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Lies and Real Estate
The one advantage I have in my not-terribly-successful efforts to find a new place to live is that I'm now pretty darn familiar with the District of Columbia. Thus, let me suggest to any house-hunters out there that they be on guard against bizarre Craigslist accounts of which neighborhoods are where. A house on 14th and Florida, for is example, is not in Dupont Circle. Nor is an apartment on Vermont Avenue north of V Strete in Logan Circle. Just saying. The "Logan East" concept is also getting used in increasingly abusive ways.
August 8, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
It's like that everywhere. 'Shaw' is now an enormous area north of Mass Ave. And where, exactly, are the limits of 'Chevy Chase', 'Bethesda', and 'Silver Spring'? I only ask.
Posted by: MattF | Aug 8, 2006 12:20:24 PM
They cover this in season 2 of The Wire, right?
Ahh, here we go:
ELENA: And the parking pad in the rear is invaluable for Federal Hill.
PROSPECTIVE BUYER: The deck has a harbor view?
ELENA: Yes, in two directions. Go on up, take a look, I think you'll love it.
NICK: This ain't Federal Hill.
ELENA: Excuse me?
NICK: This is the Point, Locust Point.
ELENA: Oh, well as far as real estate goes, anything that is below Montgomery Street and above the water is now called Federal Hill. Are you two house hunting?
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | Aug 8, 2006 12:26:03 PM
One you might appreciate here in NYC. 142nd and Broadway is NOT the upper west side. Heck, it's barely even Harlem.
Posted by: whoever | Aug 8, 2006 12:36:17 PM
Yup.
Although my favorite is still the people who try to claim houses across the street from RFK or on Florida Ave. NE as being on Capitol Hill. I don't know what the neighborhood around RFK is called, but Florida Ave. NE is Trinidad.
Maybe you'd have more success home shopping if you got out of your tiny NW target zone? Seeing as how it's getting too overrun with hipsters anyway.
Posted by: flippantangel | Aug 8, 2006 12:57:04 PM
Here in Brooklyn, in the minds of real estate agents Park Slope has expanded west to the edges of the Gowanus Canal and south to the Green-Wood Cemetery.
My parents live in the heart of Silver Spring. I think it extends from University Park all the way west along the northern border of Takoma Park to Chevy Chase, and north from the city line to White Oak. Something like the right-bottom quarter of Montgomery County.
Posted by: Antid Oto | Aug 8, 2006 1:43:50 PM
Maybe you'd have more success home shopping if you got out of your tiny NW target zone?
But staying in my target zone is what success is. Alternatively, there's a not-so-bad chance I'll be relocating to the H Street NE vicinity to chase the new hipness.
Posted by: Matthew Yglesias | Aug 8, 2006 2:27:59 PM
But staying in my target zone is what success is.
I see. I was defining success as not being homeless.
Not sure I get the appeal of H street, though. Not only is it not really that hip, as Catherine pointed out a while back, but its close proximity to Capitol Hill (H street is the traditional northern boundary of the Hill) causes me to doubt its potential trendiness. The Hill and the people associated with it are just inherently uncool. Even I, who fully admit I have absolutely no capacity to ever be remotely cool or hip, am quite certain that I know that.
Plus, while there are a growing number of bars on H street, there are no grocery stores, gyms, or other necessaries of modern yuppie life, and the transit situation is sort of a bitch. Not to mention that, having had a friend who is a cop in Trinidad, I'm quite wary of the safety angle there.
On the other hand, H street does fit into the same "former main streets of black America that were destroyed in the riots and became desolate despite being in actually prime locations geographically" vein as U street, so you may have something there.
****
This whole conversation makes me glad I own my place and don't ever have to ponder the possibility of moving again if I don't want to.
Posted by: flippantangel | Aug 8, 2006 3:07:51 PM
Ah, yes, I'm glad someone posted that thing from the Wire. I was about to point out that Baltimore real estate ads are similarly ridiculous. If you went by Craig's List, you would be under the impression that the Remington neighborhood has been entirely annnexed by Hampden and Charles Village.
Posted by: Gabe | Aug 8, 2006 3:50:27 PM
This whole conversation makes me glad I own my place and don't ever have to ponder the possibility of moving again if I don't want to.
Unless some developer wants to build a mall or an office building or something and the local economic devlopment commission thinks it would be better if you moved. Kelo, you know.
Posted by: Al | Aug 8, 2006 4:25:44 PM
Al, appreciate your concerns, but I'm pretty comfortable that the historical and political assets of the complex in which I currently live make that unlikely.
