Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The party scene was awesome. The Zei Club. Enough said.
The cost of living. Pleeeease, a struggling wage earner used to be able to afford living near 14th Street back in the day. Only the DuPont Circle area was gentrified at the time. Struggling income earners could still afford a dump in Adams Morgan, Logan Circle, Mount Pleasant etc.
Crime. There were prostitutes along K Street making their moves on male pedestrians and drug dealing was rampant in MacPherson Square Park. Yeah, it was scarier at night back then. Now, you have new glitzy office buildings for law and PR firms in the same neighborhood and new clubs selling drinks at $12 a glass and tables for parties at $400 for the evening. Bye-bye prostitutes and drug dealers on K Street.
There were more independent shops along many downtown streets. I remember clothing tailors, music record sellers and magazine shops owned by families struggling to make a profit. Now...you have corporate chains running restaurants and retail shops. What. The. F#ck.
The 9:30 Club used to be near the FBI building. There were shops that sold pornographic magazines near the old 9:30 Club. I miss those dirty mag stores.
Back then, DC was a majority black city and it definitely had a more "Chocolate City" feel to it. Chocolate in the Go-Go music. Chocolate in the black-owned businesses. There was a real black pride feeling in the city. Many white suburban types were intimated by this scene but I didn't mind it all.
The people were REAL back then. No pretension. No smartphones or cell phones to check every two minutes during a conversation. You were more interested in making FRIENDS in the long term than contacts so you can advance your career in the short term. Life was more casual back then.
I sound nostalgic because DC WAS a better place with the people. Sure, there was more CRIME and BLIGHT back in the 1990s but the people you met in bars and parties made you feel like you were in a HOME. Today, it could not be more different and that is so depressing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mesa1974
Back then, DC was a majority black city and it definitely had a more "Chocolate City" feel to it. Chocolate in the Go-Go music. Chocolate in the black-owned businesses. There was a real black pride feeling in the city. Many white suburban types were intimated by this scene but I didn't mind it all.
The people were REAL back then. No pretension. No smartphones or cell phones to check every two minutes during a conversation. You were more interested in making FRIENDS in the long term than contacts so you can advance your career in the short term. Life was more casual back then.
I sound nostalgic because DC WAS a better place with the people. Sure, there was more CRIME and BLIGHT back in the 1990s but the people you met in bars and parties made you feel like you were in a HOME. Today, it could not be more different and that is so depressing.
Dog,
You're "borrowing" from Coldbliss in the first page of this thread!
I was born and raised in the DC area until I was 16. Grew up over in PG County, Maryland. Currently live in Central VA at the moment. I remember living up there in the late 80s and the entire 90s, DC was so bad back then that my family use to be afraid just being in the city if we had to crossover into there to take care of whatever business that we had to take care of. Now PG County back then wasn't a utopia either however it was slightly safe considering the 400-500 homicides a year that DC was averaging during that period. Downtown was dead on the weekends and everybody had to go to either MD or VA to a shopping mall. However, the one thing I miss from that era was going to Union Station to the movie theater. It's kinda hard to explain but if you knew a certain movie was playing at Union Station, then you knew that 9 times out of 10 it was gonna be a good movie.
You forgot one thing: Peoples Drug! They were all over the place. Now it's all CVS.
Also, the downtown area had a slew of Roy Rogers. There were some MCDees, but I think Roy's had more stores.
Marriott used to operate many Roy Rogers restaurants and Bob's Big Boy in the DC area. They were later sold to Hardee's then McDonald's. Some Roy's still remain in distant suburbs such as Gaithersburg and Frederick, MD.
"Crime. There were prostitutes along K Street making their moves on male pedestrians and drug dealing was rampant in MacPherson Square Park. Yeah, it was scarier at night back then. Now, you have new glitzy office buildings for law and PR firms in the same neighborhood and new clubs selling drinks at $12 a glass and tables for parties at $400 for the evening. Bye-bye prostitutes and drug dealers on K Street. "
So you're saying prostitutes and drugs are a good thing, that you miss about the old DC?
My first memory was a visit to DC around 1997. I stayed at the Capital Hilton and was shocked at the decay of the city just a few blocks away from the White House. I didn't feel unsafe downtown, but there was no reason to spend any time there.
Somebody mentioned that back in the 90s you could afford to live in 14th St/Logan on one income... yeah because that area was horrible back then. Logan of 2014 is vastly different from the Logan of 2004, and unrecognizable from 1994.
I think it would be helpful if the original statement was quantified first, but I'm looking at Washington DC economic characteristics from census data from the 1990 Census and the 2011 Census Bureau Survey.
In the 1990 Census, 62% of DC households fell within the 15k-75k income range and were generally more concentrated in a smaller range of incomes. In 2011, the number of lower income households has trended down, and the number of high income households has trended up (I don't think anyone would express any surprise there), but overall the distribution of incomes is less concentrated than it was in the 1990 Census.
That's all moot if people are gauging socioeconomic diversity on something other than income distribution.
I could see what someone means by that if they're talking about change on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.
Gentrifying neighborhoods, which will have a broader range of incomes, cannot expect to remain that way indefinitely. Over time, they all go the way of Williamsburg or Adams-Morgan. So in that sense, swaths of the city are becoming less socioeconomically diverse even if the range of incomes within the city limits is broader.
I came to DC in the late 80s and early 90s on class trips when growing up. The city was a complete HOLE. Ghetto everywhere except around the govt buildings. The mayor was a crackhead; DC was a national joke. DC was not much better than Detroit, frankly.
I visited again a few years ago and couldn't believe how much it changed.
I came to DC in the late 80s and early 90s on class trips when growing up. The city was a complete HOLE. Ghetto everywhere except around the govt buildings. The mayor was a crackhead; DC was a national joke. DC was not much better than Detroit, frankly.
I visited again a few years ago and couldn't believe how much it changed.
It wasn't nearly as bad in the late 80s and early 90s as you're making it sound, and it's not as awesome a city today as you're implying, either. It is, however, undoubtedly a safer place with plenty to offer for those who prefer urban living.
To put this in perspective, Toronto is a larger, more interesting city than DC, and its mayor has recently been giving Marion Berry a run for the money when it comes to bad behavior. Any city worth its salt isn't defined by one or two people.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
