Hear, hear! My thoughts exactly!
Eh… As a native of the "Metro area, " it IS basically everything inside the Beltway, and a few miles outside of it too (Tyson’s included). I recently lived in Falls Church but would often find myself all over Arlington, in DC, in Fairfax, in Loudoun, and in Montomery County all the time, without driving more than 30 minutes. To me, it’s all part of the same area.
Shirlington
Del Ray
I hate to say it, but maybe you should stick with the mall if “dirty and smelly” bothers you. :dubious:
I’ve only been to the D.C. area a couple of times; s’okay for a visit–there’s a few nice walking around areas–but I wouldn’t want to live there; it just didn’t strike me as being that interesting. For my money San Francisco is the best walking city in North America and has a wonderfully dirty and smelly Chinatown. (I have yet to visit Portland, though, so I’ll reserve judgement.)
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, The Homogenous Collective continues to Disney-fy Santa Monica and Old Town Pasadena. Oh well…at least Hollywood is still “dirty and smelly” and more fun than a hot tub full of high priced hookers.
Stranger
Both very nice. I used to live in Shirlington, and we used to hang out in Del Ray a lot. That area has a lot to recommend it now, including Taqueria Poblano. 
Also add Occoquan to this list.
How about the Mall? Rock Creek Park? You know, DC has a higher percentage of green space than any other city in the country.
You got a cite for that?
I’d heard that about Portland, OR.
I wouldn’t totally rule it out for DC. Between the arboretum, the mall, and a few other things, there does seem to be a lot.
I’ll see if I can find it online. My site is actually my environmental studies professor from college, who had studied it. I did find this site, which unfortunately is less than academic:
http://washdc.globalweb.org/super.html#nature
Here’s a map, in PDF form, from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments showing land use patterns for the DC region.
http://www.mwcog.org/uploads/pub-documents/8V1XWw20041005133604.pdf
When I read the first line of the OP, I was expecting a full-fledged pitting of the evil twins of shopping nightmares: Tysons Corner Center, and her snooty sister, Tysons Galleria. But I didn’t get that, so I’ll add my own.
Tysons Corner Center is not bad, per se. It has a wide selection of stores, and a decent food court (if that’s your thing). But it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to get in and out of. You’re stuck taking a side access road to get to the parking garages, which have a tendency to fill up. Leaving the garage can be problematic as well (see susan_foster’s post).
And once you enter the mall, you realize you’ve put a lot of time and effort getting to a very average mall. You dodge the throng of teens clustered outside of Hot Topic and Claire’s, babbling on their cellphones to their friends on the second tier, only to be cut off by a wall of shopping mom’s pushing their stroller utility vehicles. By the time you get to the store you were going to, you are wondering why you didn’t just shop online.
But Tysons Corner Center is a pleasure compared to the soulless snob Tysons Galleria. Full disclosure: I don’t make that much money, and I am not a clothes-horse by any description, so these factors may have colored my experience. Still, I can’t imagine a worse mall than the Galleria. It is inescapably upscale. In-your-face upsacle. To give you an idea, the bathrooms in the Saks store stock 20 dollar bills for toilet paper [hyperbole alert, but you get the picture]. I have never felt so out of place in a mall in all of my life.
The mall isn’t really all bad, I guess. It does have a Cheesecake Factory (mmm…cheesecake). It is the only place I know of where you can get the experience of walking around in a 3-dimensional catalog. However, like their 2-D counterparts, none of the objects visible to you are instantly attainable in any real sense.
The only reason I went to this ivory tower of superficiality in the first place was because I got a coupon for Saks (on a purchase of $100 or more). I went in thinking (naively), “I’ll pick up some new work clothes. Maybe a couple of dress shirts, or a few pairs of dress pants.”
I COULDN’T FIND ANYTHING UNDER $100 IN THE ENTIRE STORE.
I couldn’t get over the prices on the merchandise. Before anybody rushes in to defend this establishment, I am fully aware of the canards, “you get what you pay for”, and, “quality costs more”, and I agree – to a point. But I just don’t see the utility of paying $500 for any sweater, I don’t care if it is soft as a baby’s butt after soaking in moisturizer for 3 hours, nestled in a goose-down pillow with a chinchilla pillowcase. That’s just too much!
I also noticed another troubling fact about the Saks store.
The goats were staring at me. Really.
And they weren’t the only ones. Many of the sales associates were gazing askance as I approached the merchandise, no doubt fearing that I would touch one of their garments and fearing that even after countless washings and dry cleanings, they would never be able to wash the “middle-class” off of them.
