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Sunday 7 September 2008

Walk on the wild side

James Forsyth wanders through Washington DC

Seven years ago, when I first went to DC — as the locals call it — I left a friend’s house on Capitol Hill one evening and thought I would stroll over to Union Station. Navigating by the Capitol dome and the moon, I managed to get rather lost and found myself in what, to a not particularly streetwise 20-year-old, was definitely the wrong part of town — lots of deserted streets, boarded-up shops and cheap liquor stores. After a while, my confidence in my navigational abilities seemed like hubris and I was sufficiently shaken to call a cab. But the cab operator brusquely told me that they didn’t pick up from that part of town. Minor panic set in. An SUV with blacked-out windows roared past with its passengers leaning out of the window to shout some not particularly good-natured abuse. By now, I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the humid DC night that was making me sweat or my own fear. Gone was my masculine, drink-induced confidence; in its place, a certain fatalism. A car drove up behind me and screeched to a halt, I feared the worst. But the screech turned out not to be a harbinger of doom but deliverance in the form of a taxi cab.

‘Get in,’ barked the driver. ‘I wouldn’t normally stop here but I couldn’t have a death on my conscience.’ His sympathy extended no further than that. He insisted on payment upfront for my retreat back to the genteel confines of northwest DC. Yet, throughout the whole experience, I had been no more than 15 minutes’ walk from the US Congress: poverty and power in oddly close proximity — a hallmark of DC.

The other week, a friend was driving me through the same neighbourhood on my way to the airport. The streets that had appeared so mean to me then were now dotted with neat gardens and yuppies in Ivy League sweatshirts. DC is visibly booming and areas which would only a few years ago have been regarded as off limits to new arrivals in town are now home to hip bars and smart new apartment buildings.

Every time I’ve been back to DC recently, a good restaurant and a better bar has opened up. But the main attraction of DC is — and always will be — its monuments and seats of power.

The best way to see them is on a long looping walk. Fortify yourself with a good breakfast of pancakes and coffee — the diner at Columbia and 18th serves up helpings so large that even the most dedicated trencherman is unlikely to clean his plate — and then head to Arlington National Cemetery, the least hyped of the area’s attractions.

There is something incredibly moving about Arlington. In this most individualistic of societies, where you can personalise everything from your mobile phone ring to your morning coffee, the row upon row of simple, uniform white headstones testify to how this individual liberty is in service of a cause greater than itself. If you head away from the drive and the Kennedy tomb, you can walk through acres of graves in quiet contemplation. Far from being depressing, it is an inspiring experience. The surnames on the headstones provide a fascinating glimpse of how the ingredients in the American melting pot have changed.

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