Ain’t no pill for Potomac Fever

It starts with a business suit, dark and professional. Continue with daily life and before you know it, your calendar fills with receptions as fast as your wallet with gilded, crested business cards. You wake up wondering if the chairmen of your targeted congressional committees have been confirmed yet, and debate over which 5-star restaurant to spoil yourself by visiting during Restaurant Week. You catch yourself staring listlessly at the Capitol building, then faster than you can say ‘I’ll meet you at NOAA OLA in the DOC HCHB’ you’ve got it, Potomac Fever.

The definitions of this malady vary by user from sweet to very sinister, but I feel they are all attempts to describe the variety of reactions to a particular brand of culture shock found only in Washington DC. Coming from rural Alaska, I’m still somewhat disconcerted by the littlest of things: traffic jams, clicking of my shoes on marble floors, the fact that all of my day-to-day living supplies can no longer be found in a single all-purpose store. Coming from the West Coast in general, the everyday attire here is clearly much more formal and I have quickly and drastically raised my bar on public transportation standards. But coming from anywhere there are aspects of DC life that are truly unique. For example, last week I found myself walking a few blocks alongside a group of freshmen Congressmen. They were discussing how strange it felt to be referred to as “The Honorable Mr. ____” and how sometimes they are so thrown by it that they forget to respond- now that’s a conversation you won’t overhear anywhere else.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about DC is the variety and accessibility of dining options. Every Spring and Fall during the slumps in tourist activity, DC restaurants band together to bring locals out of our everyday routine by offering fixed-price 3-course menus for Restaurant Week. As the price is the same for every restaurant, I decided to maximize my dollar and go to the most expensive establishment that would have me, which was a top notch French restaurant called the Jockey Club. The reservation process itself was a bit of an ordeal, and I found myself cajoling the maitre’d in French over the phone to allow my guest into the restaurant without the required ‘dinner jacket’. Thanks largely to luck and linguistic prowess, we were granted a corner table. The opulence of the service and meal were unlike anything I had experienced, it brought to mind a book I’d read many years ago called The Great Gatsby. If you’ve read it, no further explanation will be needed. For everyone else, let me just say that I drank champagne infused with live violets (which turn the champagne purple- very cool!), and saw the crumbs wiped from my table by a waiter with a tool specifically designed for that purpose.

The next morning I was headed out of my apartment and noticed that about half a block down the street someone had left a queen size mattress and a box spring out for the trash collectors. I promptly set up the bed on the sidewalk and tested for defects. Finding none, I adopted my new bed and no longer have to sleep on a couch! I couldn’t help but smile when I considered the expression of maitre’d from the restaurant last night had he seen me carrying a dumpster-bound mattress home just hours after serving up the most luxurious meal of my life. Well, I could do far worse than give the honest truth of how to live a champagne lifestyle on a lemonade budget. Drink up. While I don’t know what a year in DC will make of me, whether or not I’ll be stricken with a perilous strain of Potomac Fever, it is my pleasure to broadcast the journey by sharing what I’m making of DC.