Hey Dan

We did the National Zoo this summer with my family while there on vacation and you will be disappointed, Dan. I was. It is still nice and there are some cool things but on the whole, I think the Ft Worth Zoo is better now. And being a native boy of the Washington area, you know how hard that is for me to admit. I am not saying that you should not go though... The Panda's rock.

OK, so on the surface DC may suck, but there is a really cool underground scene there. Here are all of the links I could gather in an apropriate - "Yes I am working, and not waisting time" period.

k

http://www.getunderground.com/index.cfm

http://www.bloodlink.com/

http://www.dischord.com/

http://63.247.131.180/~zoemitch/archives/000015.html

http://www.dcmusicnet.com/index.html

http://www.bust.com/index.shtml (ok, this is in NY now, but I think it started from the DC led riot girl movement.)

From week-long visits I made in 1978 and 1980, DC is one of my favorite places. I found it a serenely relaxing contrast to Chicago in one direction and New York in the other. (Of course, back then I was on couple of my Great American Zoo Binges, thanks to my dad buying me $150 Trailways/Greathound passes that were good for a month. I was able to walk to almost everything I wanted to see from the sweetly delapidated hotels I stayed at. I found a certain magic there - Even twentythree years ago you had to get a security pass to enter the Bureau of Commerce - to go down in the basement and see the National Aquarium.

Two things you might not expect me to reccomend the next time you're there:

The enormous Miro tapestry , hanging near a Calder mobile, and an enigmatic Isamu Noguchi something-or-other (I think he called it "The Great Stone of Inner Repose"), in the East Building of the National Gallery.

The "Peacock Room" at the Freer Gallery (A tiny department of the Smithsonian, with its own building and research collections). Quite a story behind that - an American Millionare buys the three hundred year old leather salvaged from a Spanish galleon to cover the wals of a salon in his palatial house. He commisioned James MacNiel Whistler to "decorate" the leather. It is fair to say he was shocked and apalled. Whistler, who could be a master of understatement, was nothing of the kind this time around...

Something else I would recommend is likely not where I remember seeing it: The Sir David Orpin painting of Woodrew Wilson, executed in 1919. It was around the first thing you saw on the White House tour, but I know they change things around at intervals... At any rate, it's my favorite portrait ("Parson Weem's Fable" at the Ammon Carter is my favorite painting, but scarcely a portrait...)

Actually, it's Sir William Orpen.

Bust kicks ass. Sarah loves the magazine.
http://www.bust.com/

--Dean

My husband and I moved to DC about a year ago, and I agree with you...this city is stuffy.

I'm also not sure that this is the time to visit the National Zoo. It has had problems, with animals dying and also mismanagment.

But there is definitely a music scene...if you like punk. Plus there is a theater scene as well--both mainstream & less so.