Surving on One Income in DC

Coworkers have asked me how we do it: how can my wife and I live in DC with a kid on just my salary and afford to do things like go on vacation or buy clothes or not starve to death?

The answer: I have no idea. And it kind of scares me! I mean, it seems to be working out just fine for us, but what if we’re doing something horribly wrong and just don’t know it? What if I wake up one day and find out we’re bankrupt? Or under investigation by the SEC? Or that my bank sold my mortgage to a loan shark, and he’s coming over with a crow bar? (I can also, somehow, afford many bottles of wine, so that helps to take the edge off such anxiety.)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that my coworkers are right. We’re like bumble-bees: aerodynamically, bumble bees should not be able to fly, but they do. Fiscally, we shouldn’t be able to go to Munich on vacation, but we are.

I have to admit, first and foremost, that we are extremely lucky. My wife and I and my baby are healthy. I have a good, stable government job – higher-level professional, non-management. So I make good money, although not great money by DC standards. And my wife is a fantastic shopper. She knows how to get deals on everything, and always does. We come from terrific families and don’t have any destructive habits.

But luck only goes so far. We’ve also made good decisions. I’ve worked hard, gotten a good education, and paid my dues, working my way up to my current position. We have one used (but very nice) 17 year old car that has no note on it. Since we live in the city, we seldom drive, and even when we do, it’ll only be a few miles round trip. So we save on gas and wear and tear. We own a condo under a 1000 square feet in a big old building – so our energy costs are low and our mortgage is manageable. (We chose not to be taken by the mortgage companies with their interest-only loans and ARM scams.)

Since our place is small, we don’t have room for a lot of stuff. Plus, we’re not that interested in buying a lot of stuff, anyway: no computerized gaming systems (waste of time and money), we don’t buy CDs or DVDs or blueray or satellite radio or ipods or iphones or blackberries or GPSs for the car (I can read a map for God’s sake) or stereo equipment (all wastes of time and/or money; besides, that’s what u-tube, Pandora, and netflix are for), no exercise equipment that would just gather dust, no espresso machines (our little Bialetti knock-off does just fine) or other silly kitchen devices (my wife doesn’t need nor want them, and she’s still a fantastic cook.

We just don’t buy a lot of stuff, including clothes and shoes (although my wife would like to revisit that last one). And we don’t have cable (I don’t even know where to begin to express what a waste of time and money cable is!).

We spend our discretionary income (and there’s not that much of it) on books, netflix, good food at the grocery store, and eating out. We go to the endless free events and museums this city has to offer. And we save up to go on fabulous trips to places like Rome and Krakow and the Everglades and San Francisco and Munich.

When we do buy anything, we do a lot of research, plan for it, and get the best we can get (like our digital camera, our All-Clad, this Mac, all the baby stuff) and almost always at a discount, thanks to my wife’s extraordinary shopping skills.

But even after this analysis, it still scares me. However, I’ve personally been living fat, dumb, and happy for so long, never knowing that I don’t make enough, that I’ll probably continue to do that until the day I die. Not such a bad life, really. (Of course, my next post might be about how we’ve suddenly plunged into fiscal chaos. Stay tuned!)

Imagining Raising Kids in DC

Lately, I’ve noticed various bloggers and commenters writing how they can’t imagine raising a child in DC. This opinion is not extraordinary. When people say this, I believe them. They are really actually admiting that they have no imagination. The only thing they can envision is raising kids in the exact same milieu as they were raised – most likely a suburban or exurban milieu. They have fond memories of wonderful childhoods, and assume that wonderful childhoods are the direct result of the physical places they lived. I propose that a wonderful childhood is a direct result of having a wonderful family and has little to do with place.

I grew up in a typical suburb, just like the vast majority of white people my age. I had a great childhood. I had woods to play in, places to ride my bike, and ball fields close by. My friend had a pool. We kids ran around the neighborhood unsupervised all day. It was great! (Of course, if I had an ugly family life, I probably wouldn’t have such fond memories.)

Generations of Americans believe that this suburban existence is what made their childhood happy, and therefore it is what will make their own children happy. They believe that life in the city would deprive their children of these basic childhood experiences. I see it differently.

