Photo by spiggycat.

Washington is no stranger to unique, strange and/or experimental neighborhood names: Swampoodle, Burleith, Foggy Bottom, Stronghold and Civic Betterment have always tickled my fancy for one reason or another. Point being: it’s hardly surprising when somebody comes along with a suggestion to carve out a new neighborhood from one or several larger hoods and then brands it with a silly-sounding name.

This weekend, I had my browser directed to this blog, which aims to cover the area between Capitol Hill and Anacostia — “Barney Circle straight out to Ward Nine!” — and brands the in-between as “Capicostia.”

There’s something about living here, ..in Penn Branch, Fairfax Village, Pope Branch, Dupont Park, Twining, Hillcrest, the Randall Highlands and probably Fairlawn, too, ..that’s different than living in other parts of River East, and the culture-angst is something only we can understand. When you think about it the only thing separating us from Capitol Hill and everything the Hill represents–sophistication, culture, history, relevance, style–is a stupid bridge and a river, and, while it seems rather inconsequential, we all know it isn’t.

Does this city really need another amorphous blob of a neighborhood with a name that’s nothing more than a portmanteau of two existing names — especially one carved from two neighborhoods whose precise boundaries many have difficulty distinguishing? Probably not. But after letting it simmer around in my brain for a couple of days, it kind of grows on you, like a jingle — and it certainly is better than some abbreviations which people try to pass off as new neighborhoods. (In this case, AnaCapHill would have been far easier to poo-poo.) Help me out here, people!