I lived on Capitol Hill for five years, splitting my time between the Lincoln Park area of SE and the Union Station area of NE. I only moved away a few years ago, but the change in the local culture has been extraordinary. Maybe I just didn’t notice it before, but there’s an off-putting aura of pretense and pomposity that permeates the air, especially around Eastern Market. It’s like all the fashion-chasing trendsters who were too poor to buy a place in Dupont or Adams Morgan suddenly decided to migrate their herd to the Hill. I asked my friends who still live in the region if they noticed a change and they all agreed that the community was becoming a monochromatic melange of like-mindedness.

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The wife and I drove up to DC recently to explore our old haunts and visit some friends. Some things looked different and some things looked the same, but the biggest change was in the Navy Yard area where the new Washington Nationals stadium was built:

We moved away from DC just before the stadium was built and were amazed by the development in the surrounding area. Although still in the early stages of gentrification, the neighborhood is much nicer and more developed than it was when I lived there.

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