As a child, I wanted for nothing. Or so I thought. But that’s because I didn’t think twice about having to rely on my parents for a ride everywhere I wanted to go: the mall, the movies, a pizza shop, a friends house. It didn’t bother me that we weren’t allowed to ride our bicycles to the shopping center, nor were we allowed to walk along or across the busy roads. At the time, I wasn’t aware that this was an impediment. It was simply a given. Same thing goes for rarely visiting a museum or going to a concert or a lecture or the zoo, all of which were amply available downtown, but required too much time, too much driving, too much money, to do more than a few times a year. Again, that’s just the way it was. Not knowing that a different life style existed, I didn’t feel deprived at all.

A child growing up in the city won’t know that they are being deprived of the ability to ride their bikes down the street and run around for hours unsupervised. What my child will know is this: his mom and dad took him to a pool (either the public pool or a hotel pool or a Y pool or the JCC pool) all the time; his mom and dad played with him in parks they walked to; his mom and dad taught him how to ride a bike in the same parks; when he is older, his mom and dad let him ride the metro and go to coffee shops/movies/shopping with his friends: no need for a ride from mom or dad, either. On top of that, he’ll remember going to the museums all the time (both the free ones and the ones you have to pay for) as well as the zoo, concerts of all kinds, and even talks and readings as he gets older. Plus, he won’t have to sit in a car seat for hours a day.

Perhaps even more important, he’ll be in daily contact with people who don’t look like him, who speak different languages, practice different religions, and make different amounts of money (or no money at all). At five months, he’s already made friends with the staff of a local Eritrean eatery. This interaction is good: he’ll learn about the diversity of the world and how to negotiate his way through it.

And besides, our little guy won’t miss what he doesn’t know about. I firmly believe that the benefits of living in DC far outweigh riding a bicycle down the middle of the street or running around unsupervised all day. Our little guy will have a far more enriched environment here in the city than if we lived in the suburbs.

I find the attitudes of young couples who simply cannot imagine raising a child in the city troubling for a two reasons.

First, where you live impacts the environment. Deciding that you can’t raise your kids in the city, based on the erroneous belief in what makes a happy childhood, merely creates another family living a wasteful suburban existence in a big house on a big lot; another family with two cars (probably SUVs, because they need them); another family that takes a car for every single trip it makes.

Second, this chasing after the perfect childhood is actually depriving their children of so much that the city has to offer – the diversity, the learning opportunities, the simple exercise of walking, and time with their parents. I spend time with him every day instead of sitting in hours of traffic.

We each value different things. I try not to judge others by what they value, but it is human nature to do so. So I do judge people who publicly state that they can’t imagine raising a child in DC. But I don’t judge them too harshly – these are caring people who want to create nice childhoods for their kids, and they will, but not because of where they live. They will provide their kids with nice childhoods because they are good people.

A DC Native

I had this ridiculous idea, that I'm part of something important, a growing number of young married people who are deciding to stay in the city once they have kids. (There are now 3 babies in our building, including our own!)



It seemed so radical, almost counter-culture. When we got married a few years ago, one of the first questions many people asked us was when we were buying a house in the suburbs. And it wasn't really a question, so much as a statement, as in "wait until you buy your first house out in Virginia". After the First Lord of the Admiralty (that's him up there) was born a few months ago, I was expecting the same questions. But, apparently, it is no longer a given that everyone who has a baby will move out of DC. People either didn't wonder about it at all, or they phrase it as a question, as in "do you think you might possibly move out of DC?" as opposed to "when you move out of the city."

Either way, I felt like I was on the leading edge of something.

But then I got to thinking. And noticing. There are tens of thousands of children being raised in DC. Always have been. The difference is, they aren't white, their families don't make six figures (well, some do), and they aren't expected to leave. They've been here for generations, and they like it just fine. When it comes down to it, I'm kind of like Columbus discovering the Indian's back yard - nothing new here. I'm not doing anything particularly interesting.

Unless, of course, you (that being the "rhetorical" you, because I don't know the actual "you") are a racist. Because there is always that undertone of racism in the questions and/or statements about when we are moving out of DC.

But I'll let that go, because I've learned not to worry about other people's issues.

Raising a child in a city is different from raising a child in, say, suburban Pittsburgh where I grew up. I thought it might be interesting to document that here. I don't know if it will be, but over the next few months, I'll give it a shot. Why not? The First Lord of the Admiralty demands it!

