New York Times - Chi Cha

NY TIMES
September 23, 2007
Capital Gains
By HELENE COOPER

Washington, D.C., is many things -- the center of the universe, the destination of all political protests, the site of some spectacularly balmy, mosquito-free nights every fall.

But hip? Get real. One of the exhibits right now at the National Portrait Gallery features 25 paintings of the former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. When Hillary Clinton dared to show a microscopic hint of cleavage on the Senate floor, the local press gasped. And the Capitol police still give tickets for traffic infractions of the two-legged variety.

Still - the white men in blue suits have suddenly woken up to discover that the gate-crashers have not only broken into their old boys' clubs but are starting to run the show. Nancy Pelosi tore down one wall in January when she became speaker of the House, and Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting over which one of them might get to tear down the next one.

Similarly, after waiting decades for some of its blighted neighborhoods to amount to something other than block after block of boarded-up abandonment, Washington is buzzing with energy. The H Street corridor is starting to hum, with cafes and bars including the Rock and Roll Hotel, a new music club that hosts bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Solillaquists of Sound.

Gentrification along U Street as well as the adjacent areas of Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights means that the neighborhood known to Washingtonians as Adams Morgan - formerly the closest the city really got to trendy - has spread its tentacles almost to New York Avenue, the artery used by residents trying to get out of town. Here you can find popular hangouts like Busboys and Poets, a cafe and bookstore that holds Peace Corps "meet and greet" cocktail hours.

Even the age-old Smithsonian museum quarter on the National Mall has gotten a bit of a transfusion. Sure, all the old standbys, from the National Museum of Natural History to the National Air and Space Museum, are still around - and still free. But who needs to sample freeze-dried ice cream supposedly served to astronauts when you can walk next door to the hulking, limestone-clad National Museum of the American Indian and sample the nouveau indigenous cuisine (chilled hazelnut soup) served at the museum's Mitsitam Café? You can still pay respects to Dorothy's ruby slippers and Abraham Lincoln's top hat, but why not check out the three-hided dresses of Native American women at the current "Identity by Design" show?

"The city has exploded," says Mary Elizabeth Albaugh, the founder and owner of Betsy Fisher, a well-established boutique on Connecticut Avenue. Albaugh opened her store because, she said, "Washington was a ghost town when it came to shopping. There was Ann Taylor and there was Alcott & Andrews," a rather staid office-wear chain that was home to floppy bow ties and boxy jackets. Not anymore. At 5 o'clock one recent evening, Albaugh carted in a cocktail bar so that politicos and media types could enjoy raspberry martinis while they tried on Tom K. Nguyen pantsuits and Marika Charles tops. Instead of dress sizes and price tags, the conversation was about whether President Bush might shut down Guantanamo Bay.

Across town, in Capitol Hill, the seafood restaurant Johnny's Half Shell has taken over the space once occupied by the Washington institution La Colline, an upscale French place known for its sole meunière and its formal service. When Congress is in session, Johnny's is packed with staffers plowing through the extensive wine list. Look, there's Susan Collins, the lively junior member of Maine's all-female Republican Senate delegation, sipping pinot noir with her colleague and friend from across the aisle, Jane Harmon, the diminutive Democratic congresswoman from California. Snippets of their conversation reveal extensive breadth, to say the least: military intelligence (why did John Negroponte leave his post as director of national intelligence to become deputy secretary of state?), the Iraq troop surge, the best outlet shopping.

The thing about Washington is, everybody here is here for a reason, which lends a certain edge and purpose to wining and dining in the city. You don't come to D.C. because you want to relax. You only relax after you have exhausted yourself lobbying a senator to get behind your pet cause or protesting for immigration reform on the Mall.

That dichotomy comes with its own benefit, the ability to feel virtuous while sipping a mojito on the roof deck of the presidential yacht, the Sequoia, at the Potomac River's Gangplank Marina. The boat is filled with black-and-white photographs of previous visitors, from Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev to John F. Kennedy.

One Tuesday summer evening, the J.F.K. photos added a touch of irony: the party was in honor of Dagoberto Rodriguez Barrero, Fidel Castro's man in Washington, and someone official-looking was handing out Cohiba cigars. "Washington is full of people who are jaded about politics and experiences, who think they've seen and done everything," said Steven Clemons, an executive at the New America Foundation (one of the town's ubiquitous research groups) and the host of the Sequoia party. "But lately the city seems fresher somehow. All of a sudden, there seem to be opportunities for more fresh thinking."

Clemons's foreign-policy "salon dinners" at Restaurant Nora on Florida Avenue are attended by Saudi princes and Israeli peace negotiators alike. But of course, Arab princes need somewhere else to hang out when debating the status of the latest Middle East talks. Thankfully, there's Chi-Cha Lounge, with its fruity drinks, mood music and molasses-tobacco-filled hookahs. It's really too bad they don't have more places like this in the Middle East. But hey - they got 'em in D.C.

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