Moscow on the Potomac

National Harbor is a grotesque abomination. It is Las Vegas without the tittilation. Disney World without the rides and amusing costumed characters. The local mall, without the bargains. Its buildings are boxes assembled from catalogs of available pre-fabricated pieces ("arch section, $35,000 or 2 for $66,000"), most notably the largest, the Gaylord National Hotel, which resembles nothing if not a late-Stalinist-era train station surrounded by squalid Moscow apartments. But with bling. It's envisioned as a mixed-use, self-contained neighbourhood, with luxury hotels, condominiums, shops, restaurants, and vast parking garages á la Vegas. Condos, if you're interested, start at $199,000 for a studio.

Instead of empty butcher shops and one-style-fits-all clothing stores, this Soviet outpost boasts the big names in consumption. You know the names; open a copy of Vogue to any page. It's here.

The Gaylord is, unfortunately, where I'm holed up. Someone else is paying (and by that, I mean you; all of you). The room isn't bad, unless you consider the price. It's on the twelfth floor, so there's a view, looking east to a six-storey parking garage, a construction site, and three houses in a middle-class subdivision of Oxon Hill, Maryland. To the left is the vacant parcel of land bought for a Disney resort, which might get built if the economy returns to the frothy state it had before the Bush Recession. Inside the room, in addition to most of the usual amenities -- safe, fridge, iron (but no hair dryer) --  is a flat-screen HD TV: I got to watch my first high-definition soccer game, US v. Czech Republic -- or part of it, anyway: the signal went out in the 64th minute and didn't come back on until the next evening. Very impressive.

Consider the size of this place: the hotel is two blocks long, a block deep, and 18 storeys high (with at least two more floors below street level). There are only three banks of elevators. To get to the elevator from my room requires a walk approximately equal to a city block. To get to an elevator that goes to the lobby is two city blocks. That's irritating enough when I'm just going out for coffee or dinner, but imagine what I thought of it when hauling my luggage in from the parking garage (which is a block in the opposite direction).

The architects of this place gave, apparently, no serious thought to the comfort and convenience of its guests. Beyond the disposition of elevators, there is the scale of the building to consider. The spaces inside this building are vast, meant no doubt to impress. But rather than uplifting, they oppress. Ceilings are too high, hallways are too wide, too long, and too monotonously uniform. If they varied some in wall colours, that would at least give one a sense of where in the building one was; instead there is only a stretch of red carpet and tan wall disappearing in the distance, no matter which direction one looks.

The atrium provides the one limited exception to the oppression. With its high arched glass roof -- the one that makes it look like a train station -- the atrium is light and open. Still ugly, in a sort of techno style, but light, and open. The western wall is glass as well, giving a view of the Potomac, the Woodrow Wilson bridge, and Alexandria. At most times of day that view is unexceptional, but at sunset, if the sky cooperates, the view is beautiful, as it was last evening. Sorry, didn't have my camera handy. Maybe there'll be another tonight and I'll be ready. (Nope, there was rain instead.)

But it's the prices of things here that creep me out the most. It's one thing to pay an exorbitant discounted rate for a nice room high up in a luxury hotel, especially since, again, y'all are picking up the tab for that; it's another to be asked to pay $7 for "just toast and coffee" at one of the more casual dining areas in the atrium. (I avoided eating there so far, but absolutely nothing else in this entire development is open at this hour, and I will either have to bite the bullet and eat in the hotel, or get the car out of the $19/day garage (thanks for that, too, y'all) and go somewhere away from National Harbor.

Consider the room-service menu: Say I wanted a bowl of oatmeal. That's $9, an exorbitant price. But, Hey, you say, they're delivering it to your room; you're paying for the convenience. No, you're paying $9 for the oatmeal. The convenience is extra: a 21% service charge ($1.62) plus a $3 delivery charge. That's the cost of convenience. (Plus tax, but that's not the hotel's fault, it's the fault of voters with weak morals.) Staying here is like living at the airport. In the red-carpet lounge, but still at the airport.

