It’s been a hard three months to live in the District.
Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, he’s been trying to dismantle the city. Last month, he signed an executive order to ramp up police presence in D.C. to make it “safe and beautiful,” and he continues to threaten to strip the District of home rule, the policy that allows the city government to make rules for the city.
The District has also just felt sadder since Trump took office. Maybe it’s that half the city got laid off from the federal government. Maybe it’s because 92.5% of the city voted for Kamala Harris and hates every policy that the Trump administration has enacted over the past three months. Maybe it’s that the city is full of people who can’t turn their brains off from politics, inserting what’s been described as a potential “constitutional crisis” in every dinner conversation.
I don’t have a great, singular answer as to what’s making D.C. feel down in the dumps. I just know that I can see the District’s dampening spirit when I walk by the massive fences around the White House, when I read a story about the latest way GW has landed in the president’s crossfire, when I step out into the city’s less-populated nightlife and when guests on the history tours that I lead ask me: “How are you so happy about this city?”
That depressed enthusiasm about the District is exactly what the Best of Northwest exists to counter. The Hatchet’s annual guide is meant to be a celebration of all that is still vibrant about life in our home of northwest D.C. and GW.
The District has always been under the thumb of the federal government — that’s why the modern iteration of D.C. exists. But in the nearly 250 years of the city and the American federal government’s tenure, the District has blossomed into more than just a series of downtown bureaucratic office buildings. If we ignore that, we stamp out D.C.’s history and the parts of its culture that have nothing to do with some building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
People in the District still get to partake in a wonderfully varied culinary scene, where restaurants offering pupusas, crab and an Irish open bar all fall in the same area. GW students get to take in the sounds of steel drums outside the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station and argue with each other about their favorite campus statue of George Washington. The District is still home to used bookstores, oddities of political history, square dancing, murals and gay flag football leagues — all of which give the city a genuine vitality that no actions in the Oval Office have been able to touch.
It’s a bummer to live in D.C. right now, sure. But let’s embrace what’s still great about being here.