First thing: he will be a native of Washington, DC, not a transplant like 90% of the people I know. He belongs here more than I do. He will think nothing of funny names like "Foggy Bottom" or "Adams Morgan". U Street will be his home. He'll be comfortable with sirens and buses and riding metro and foreign accents and languages. He'll find it strange that some people get into a car every time they need to go to the store. Ethiopia won't be a complete blank to him, as it was to me during the years of "We Are the World." The National Mall will just be another park to him. He won't understand why, in some place, you have to pay to see art. And those neighbors over there on the other side of Lafayette Park? He'll never know a time that an African American family "couldn't" live in the White House. That's all kinda cool. At least to a new dad.

Conversations and Connections Writer's Conference

I spent Saturday in Dupont Circle at the Conversations and Connections Writer’s Conference. I can’t praise this even enough.

I’m not much on writing classes or workshops. I’ve attended them and I’ve taught them. But what I always come back to is that you can learn to write, but you can’t be taught to write. While this may seem like an oxymoron, I think experience will bear this out as a truth. You learn to write by writing. A lot. Sure, you need someone to show you how to write sentences, how a dictionary works, what the different verb forms are. But once you’ve got the rudimentaries down, after that it’s all milage.

The keynote speaker was Mary Gaitskill, the National Book Award nominated (and National Book Critic’s Circle Award nominated and PEN/Faulkner nominated) author. She said something along these same lines. She talked about “craft,” a term bandied about by critics and writing teachers, and how “craft” has very little to do with good writing. Because good writing is “art.” We discuss “craft” because it is something we can get our arms around. We can analyze it, explicate it, and talk about it in a relatively concrete way. But it’s hard to talk about “art.” It’s more mysterious. But it is what makes the difference between a great novel and a mediocre one.

I’m not convinced there is any such thing as craft in writing. What, exactly do we mean by “craft?” Whether you say “he said” or “he uttered” or “he exclaimed” (or even “exclaimed Bill”) after a line of dialogue? Is this “craft?” Is the plotting of a story “craft?” (If so, then it’s not a very exacting kind of “craft,” like turning a table leg or mixing mortar the right way so it holds the tessera correctly; there are so many ways to write a story, who can say which is the right way? And very often, a new, innovative way that had never been taught, never even thought of before (Faulkner? Joyce?), is often held up as great art.) So what, exactly, do we mean by “craft?” Maybe how hard you hit the keys with your fingers? How many words-per-minute you type?

Setting my misgivings about writing workshops in general aside, I attended this conference with an open mind. I was rewarded with some great sessions about the business of publishing fiction and poetry, writing a novel, and web publishing. I found these discussions encouraging. The novel session in particular: it was like therapy. I got to hear published novelists talk about the ups and downs of writing a novel, their own set backs, challenges, habits, and strategies very much mirroring my own. It let me know that I haven’t quite gone ‘round the bend just yet, that I’m still in there moving ahead in the right direction.

Some of the participants included Rachel Adams, the editor of Lines and Stars, who published my story A Day Like Any Other in the magazine’s inaugural issue last year. Also in attendance were the folks from Potomac Review, No Tell Motel, Gettysburg Review, and Failbetter.
The best thing about this conference was the bang for the buck. It was for real writers; what struggling writer can actually afford the hundreds (even thousands) of dollars to attend many of the writer’s conferences that have proliferated over the past decade? Conversations and Connects was $45, and it included a free book, a subscription to a literary magazine of your choice (I chose The Gettysburg Review), and a “speed date” with a literary editor. I hope they hold this conference again next year.

A final note: the reason I haven’t kept up my blogging is directly related: I’m about 100 pages into writing a new novel, which sucks up my creative energy more than I thought it would.

Yeah, I'm Pro-Development

But not just any development.

I’m pro-dense, urban, well-designed, well built development.

I’m against crappy development, like the strip mall at W and 14th which, thankfully, now has construction fences around it.

To create good development, you need government oversight in the way of zoning and building codes, and you need community involvement. Constructive community involvement. The community needs to support good development and oppose bad development. The problem is, of course, that people have different definitions of what those things are. For instance, as I stated in my last post, the Dupont Conservancy is opposed to the proposed development at 14th and U, but where were they when that horrible strip mall was built a few blocks away? Perhaps they didn’t exist then, but that’s the kind of development that needs to be opposed.

