Atlantica - 01.09.2007, Qupperneq 34

From left to right: Vietnam Memorial Wall, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Sculpture Garden at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Ethiopian food in the immigrant-cum-nightlife
district Adams Morgan. While we sit in the win-
dow seat of Meskerem Restaurant watching the
hodgepodge of passers-by including preppy col-
lege kids, day workers and aging punks, Spinney
regales me with horror stories of her stint as a
legislative assistant to a congressman.
“Working on Capitol Hill is basically wading
through the egos of class presidents from every
high school in America, all savagely clawing for
their perch in the oval office,” Spinney says. After
accidentally tumbling into a job in the cesspool of
Washington politics, she was quick to drag herself
out, rinse herself off, and redirect her good will
where it’s needed: the DC public school system.
“The entire set surrounding the Hill—politi-
cians, lobbyists, bureau journalists, preppy law
students—is so detached from the real people
who live in this city,” Spinney declares. She’s only
too pleased to distance herself from the manic
players jockeying for positions deeper inside and
further atop the Washington machine.
However, these rat-racers have their eyes far too
focused on the prize to see the toiling masses of
civil servants and other laborers who keep the
city afloat. The lion’s share of upper-class con-
tempt comes from the younger generation of DC
aristocracy. The Washington City Paper recently
broke an invite-only social-networking website
called LateNightShots.com, where the new crop
of young and preppy Republicans delight one
another with stories of their sexual escapades
and binge drinking in Georgetown bars. They
thrive on elitism, trashing everyone from the
new money who drive BMWs to the “barbarous
horde” that peoples the district’s streets.
Their nest is the Waspy bastion of Georgetown,
which fought vehemently (and availed) to keep a
metro stop from opening in their haven of afflu-
ence. The pristine streets of Georgetown are
charming, lined with colonial houses and the pic-
turesque C&O Canal running between M and K
Streets. Unfortunately, Georgetown has become
no more than an outdoor shopping mall. A telltale
allegory for the entire neighborhood, the lovely
façades of M Street and K Street lack any sort
of character within. Save for a few hangers-on,
almost all the historical storefronts have been con-
verted into retail chains like Nike, Abercrombie &
Fitch and Starbucks.
But a mere three miles away in Adams Morgan,
where I sit with Samantha Spinney and a plate-
ful of spicy food, the characters abound. In
the block of 18th street between Columbia and
Kalorama, the heart of Adams Morgan, you can
32 a t l a n t i c a
After shows the crowds migrate
in droves to Ben’s Chili Bowl,
the only ground sacred
enough to remain
unscathed during
the riots.