And don’t get me started on Potomac Mills on Saturday. :shudder:
I’ve been going to Tyson’s my whole life (I am 29). I remember when it was only the only mall around, when it was just one level, when it had Woodies, etc. Since I have years of experience of shopping at Tyson’s, I have developed all sorts of tricks for getting in and out quickly, such as what route to take, what garage to park in, etc. So if you know the place, it is pretty easily accessible.
AMEN! That place makes me sick. It’s almost like it’s not real. I will sometimes go there for Macy’s, which is not that expensive. There are a couple of stores inside the mall that I will visit, like Anthropologie, Betsy Johnson and MAC. But holy shit, if you step into Neiman’s or Saks, you feel like you’re on another planet. The salespeople look fake, they’re so perfectly coiffed and made-up, and they stare down their noses at you unless you are wearing at least a $500 outfit. UGH. I wonder, who the fuck shops at these places? Probably people like the woman I saw there once who was wearing a full-length mink coat and pushing a stroller.
Yeah, i was a bit nonplussed about that too.
The smell is part of what makes Chinatown (in various cities) so appealing.
I love the Tysons mall, though I admit parking does tend to be a problem. And those access roads – ugh! Everyone seems to think the stop signs don’t apply to him. It’s amazing how few people get the concept of an all-way stop; they tap their brakes (if you’re lucky) and then keep on going. My horn gets a workout every time I go there.
And around the holidays it’s an absolute frickin’ nightmare. A good half-mile radius around that mall gets a wide berth from me for the entirety of November and December. Thank Og I don’t have to drive by there to get home from work any more.
Tysons II, on the other hand, just doesn’t really impress me. One time my wealthy mother-in-law turned me and my SO loose in Needless Markup and told us to get anything and everything we want. I literally could not find anything I wanted. Not one single thing.
Have you noticed that mall is always empty? I have it on good authority that the place is only able to stay in business because of a handful of diplomats’ wives who spend obscene amounts of money at a pop. I don’t know what my point is, I just thought that was an interesting tidbit.
Amen. I couldn’t stand to live in a sterile, clean, simple place like some suburbs I know.
You are right about that mall being empty. I was there on a Friday night, and I practically had the run of the place. It was like Dawn of the Dead, down to the mindless zombies ambling through the halls.
That is an interesting tidbit.
Huh? Have you been there recently? It’s certainly cleaner than Adams Morgan. I don’t tend to spend a lot of time there because not all that many of the restaurants appeal to me enough to deal with parking on a weekend, but the times I’ve gone and spent some time walking around, it has always struck me as relatively clean for the city.
Dude, back in the early 90’s part of the pan handle of WV was considered part of the DC metro area. :eek:
So this isn’t a public transportaion rant, then?
Okay, sort me out here folks. Why are you offended that I don’t enjoy Chinatown in any town? I just don’t get the charm of the place. Is that a bad thing? :dubious:
Wait a second-you were able to eat in one of those restaurants? Because when I was there last week there wasn’t one that had a wait less than 2 hours. I find Tyson’s too spread out and crowded and won’t go near the place around the holidays. However, I love Tyson’s 2. It’s always empty, you can usually park, and as long as you’re only going to the chains like Hallmark or Sharper Image, the prices are the same. I never set foot in Neiman Marcus or Saks, but Macy’s is OK. I always feel underdressed there, but I figure my money’s as good as anyone else’s.
That sounds kind of like Harrods, a big fancy store in London. It’s really more like a small mall than a store. I felt totally out of place there.
My OP was all over the place because I was tired but could not sleep. Perhaps it is to clarify… yes?
I didn’t actually eat at any of the restaurants. I did have a glass of wine after a movie recently. The impression it left me with is that I’d never want to make it a habit to eat in any one of those places because the scenery is so obviously and overly contrived that it feels canned. I like malls for the shopping. I even like food courts for a quick and cheap bite once in a while. I don’t think malls should try and pull off fine(-er) dining in the way it was executed in this case because it just doesn’t work. Kind of like the Venetian canals in Vegas are not the real Venice. I can appreciate that a lot of money and effort went into making it look nice, but it’s still canned looking. Greater DC needs better city planning to make better use of public spaces is all I’m saying. They shouldn’t try to make malls the “easy way out” alternative to that effort. But hey, if they’re going to try, maybe they can put up a fake Chinatown inside a mall as well. I’m sure somebody somewhere is thinking of it already. :smack: