DCentric

BYT

Part of the handy guide from BYT, which you can download.

In service to all of the people who will apparently be crashing with my neighbors for this weekend’s dueling rallies, the bloggers at Brightest Young Things have published a “How to survive your rallying weekend”-feature. It offers a handy break-down of neighborhoods and restaurants to explore or avoid (all of Georgetown has been condemned):

There is no reason you need to go to Georgetown unless you desperately need something from the Apple store (the only one in the District) so you can obsessively post updates for your college paper or personal blog.

There are no cool bars in Georgetown- only mid-range clothing chains, tourists with cupcake smeared on their faces (though it is sort of OK if the cupcake is from Baked & Wired, the best bakery around) and college-aged diplobrats…The same goes for Northern Virginia. No matter what people say, NoVa is a place for people who are afraid to live in the District.

It’s a cheeky, fun guide that probably required a lot of work–and BYT deserves praise for compiling it and presenting it so nicely. Unfortunately, all I can think of after reading it (and its proud references to The Wire) is, “Stuff White People Like“. Or more accurately, “Stuff White People Who Feel Hip Like”. Sure, you can name-check Oohs and Aahs and praise the collard greens all you want, but that’s something white people like to do, too.

I’m not the only one who thought that:

As a cartographer, I love the graphic but this post makes me want to collectively slap BYT in the face.

You should replace “sane person” with “white and at-the-moment-trendy.” By all means continue to laud your nonconfomrity by rubber stamping 7 bars that are ok to be seen at. Your stamp of approval sickens me.

On a slightly unrelated note, all of this cool-hunting is starting to exhaust and bore me. I think we’d all do well to follow the twenty-year old (!) advice of Digital Underground and “Doowutchyalike”.