There are other great things happening in that part of the neighborhood.
Along with the fence around the strip mall, there are two other big
projects underway. And they just took down the scaffolding in the most
well constructed building ever built on the NE corner of 14th and U. I
say that because they’ve been working on it for about 15 months, and
it’s a small three story building, so it better be the best building in
the history of the world! I’m not sure what’s going to go in there, but
right next door is the new Marvin. We’ve only been there for a drink,
but it looks fantastic and I have a feeling that the food is good.

Further up 14th is the new Union Row where a Yes! Market will soon open.
The silly European style alley they built through the middle of the
building is actually quite nice! I hope that building fills up. If
they build something of that quality at 14th and U, who could have any
concerns?

Thanks to all who read and commented on my last posting about the
project at 14th and U. Surprisingly, all the feed back I received was
positive. I figured there would be someone who disagreed with me.

14th and U Street Controversy

A developer has proposed a ten story apartment and retail building for the southwest corner of U and 14th Streets, where the McDonalds now is. The proposal is to get rid of the bad one story development along 14th Street and incorporated the historically contributing structures into the design of the new building. This, of course, has brought out all kinds of opposition from various community group, including, for some reason, the Dupont Circle Conservancy and the Dupont Circle ANC, even though 14th and U is NOT in Dupont Circle.

But that’s OK, because in this great city of ours, anyone and everyone can throw their two cents into any issue at any time. Since I live two blocks from 14th and U and walk past that corner twice a day, I figure I probably have more right than people who live at 22nd and S Streets to comment on it. So here goes.

I support the development. To not support dense in-fill development in the middle of the city is to be both anti-urban and anti-environment.

Anti-urban because dense development, as Jane Jacobs pointed out in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is good for the economy and good for public safety. Anti-environment, because in a neighborhood that is well served by public transportation (the Metro is one block away), and in a world where global warming is a reality, leaving a huge plot of land like that under-utilized is backward looking. Us urbanites should be leaders in the environmental movement, not NIMBYs.

The arguments against it come down to traffic and “massing,” which is the same as saying “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big.”

The traffic argument doesn’t work because, again, Metro is one block away. Who on earth would move to that building so they could drive to work every day? Plus, I walk past there at rush hour every day, and there ain’t that much traffic there, something the Dupont Circle folks might know if they every actually ventured into my neighborhood.

The “massing” argument is also absurd. To support the “I don’t like it ‘cause it’s too big” argument (and I quote from The Dupont Current), the Dupont Circle Conservancy said that “unlike the Reeves Center to the north, which was built on a large site, this project is being wedged into an existing historic district with considerable adjacent existing residential areas.” The sheer idiocy of this statement is mind-boggling! First, to hold up the Reeves Center as some sort of model of development is lunacy. The first problem with the Reeves Center is that it doesn’t use all of it’s large site, not to mention that it has such things as huge ventilation systems fronting on U street and empty glass and ugly brutalist architecture, all of which make it relate extremely poorly to the prominent corner on which it is situated and not fit in with the historic structures all around it. Which brings up the second problem with the Conservancy’s statement: the Reeves Center is in the exact same historic district, surrounded by the same residential areas, as the proposed site. In fact, it is right across the street! Their argument is simple nonsense. A 75 to 100 foot building would have the same “massing” as the self-storage building it will abut, as the Reeves Center, and as all the other apartment and condo buildings that have been built along 14th Street.

The devil, of course, is always in the details. The plans have to be good. But since it is in a historic district, and there are zoning specifications it must meet, and a lot of it has to be reviewed by the ANC (the ANC that has actual jurisdiction over the area, not one from across town), the plan will have to be good to pass muster.

In this day and age, with the price of oil climbing to ever higher levels, with the reality of global warming, NIMBY-ism and obstructionism should not be allowed to derail good, dense, urban in-fill development, which I believe this will be.

Shameless Promotion: Les Champs Artists' Cooperative

I've come out of my blog-dormancy to make a quick anouncement about a new Artists' Cooperative based in DC. Based, in fact, on U Street. Actually, based right here in this building: Les Champs Artists Cooperative.

My beautiful and talented wife is the founder of the cooperative, and they just had their first highly successful show this weekend at the Junior League of Washington's A Capital Collection. They sold a lot of art!

The cooperative is made up of many talented artists who do what I like to call "representational realism". In other words, artists who can actually draw and have a real sense of color and create beautiful, amazing pictures.

Perhaps I'm biased. But check it out!