Bronze-level articleWashington, D.C.

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US Capitol Building, otherwise known as Mordor.

Washington, D.C. (District of Columbia), usually referred to as just "DC" or "The District" (by those in the DC Metro area) or "Washington"[1] is a federal district wedged between northern Virginia and Maryland, and the capital of the United States. The Executive offices, Supreme Court, and Legislative Capitol Building are all located there.

Washington is an anomaly in many ways:

  • It has no voting representation in the Congress, despite clearly being a part of the U.S. In spite of this, it still has three votes in the Electoral College, as if it were a small state.
  • It is a planned city on a coast renowned for horribly unplanned cities[2] (with the exception of Manhattan). This, however, doesn't make much difference as the downtown grid is covered with avenues slashing across at odd angles, turning a sensible layout into an insane patchwork of zig-zags. There is a conspiracy theory about this odd layout.
  • It is literally built on a swamp, making for really nasty humidity in the summer.
  • Despite enormous amounts of money passing through it, a majority of its inhabitants are poor minorities.
  • The Moonies own one of their two daily newspapers.
  • If you look at a map showing D.C. and its surrounding area, you will notice that Washington along with the cities of Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia, look like a diamond road sign.[3] This is because in its original plan the District of Columbia straddled the Potomac River with Arlington and Alexandria incorporated into the District. These cities were returned to Virginia on 9 July 1846.[4][5]

Washington, D.C. has a population of 581,530 crammed within 61.4 miles², not including a daily influx of 5,358,282 visitors attempting to photograph the cherry blossoms.[6]

Contents

[edit] Nicknames

  • D.C.
  • The Beltway, after Interstate 495 which encircles both the city and wealthy environs like Bethesda, Maryland and Alexandria, Virginia, home to huge numbers of federal contractors and lobbyists
  • That stinking hole of corruption and depravity
  • Mordor

[edit] The site of major (and minor) protests

United Auto Workers, Sept 19, 1981

Over the decades Washington D.C. has been the site of major protests and marches. These include:

  • June/July 1932 - Bonus Army. World War I veterans marched and protested to demand the payment of their bonus from WWI early, which was not due then until 1945 but badly needed during the Great Depression. Some of the Bonus Army marchers stuck around in makeshift camps and wouldn't leave until late July when troops led by soon-to-be-WWII-heroes Gens. MacArthur and Patton (with an obscure major named Dwight Eisenhower as aide-de-camp) forcibly evicted them with bayonets and riot control gas. President Herbert Hoover ordered the assault stopped but MacArthur ignored him.
  • September 19, 1981 - Solidarity Day March. Various union groups organized a march to protest what would eventually be mocked as Reaganomics.[8]
  • March 26, 1991 - A wide variety of anti-war, union, and worker groups came to protest against U.S. involvement in the First Bush Gulf War.[9]
  • 2002-2007 - Too many protests to count against the Iraq War organized by one of two rival anti-war groups, the ANSWER coalition and United for Peace and Justice. Several of these were quite large and drew in excess of 100,000 people. The ANSWER protests drew criticism for their lineup of flaky speakers trying to inject every other possible issue into the protest ("free the Cuban Five," "independence for Puerto Rico," "free Mumia," Palestinian and immigrant rights issues, ad nauseam) instead of keeping it focused on opposing the war. The more mainstream UFPJ's protests were better received.
  • September 12, 2009 - Tea Partiers show up en masse to party. Organizers make wild claims of 600,000 to 2 million in attendance, but the D.C. Fire Department estimated 60,000 to "in excess of 75,000." The date was based on the 9/12 Movement, one of Glenn Beck's concoctions.

[edit] Notable imports

  • Slugs commuting in from Fake Virginia and Maryland
  • Your tax dollars
  • Protesters

[edit] Notable exports

  • Minor Threat, punk band and inspiration for the straight edge movement
  • Bad Brains, an awesome hardcore punk band
  • Fugazi, and almost everybody on Dischord Records
  • Angel, worst hair metal band ever, who may be better known for Frank Zappa spoofing them than for their music.
  • The Blackbyrds, a pretty good R&B vocal group from the 1970s ("Walking in Rhythm," "Rock Creek Park")
  • Urban Verbs. Calling them a Talking Heads imitation isn't fair. After all, Talking Heads were from New York, Urban Verbs were from D.C.
  • Frequent scandals and the like

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. By the unwashed heathens in other, lesser parts of the country, except for that state in the Pacific Northwest and its neighbors to the south and to the east, where people use "Washington" when referring to The State of, and "D.C." for That One-Time Malarial Swamp on the Banks of the Potomac.
  2. See, Boston, which city's roads were laid out on random cowpaths, according to local legend.
  3. It is a perfect square. Each side is ten miles (16 km) long.
  4. See the Wikipedia article on Arlington County, Virginia.
  5. See the Wikipedia article on Alexandria, Virginia.
  6. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html
  7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Moratorium
  8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Day_march
  9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RebIWW2.jpg
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