Forbes on Ins and Outs of D.C. Migration

One day I hope to be one of those red lines heading to New Orleans.

Assuming a large number of these movements are related to people in the military coming to and going from DC, I'd say it's US STRATCOM in Douglas County, NE.

now that's the kind of intelligent analysis i expect from the commentariat! bravo, kerguelen! (also, for being named after the one place in the world i most want to go but most likely will never make it to.)

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

Good news for Baltimore city, which appears to be a net importer of wealthier people from surrounding wealthier counties like PG County, Fairfax County, etc., and like DC - has become a net importer from the NE, and net exporter of poorer people moving to the south. In particular, check out the massive influx of PG county residents to Baltimore City. Couldn't get MoCo to B'more to come up but I suspect it's similar.

Did anyone care to click on Detroit?

Ha. That was the first city I clicked on yesterday. Pure red beams heading everywhere. So sad.

Well, so long as it's clear that you don't care about facts and just want a compelling narrative -- in other words, you've become a real mainstream journalist and are now ready to write for the Washington Post -- how about the following:

The data reveal that Obama is not actually a secret Kenyan nor an Indonesian nor a Hawaiian, but that his actual ultimate loyalties lie with the Great Lakes basin. He's been bringing armies of Buckeyes and Michiganders and Hoosiers and Illini and Cheeseheads and Minnie Sodans to massive training camps within DC, and once trained they're being shipped off to strategic targets in the South to covertly inculcate the locals with real Midwestern values, such as politeness, common sense, bottle deposit laws, the knowledge that mayonnaise is not a burger topping, rhotic speech, and hotdish. This is also why by 2020 the Big Ten will have fifty-seven members, including every BCS division team from Rutgers and Maryland in the east to Baylor and the Air Force Academy in the west. Except Notre Dame.

I thought it was naive, hard working souls being lured into DC, being stripped of their work ethic and efficiency, then put out to pasture in the South.

kriston: have you actually added up the net in-and-out migration to and from "the south" (how exactly are you defining that) and DC?

because, just looking at the numbers in the atlanta area, just because a line is bright red doesn't mean a ton of people have left DC, it could just mean that a lot of lines are overlaid on each other.

from a quick glance at atlanta area numbers, while there is a net move out of DC to there, it's not that large compared to the total number of people moving per county.

I could be misreading the data; from a gloss at the map I see more red lines moving south from D.C. and more black lines from the north moving into D.C. But I tooled around with the map feature for a while and looking at the largest cities in both regions, it looks like more people move from D.C. to the south than vice versa.

My claim is less about the data than the data visualization: "it would appear that in 2008" blah blah blah. A good data visualization is supposed to make these trends more apparent and this visualization portrays a subtle but unmistakable trend.

Is the update really needed? It's not a personal blog. It's a DC news blog. Please... no one cares how much hipster cred you have. It's predictable with yours posts now, and it's getting tired. Aaron, please stop DCist from sliding into a cliquish mess like BYT.

I had to double check the post a few times to find out what the hell you were complaining about. The little joke RE Laura Burhenn? She is a pretty well known DC entertainment personality, so I don't see anything "cred" related or "cliquish" about it.

Also, as a side note: How exactly can ANY online blog, or site, with no login required to view, and which can be commented on by all, be cliquish? How is that possible? Doesn't the term clique imply some level of exclusivity?

Yes, anyone can technically join any of these websites with (or sometimes without) a username and password.

I was referring to the fact that there seems to be a very small set of regular commenters here who have regular "in jokes", tag lines, and a very well developed intra-group banter.

We all know them

"worse than Hitler"

"whale cake"

etc

If it were a royal court, MonkeyErotica would be the court jester

Having said this, the group is not too outsider unfriendly, just a little cliquish. That's fine.

(cue the refrain of "get out", "leave", etc. ;-)

I refuse to visit Bright Young Things simply because of its painfully pretentious name.

I've been reading DCist for almost a year now, and I find it to be reasonably like a clique, mostly because of all the 'in jokes', but I don't find that love of whale cake is a huge barrier to entry.