They have Cincinnati style chili. I’m thanking you NOW. I had to have my mom ship me some for Christmas!
I look at him funny for it already.
It will seem strange that football games don’t start till 1 PM on Sundays.
I went the other direction, Northern Virginia ==> Los Angeles. I finally got fed up with ice storms. Snow I could handle. It was the ice on everything that convinced me that enough was enough. Have fun getting your car doors open and your windshield wipers working then.
On the other hand, the heat and humidity will continue into mid-October. You may also discover hay fever that you never had before.
Which funny enough is called The Beltway with the “The”.
The good news-- you’re getting the hell out of LA.
The bad news-- you’re moving to the DC Metro Area.
I live in NorCal now, but I’ve lived in both those places, plus up and down the east coast. Not to rain on your parade, but DC is about the worst place on the East Coast, weather wise. I’ll take 20 degrees and snow vs 40 degrees and rain any day.
Best of luck. It’s really about the people you meet and hang with. Everything else is background!
We’ve lived inside the Beltway in Silver Spring since 1998. The Mexican food ain’t much, but there’s very good Salvadoran food. If you like good beer, the beer scene has exploded the past few years. It can get into the single digits in winter and 100 with high humidity in summer. If you drive much you’ll soon realize that many people have a strange aversion to signaling. Good and bad, it’s home now. It’s been a good place to raise a family.
People live in the Department of Motor Vehicles?
I was led to believe that this was a common reference to the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. Of course, it could all be lies.
It is kind of a new term that’s been popping up more these days.
Welcome! I live in Rockville at the moment, and minus college and one year in LA, I’ve lived in Montgomery County my entire life.
Having done that year in LA, one positive I can share is that unlike LA, our subway system can actually get you places. There’s a lot of bitching about the Metro, but it’s not nearly as useless as LA’s. When I went out there and heard that the “rush hour schedule” meant trains every 10 minutes, I nearly fell over laughing. We also have three airports that are about equally convenient/inconvenient from Montgomery County, and while they are all annoying in their own ways, none of them are as big of a shithole as LAX.
Traffic is pretty terrible, but you’ll be used to that, and I think it’s slightly better than LA. The only time I ever managed to achieve the speed limit on the 405 and the 101 was 11am Christmas morning. And we actually have left turn arrows here, though you will also need to understand traffic circles.
Summer and winter can be pretty brutal, but it varies by year. This summer supposedly isn’t going to be as hot, claim the Post weather people. But we’ll see.
Must be new. As an old-timer, I’ve never heard it used before as a reference to the DC metro area., as distinct from the place you go to get tags and title and renew your driver’s license. (In Virginia, anyhow. On the Maryland side, it’s the MVA.)
Speaking of the MVA, one thing the OP should know about moving into Maryland is our odd vehicle inspection system. Because the only time your vehicle gets inspected for anything besides emissions is when you either (a) buy it, or (b) bring it into state from elsewhere. So it’ll hit you right away.
And at that time, they give it a serious, detailed mechanical inspection, and even if your mechanic somewhere else looked your car over thoroughly and fixed any problems he could find, they may still find several hundred dollars’ worth of problems in the MD inspection. I’m speaking from personal experience on this one.
But once your car’s been OK’d when you bring it into state or when you buy it (if you buy from a car dealer, they take care of this, fortunately), you never need to get it inspected again for anything except emissions, which is once every two years. (My experience there is that unless your car’s either really old or in bad shape, it’ll pass the emissions test with no problem.)
As usual, everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
I’m from the great white north and the weather in DC is too hot/humid in the summer and not cold/snowy enough in the winter to be of any use to anyone. The silver lining is that spring and fall are lovely.
If you’re a boater/sailor, the Chesapeake is great once you’re out on the water and I get out there as often as I can. But if you’re a land lubber, beach access is the best kept secret of this area and that secret has never been divulged to me. I guess Ocean City and Delaware beaches are an option but I dare you to try to get there in under 4 hours on a Friday afternoon, along with every-fucking-body else.
Mountains, such as they are, exist only in West Virginia (cue the banjos). We’re skiers. We’ve skied there. They build them upside down with the lodging and parking on top and the base on the bottom. Weird and congested and not worth the bother.
That out of the way, lets address the cultural mecca that is DC. In a word, it isn’t.
Sure the museums are free and abundant. But if I have to look at the same goddamn Renoir at the National Gallery or space capsule at the Air and Space, I’m going to lose it. Once you’ve seen the monuments and the museums for the third time, you’re not going to consider them such a national treasure - more of a national tourist trap. Oh, and enough with the fucking cherry blossoms. I’ve seen smaller crowds at the Tysons Mall before Christmas.
Food. You like food? I like food. Hope you’re a good cook. Because the restaurant scene here is lame. So lame. Plenty of chain type restaurants that you can find anywhere in the country. Very few truly good independant restaurants. A few in DC and one or two secreted away here and there, but few and far between if you’re looking for anything inspired. I’m happy to recommend some but if Coastal Flats, Capital Grill, P.F.Chang’s and Maggiano’s is more your speed, you’ll have no trouble finding plenty of them on your own.