Oh, I know: bitch, bitch, bitch. But it's just sooooo over-the-top, the size and the cost of this place. It makes me uncomfortable, and unhappy. If I am to throw money away of frippery, I want it to be on my own terms and of my own choosing, like when I elect to go to a more expensive restaurant.

Four-Star Food at Two-Star Prices

What keeps a restaurant going for a hundred years? Maybe just luck, or location, or advertising and a steady supply of gullible people. I don't know, though: food might have more to do with it. All the restaurants I know that have been around for so long have great food. They may go through periods when reputation has to carry them through: when the chef is aging or a new one is finding his way; but basically it seems that they maintain a consistently high level of quality year after year. I think first of the great old restaurants in my home town, New Orleans: Antoine's, Commander's Palace, Galatoire's. Their food may not always be the best, but generally, yeah, it is.

Now I can add another old family-run institution to that short list: the Royal Restaurant in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.

What's that mean?

The restaurant itself isn't in the same class as those venerable old N'Awlinz dining palaces: it's not as dressy, not as elegant, and certainly not as expensive. Its two dining rooms have vinyl-covered booths lining the windows, and nary a white table cloth in sight. The wine list is limited, and a salad bar lines one wall. But based on the three dishes I sampled there last night, I'll put their food up against anybody's.

I had crab cakes. I had, I should say, outstanding crab cakes. I regret having had to share them with the others at the table, but it was the price I paid for sampling their dishes. Large lumps of crabmeat were packed into two large, thick patties, breaded in a light, tasty batter and fried to perfection. The result was a thin, crisp crust enveloping lots and lots of tasty crabmeat. It was served with a baked potato rolled in cracked pepper; not one of those giant steroid-enhanced things you find at the supermarket, but a nice, normal potato. Okay, the potato could've been hotter, but honestly, I wasn't unhappy with it.

The other dishes I got to sample were roast lamb, seasoned in the Greek style and falling off the bone; served with well-prepared green beans and mashed potato; and a moussaka that made me think maybe I should have ordered that. All of the portions were generous. The meals also came with a trip to the salad bar that offered a reasonably large selection of fresh and tasty items, including excellent stuffed grape leaves.

The staff was attentive, knowledgable, and prompt; special mention to Fasika, our main server, who put up with all our questions and set a pleasant, easy-going tone from our arrival.

The total bill was surprisingly modest, considering the quality of what we had eaten. This pleasant fact was in marked contrast to where we'd had lunch that day, across the river in the prefab future slums of National Harbor (see next post).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The word of the day is: Kitsch

I went to the National Arboretum today, the first stop on my Tour of Suburban D.C. Oddities. I only intended to see the columns that were removed from the east front of the U.S. Capitol when it was expanded in the 1950s, but I got sucked into the place by the awesomeness of it.

The columns are arranged on a slight rise, in the same pattern as when they were attached to the portico. These were the columns that were there when Andrew Jackson was inaugurated, and Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt, and his cousin Franklin, and Harry Truman and Ike. They were taken down so that government could bloat without leaving the building, and thirty short years later, they found a home here on this hill in the farthest corner of the District of Columbia.

Now they stand like melancholy ruins. And like the delapidated ruins of Athens and Rome, they evoke a sort of awe. Their clean classical lines, their ornate Corinthian capitals, their lack of further function evoke a sense of how great must have been the people who made them. Their location, so remote from the crowds of busy cities, and from even the hordes of tourists that assault more ancient ruins, give them an aura of forlornness.

They were once at the center of power, the heart of a great empire. They witnessed power; they surrounded it; they ornamented it. Now, stark and alone on this little hill, they embody it.

