April 6, 2006
Some of the District's Myths
Courtesy of the Post's Metro columnist Marc Fisher, today we discover that there are any number of myths about the District that seem to be communicated from generation to generation without anyone interjecting to speak truth to them. Along with the myth that Georgetown residents stopped a Metro station from being built in the neighborhood in order to keep the poor and dirty masses out, Fisher points to these interesting D.C. myths:
- Built on a swampThere are more myths and truths to be had in the comments section, including one involving a condom on the Washington Monument and one musing on a supposed carving of Robert E. Lee's head behind Lincoln's right ear at the Lincoln Memorial.
- Plan reconstructed out of Banneker's memory after L'Enfant was fired
- Plan copied after Versailles
- Circles and avenues for military purposes/crowd control
- No J Street to slight John Jay or Thomas Jefferson
Any myths you'd like to share?
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hell, beyond a couple of other myths posted, we got no answers about much on that post thread.... and worse off, we got a tirade of racial arguments.... wow.
Yeah I read that thread yesterday. I second that Wow. It gets pretty heated here, but we can't hold a candle to some of the threads you'll see over at the Post.
exactly, i don't think you can get credit for exposing "myths" if you don't explain what the truth is. maybe its a myth that its not a myth.
that said, the cited "myths" in the dcist article do seem to be legitimate myths....though the "swamp" one is debatable. The entire city wasn't a swamp, but there were indeed swampy and marshy areas.
snopes.com looks into a number of these myths and explains the truth behind them (if any).
Oh and, why isn't there a J st? I've always thought it had something to do with the way they wrote letters back then, that maybe the j and the l were too similar and people would get confused (but that's probably not true considering that s' looked like f's back then, and I's still look like l's).
Yeah, I didn't understand making the debate a racial one. That one guy who went off on white people needs to lighten up. Why post a racial argument on a Myth article?
Cherished DC myths, eh? How about:
-Gun control lowers violent crime.
-DJ nights are killing live music in DC.
-A billion dollars will fix the DC Public School System.
-Saint Ex is a fun place to see and be seen.
-George Pellecanos is a hardboiled, edgy detective writer.
-Pizza Mart offers some great-tasting slices that won't give you diarrhea.
I could go on, but I'm choking on my bile.
Oh and, why isn't there a J st?
I believe this has something to do with i and j being close to interchangeable consonants at the time. The letter j wasn't common so it was omitted from to avoid confusion.
I and J were originally the same letter. They were definitely different by the time DC was built, but there was still a tradition of leaving one out when using a series of letters to identify things.
I and J were originally the same letter. They were definitely different by the time DC was built
I've heard that they were still more or less interchangeable in the late 18th/early 19th c., and that is the reason J St. was left out of the L'Enfant Plan.
Apparently this is also the source for the I St. / "Eye" St. thing -
I and J were originally the same letter. They were definitely different by the time DC was built
I've heard that they were still more or less interchangeable in the late 18th/early 19th c., and that is the reason J St. was left out of the L'Enfant Plan.
Apparently this is also the source for the I St. / "Eye" St. thing -
Outside of the District, there's the disputed fact (and perhaps myth) about the Iwo Jima monument having 13 hands but only 6 men holding the flag. You guessed it...the hand of God.
I first heard the "traffic circles as military defense" myth a few years ago. I believe the truth has to do with the triangular lots that would have otherwise been created by the intersection of two streets and one (or more) avenues.
I think people use Eye St so others don't think I St is 1 St.
I was pretty shocked about the racial arguments on the Post site. I recently had a conversation about my neighborhood with a guy who grew up there but decided to move to Fredericksburg. His attitude about white people moving into DC was appalling for someone who grew up in an urban environment and moved into a rural area (though I have no idea what Fredericksburg's tradiational racial make up was).
To me it was all summed-up by my neighbors telling me in 1995 that I "didn't need to fix up my house in one summer" and I should "spread out ALL the work we were doing over 10 years." We were doing small things like planting flowers and removing flaking lead paint! The kinds of weekend jobs I spent my childhood doing at my parent's house. We just bought the house and were too broke to renovate it.
I think the greatest DC myth was the crack war attitude the houses were slummy and offered nothing. I grew up thinking that until I actually visited stunning neighborhoods east of the park.
Don
that was such a buzz kill. there were all these myths but no truths. booo.
and then that damn "frankie" war. so useless. where are the truths? oops, forgot...we live in washington, dc.
I'm confused. The Georgetown Metro racism myth was not in fact demonstrated to be an actual myth on the Fisher article... so... uh...
huh?