, this unexpected reaction to his unexpected action makes me feel both guilty and violated to this day.