The Georgetown Metropolitan

News is still a bit slow these days, so GM is still working through his old Seven Georgetown series. Enjoy:

This week for Seven Georgetowns, GM will tackle the second of the two districts that he has actually lived in: Georgetown Heights.

For those just tuning in, GM recently posited that Georgetown as a total neighborhood can be broken up into seven distinct “sub-neighborhoods”.  And further, he argues that each of these districts has a distinct identity and can stand on its own as offering a great deal, even when ignoring the rest of Georgetown around it.

Georgetown Heights is the name GM is ascribing to the northeast part of Georgetown. Although it should be said that Georgetown Heights was a name that was occasionally used in the past to describe this part of Georgetown.

For GM’s purposes he is limiting it mostly to the area north of Q St., between 28th St. and 32nd. He also includes the three blocks south of Q St. between 29th and 32nd (although that is slightly debatable). Additionally, he includes the area north of R St. from 32nd to just east of the library.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• One woman’s valiant effort to map as many people’s experience with Georgetown as possible.
• If you, like GM, have noticed that a lot of oak trees are all of the sudden covered in clusters of dead leaves, have no fear: it’s from the cicadas and it’s not harmful.

….away. If you’re hoping to dress up like a pocket that was put in the laundry with a bunch of neon crayons in it, you’ll have to order online: the Lily Pulitzer store closed.

The store, which was located at 1079 Wisconsin, closed last week. Despite being very in keeping with the stylings of a lot of Georgetowners (and famously being the choice of Jackie Kennedy), the store only opened up here in 2016. GM is not aware of the reason for the closure, but it does follow recent store closures for the brand in Clarendon and Bethesda.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Former Georgetown ANC Commissioner, and wheelchair user, Anna Landre documents the frightening ordeal of being stranded on the third floor of the Banana Republic due to the elevator being out.
• Body found in the canal.

GM is still in rerun mode today, so please enjoy his second installment in his Seven Georgetowns series:

Two weeks ago, GM introduced a new series: Seven Georgetowns. The basic idea is that Georgetown is made up of seven individual sections that if they were to be judged as neighborhoods on their own, they’d still have a ton to offer their residents. And today, GM will discuss the section he affectionately refers to as the DMZ.

Yes, it’s DMZ like “de-militarized zone”. The idea is that it is a narrow strip of contested land between two large powers that is operating under an indefinite armistice. The powers in this case are Georgetown University and “the residents”. (Much like genuine DMZ’s, there’s a sensitivity over terminology. Full-time non-student residents like to call themselves “residents”, but students are residents too, so the term is a bit loaded.)

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The car used in the drive-by shooting outside Nationals Park was found on Water St. in Georgetown.
• The Cat Cafe claws back.

Summer makes for some slow news days, so GM is going to re-run his Seven Georgetowns series from a few years back. And as NBC used to say, if you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!

A common refrain you’ll hear from longer time Georgetown residents is that the neighborhood isn’t what it once was. GM doesn’t have to list all the old stores or restaurants that people miss. Or any other neighborhood amenity lost to history.

What GM would like to suggest today is that maybe Georgetown is somehow less than the sum of its parts. In other words, when considered as an entire neighborhood, there are countless complaints about what it lacks or has in excess. But people rarely experience the entire neighborhood on any sort of a regular basis. If most residents are like GM, they spend most of their time in the neighborhood within 5-7 blocks or so.

And when you start breaking up Georgetown into some natural groupings around that premise, you end up with seven smaller “neighborhoods”. And each is distinct from the others with impressive strengths and unique drawbacks. So maybe Georgetown as a whole is great, and maybe it isn’t. But the seven sub-neighborhoods are pretty great when judged on their own.

GM came up with a map, seen above, with these seven sub-neighborhoods. Is it a perfect map reflecting all residents’ views? Of course not. But it is GM’s best guess. Suggest your own changes below if you’d like!