That said, there are likely worse places to live. Baltimore comes to mind.
If it’s so terrible, what am I still doing here? Working, mostly. Planning my escape the rest of the time.
Welcome to the neighbourhood. 
Dang - there are a lot more DC-area Dopers than I’d realized. Then again, I’m down in St. Mary’s county, more than an hour from DC, so I don’t know if I count.
What am I saying - of course I count! 
Other than that, I have nothing to add. Except maybe we’re long overdue for a MAD Fest.
It’s one of those things that now you’ve heard it once, you’ll notice it popping up more and more. I notice people from outside do the District use it more than residents of the city.
OP: there have been a lot of threads over the years about visiting DC, there might be some good info for you in them if you poke around.
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The traffic sucks balls. Every year there’s a study that says it’s pretty much as bad or worse than in Los Angeles. Commuting is horrible. There are lots of people driving BMWs and Benzes that make it even worse. Drivers are impatient and just plain mean. And, no coincidence, we have a lot of rush-hour traffic accidents. The situation is complicated by tour buses (why don’t they ban them during rush hour?)
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The public transportation sucks balls. If you commute by bus or subway, it can actually take you longer than sitting in traffic in your car, plus random train stoppages and stuff are routine. It takes freaking forever. And starting in spring, the Metro is mobbed by gangs of junior high school students on group tours who just get in the freaking way.
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The weather sucks balls. The winters are harsh (okay, not as harsh as in Boston, but still). The summers are hot and humid (okay, not as hot and humid as Houston, but still). We get the short end of both sticks. Storms routinely cause power outages, because most of our power lines are above ground and vulnerable to falling branches. There is also routine flooding of basements.
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The food here is fan-damn-tastic! Ethiopian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Peruvian, Salvadorean, hamburgers, pizza, barbecue … especially if you go to the places in the ethnic neighborhoods … We have good coffee!
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Every falls brings in a new crop of college freshmen and fresh graduates to the region supported by daddy’s money who drive up the cost of rentals, drive down the salaries because they’re willing to work for free, and for whom every old neighborhood is being razed in favor of brewpubs.
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There are several live theaters here. Support local arts!
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You can usually get a ticket to see a baseball game at Nationals Park for less than $10. Can’t beat that!
I find the complaining about the food scene in the D.C. area to be weird. Yes, of course the Mexican restaurants in the L.A. area are more consistent than those in the D.C. area. So what? That’s just one kind of restaurant. There are lots of different cuisines available, and those in the D.C. area might be even more diverse and interesting than those in the L.A. area.
It’s a typical big city area. The traffic is worse than in a small town. The restaurants are more diverse than a small town. The various activities available are much more than in a small town. How does it compare with other big cities? I don’t know. It would take someone living in both big cities for several years each to accurately compare them.
Consider living in an area that’s not as expensive as the city itself or Montgomery County or Northern Virginia. I’ve lived in an apartment complex in Prince George’s County for almost twenty-five years. It’s relatively cheap and there are the usual things to do and shop at nearby. If I want to go into D.C., the Metro station is within walking distance. I can get on the B-W Parkway and drive into the city quickly and out toward Baltimore quickly.
Let us know when you get to this area and we’ll do a Dopefest at some local restaurant.
Where to live is a very individualized decision, depending on circumstances, such as commute.
But once you’re here, you tend to become very loyal to your choice. The Maryland suburbs have the advantage of being larger and offering a wider range of housing options.
But overall Maryland versus Virginia are not all that different from each other.
How could I forget Vietnamese food? It’s excellent here. And the soul food!
Having lived my whole life on the Midwest and East, I always hear from Westerners that the Mexican food isn’t good here. I have no idea. I do know that most of the Mexican restaurants here are really more Salvadorian though.
Southerners tend to turn their noses up at our barbecue options too. Just like I chuckle when a restaurant serves what it thinks is Cincinnati chili.
More on seasons:
Our spring here is about a week-and-a-half of mice weather sandwiched between freezing and muggy. That’s when the cherry blossoms bloom.
The best season here is fall. It’s just about perfect. (Except for all the allergies!)
Oh - since people corrected you on the interstate names (“the beltway”, “95”, you won’t be using it but “66”), I’ll let you in on when you go into DC proper - you’re going into “the district.”
“DC” is also acceptable; “the city” is not.
Is that about on par with talking about going to “'Frisco”?
I’ve lived here since 1988 and have never heard the term DMV to refer to the area.
“DC Metro Area” is something you’ll hear from time to time.
Now, there is the DelMarVa Peninsula a bit east of here - named for the 3 states that are part of it. You don’t want to try to go to that on a summer Friday, unless you like being stuck in godawful traffic with all the other beachgoers.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!
(see, I told ya people would laugh :D). “Freeway” is also not a common term around here, though people will understand.
In 2010, we took a 2 week vacation in the southwest - flew into and out of Las Vegas, and spent the 2 weeks visiting various national parks in UT and AZ.
As I looked out of the plane window on our descent to BWI, I was stunned at all the green :).