Posted by: flippantangel | Aug 8, 2006 4:45:44 PM
I find that when I am accurate and describe my house as in the southeast corner of Columbia Heights, people find that confusing, since Columbia Heights is psychologically bounded on the east by desolate Sherman Ave. I'm better off just saying "a block West of Howard U." In any case, I'm moving back to a definitely part of Shaw part of Shaw (6th & Q).
Posted by: Will Wilkinson | Aug 8, 2006 4:51:17 PM
I'd give this thread 8.6 Dunbars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar_(Catch-22)
Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | Aug 9, 2006 9:23:53 AM
My parents live in the heart of Silver Spring. I think it extends from University Park all the way west along the northern border of Takoma Park to Chevy Chase, and north from the city line to White Oak. Something like the right-bottom quarter of Montgomery County.Sadly, this is only one small part of the gigantic mass of undifferentiated sprawl that calls itself Silver Spring. I live off of Briggs-Chaney Road, near Burtonsville, closer to the Howard County line than the Beltway, and according to the Post Office it's still a Silver Spring address. Some people consider the entire EASTERN THIRD of Montgomery County to be part of "Silver Spring." Judging by the real estate guides, SS covers the area from Takoma Park to Chevy Chase inside the Beltway, and the entire HWY-29 corridor all the way up to the bloody Patuxent River... including White Oak, Calverton, Colesville, and even part of Wheaton.
Posted by: ajl | Aug 9, 2006 11:42:00 AM
The discussion above seems to assume that this is driven by basically dishonest brokers wanting to upgrade the tone of a listing.
I think, on the other hand, a lot of it is driven by clueless twits. Here in Los Angeles there are pretty damn strong geographic barriers that delineate say the San Fernando Valley from the San Gabriel Valley, but you get people posting on CraigsList who obviously don't have a clue what these geographic barriers are. I blame it all on the automobile which makes driving over a mountain range so effortless you barely even notice it's there.
Posted by: Maynard Handley | Aug 10, 2006 12:27:19 PM
Eine wirklich super Seite!
Posted by: bodoro | Aug 11, 2006 12:55:16 PM
"The Hill and the people associated with it are just inherently uncool."
So Matt, who writes articles advising people about how to get elected, what laws to pass, policies to have, etc. is cool, but the people who actually get elected, pass laws, and create policies are uncool?
Yeah, I have a chip on my shoulder, and it's because I suspect Flippantangel just might be right.
Posted by: MQ | Aug 11, 2006 10:47:14 PM
Did I ever say I thought Matt was cool?
(I'll give him cooler than me, but that's about the lowest bar imaginable. And, I'm much better looking.)
Posted by: flippantangel | Aug 12, 2006 1:08:07 AM
There's a definite bias toward more famous neighborhoods, among realtors (or landlords or even subletters) who haven't lived in a city for too long. You get an apartment, you don't really pay attention to what "neighborhood" it's in because it's a residential area surrounded by other residential areas. You look at a map, and you see that your apartment is in Friendship, or Allentown, or Greenfield (Pittsburgh examples). You say "I've lived here for two years and never heard of those neighborhoods, they must be archaic usages." So you list it as being in whatever the closest more famous neighborhood is (Bloomfield, "South Side Slopes", or Squirrel Hill).
Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Aug 13, 2006 5:31:22 PM
Pittsburgh in particular is a serious offender when it comes to different names for different neighborhoods. There are often several nicknames for areas, sometimes a few blocks gets their own nickname, for example. (Here's a cute local article about it here.) It's an amusing intersection of geography and history, even my 76-year old grandmother who has never lived anywhere else but Pittbsurgh says she can still get lost there.
I've personally learned this after househunting in Pittsburgh long-distance. (I'm closing on a house there in less than 2 weeks.) We're moving to the "Regent Square" neighborhood but officially we're in Wilkinsburg. Not that it matters since Regent Square doesn't really exist anyways.
Posted by: zoe kentucky | Aug 14, 2006 3:12:36 PM
Zoe: You'll also find that virtually every business that has "Regent Square" in the name is actually in Swissvale, which is not even part of Pittsburgh. It's nice to know that most of the people who live in Regent Square actually live in Wilkinsburg, which isn't part of Pittsburgh either. I believe that the only area that is actually in Regent Square is the area between Forbes Avenue on the north, Swissvale on the south, Braddock Avenue on the east, and Frick Park on the west, which I think is about fifteen blocks.
Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Aug 15, 2006 6:22:38 PM
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