Of two cities

“You can’t leave now!” admonished my desk-mate Jan, a secretary at the D.C. law firm where I interned, wagging her bangled wrist at me. She wore a belly-dancing costume, complete with a gold-sequined brassiere, beneath an oversized blazer that made the outfit loosely work-appropriate. College began in less than a week, and everything worth keeping was boxed and ready back at my apartment.

“Why not now?” I asked. My capital hometown wasn’t going anywhere, and I was off to bigger and greener (greenish) pastures on the Upper West Side of New York. The answer was simple.

“Because the man’s in town!”

The man, of course, is Barack Obama. Washingtonians had predicted how he and his cabinet would take the city by storm, invigorating its cultural life and illuminating landmarks like Ben’s Chili Bowl, a fast-food spot that played a role in the region’s African-American history. These days, we are likely to follow Rahm Emmanuel to his lunch haunt or, like columnist for The Washington Post David Ignatious, peer through barbershop windows in Georgetown to spot FBI chief Robert Mueller getting a trim.

We are newly star-struck by our own brand of celebrity, and are prone to lurking and guerilla photography, kept current with Internet tip-offs. Consider Barack’s shirtless shot on the cover of The Washingtonian, the byline “Our new neighbor is hot!” bolded to the left of his muscular chest. With city pride bolstered by a surge in national attention, we have become tourists in our own town in the best possible ways, with new eyes, ears, and things to do with them.

New York is well accustomed to its celebrities. The city’s official recreation of choice has been people-watching almost since its founding, and tourists always hope to glimpse a famous face among the crowds. Media forays like “Gossip Girl” and “NYC Prep” on Bravo market wealthy young citizens—­­­not movie stars or singers—as celebrities, rendering New York fame paradoxically common. In D.C. where the latest craze for faces is fresher, we are just coming into our city’s celebrity, rather than overindulging the next generation’s appetite for media coverage.

New Yorkers are pickier about tourists, scoffing at fanny-pack-and-all-the-same-T-shirt-wearing flocks that yielded the city $53 billion in 2008. Sometimes grumpy and often impersonal, the Big Apple has layers of toxic pesticides to wash away before the meat can be enjoyed, hazing periods for newcomers rushing this immense fraternity house. D.C. manners, on the other hand, are small-town, even Southern. A recent “New Yorker” cover poked fun at bus-tour companies promising the quickest yet most encompassing New York experience. Back in D.C., we have red-painted trolleys frequented by middle school kids visiting for the weekend, and old guys who mistake them for the Metro bus. Hop on, hop off!

Our public transportation systems are microcosms of the two cities’ patterns of motion. New York’s subway system reaches its long fingers deep into the five boroughs, but its joints are rheumatic. The trains can be fickle: late, early, steaming, icy—you may find yourself stuck for a half hour in a metal box that smells like pee. Washington’s metro (we call it that), though so small it covers only half of town, is as punctual and neat as a new intern on the Hill. The volatile nature of New York’s mass transportation and infrastructure, something like the weather, corners some citizens into fetishized pockets of personal fastidiousness. A native friend of mine, a self-described “neat freak,” frets about the mess in Carman Hall, but finds himself at home in the throng of people swarming across the street. In D.C., we drive gas-guzzling cars and scatter our belongings across wide spaces over grassy lawns, confident that our destiny belongs to ourselves, heartened by the illusion of control. Here, we are at the mercy of the city’s random fates and act accordingly, obsessing over our few personal spaces of solace.

There is evidence apart from the statistics and numbers to argue that between the two cities, D.C. is the child and New York the adult. Consider the popular “I Heart NY” T-shirts and the budding market for “I Heart D.C.” (which sells best with Obama’s face stamped on it, the blue-and-red mural version in the style of Che Guevara). Growing up in D.C., we played in public parks. Here, we study them through the lenses of architecture, city planning, and sociology. Of course, New York was also the original capital of the U.S. until it moved in 1790 to its offspring D.C. to placate the South.

Kids grow up. The MTV series “The Real World” has finally landed upon D.C. after several rounds through New York. The Washingtonian published a series called “Why We Love Living Here.” D.C. is the setting of many of the newest bestselling novels and movies like “State of Play”—it’s growing, attracting attention, and has a more open and undefined future than self-satisfied New York. But I’m growing up, and I can grow into this city of adults even when “the man” stays back home, as long as I keep the spirit of a newer construction with my eyes open and my future up in the air.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.