Across the little valley in front of their reflecting pool stands a single carved stone. From this distance, I can't tell what it is, so I walk across the valley to see. It is a capital, brought down to eye level, where I can appreciate the work of carving acanthus leaves in sandstone, up close. I can look back at the columns. From here, their isolation is even more marked. They are utterly alone and unwanted.

Well, as long as I'm here across the valley, with such a long walk to the car, I think I might as well walk along the road instead of back along the grassy path. This proves to be a mistake. There is a koi pond with water lilies in it, the most perfectly formed water lilies I've ever seen. And next to that, across from the National Herb Garden, is the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. I don't know what Penjing is, but I know what bonsai is, so I go in for a quick look.

Wow. Wow. Oh, wow. These little tiny trees and bushes are astounding. I will not try to describe them. After an hour and a half I realize I will have to come back here with a certain genetic biologist of my acquaintance, so I tear myself away and go see the dogwood grove on the farthest edge of the arboretum. But you can see the pictures I took here.

The Dogwood Collection, according to the official brochure, sits in a "tranquil setting with lovely vistas of the Anacostia River." That's partly true. It's a tranquil setting: long alleys lined with trees that seem exhausted by the weight of blossoms; a fountain, some well-placed benches, some colourful flowers. But the lovely vistas of the Anacostia are undone by the muddiness of its water and the masses of leaves that all but hide the river from view. Being really into Views From On High, I leave disappointed.

That feeling gets worse at the next stop: Castle Good Knight. After seeing the exceptional castle created by one man in Ohio, I can hardly wait to see the creation of another in Maryland, one that is described in the literature as a "castle complex" and billed as a children's museum and "enchanted kingdom."

Can you say "kitsch"? Plywood walls painted to look like grey stones pierced with lancet windows conceal three acres or more of ticky-tack. A weird assortment of dross, from Krewe of Rex banners to bengal tigers wearing saddles, is sprinkled among shabby plywood sheds dressed up like stubby towers. A statue of faeries done in a classical style -- Disney-classical, that is -- has pride of place in the courtyard, but it can't help the aura of seediness that pervades the place. Well, I suppose your average five-year-old won't see it the same way. Fortunately. Because I thought it was just trashy.

On to the next stop: the nation's only remaining wrought-iron bridge, in Savage, one of the hundreds of indistinguishable municipalities that stretch from south of Richmond to north of Boston without significant interruption. As I drive through this endless concatenation of polities, it strikes me that this place gives sprawl a bad name. Anything that is unique, anything that has character, is eventually subsumed in the unremitting sameness of progress. Every major intersection is a cookie-cut shopping center, with all the same stores as are in the cookie-cut shopping center in front of our hotel.

So my arrival in Savage is restorative: this town is centered on a precious little historic district, featuring the bridge and a partially-renovated mill complex housing an assortment of local shops. No Hallmark Card shop, no Restoration Hardware, no Barnes and Noble here. Inside the mill-mall I find ... Curmudgeon Books. That's right: Curmudgeon Books. Imagine how touched I felt. Also a gift shop featuring some of the funniest birthday cards I've ever seen. I stock up. And perhaps the most unique mall denizen I've ever encountered: Terrapin Adventures, where you can learn to ride down a zip line or kayak on the Patuxent River out back. If I'd had someone with me, to drive me back from the hospital, I might've taken advantage of that.

My last stop is the National Cryptology Museum, an outpost of the National Security Administration, a half-hearted attempt to lighten up a little. Not a lot to take pictures of in here; it reminds me of the little museum at Stinson Field in San Antonio: a lot of old photographs of airplanes and machinery, and some old machinery. The whole thing looks like it was done by volunteers with no budget. There's a mock-up of a Vietnam-era listening post, some uniforms, some obsolete computers. The most interesting exhibits were a collection of Enigma machines from World War II, and the United States National Seal, hand carved by Young Pioneers (the Soviet version of Boy Scouts) and presented to the American Ambassador, who hung it in his office for six years, not realizing that it contained a KGB microphone. Can we really have ever been so naive?