In my return to Washington DC after 12 years away, I’ve noticed there’s an invisible protective four-foot bubble of space between each person. I can almost see these bubbles attached to pedestrians walking their corgis on the leafy streets of Kalorama, to the buttoned-up workers waiting impatiently (but always waiting!) at crosswalks on the sterile streets downtown, the folks standing in line to order a pistachio latte at one of the many Tattes that have taken over the city. Sometimes this bubble looks like a five-foot strip of grass between blankets in the lawn seats at Wolf Trap or Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10 feet of space between a person and a painting at the National Gallery of Art, a full 12 feet of space in front of a band performing in the music room of the Phillips Collection, the “front row” forming, on its own respectful volition, halfway into the room.
If you enter someone else’s bubble, you’re violating a social contract in a city of people who have largely agreed on the right way to do things. (Did you know that if you get a license plate in DC, it automatically comes with the slogan “Taxation Without Representation” because it was decided more than 20 years that all DC residents should be ardent supporters of DC statehood?) COVID of course exacerbated the social distance, but I’d argue that a rule-following city like DC was especially primed to embrace a new set of instructions and adhere to them for longer than I’ve seen elsewhere.
In DC’s Metro system, there is a dogmatic allegiance to the idea that escalator efficiency is optimized by walking on the left and standing on the right. It’s not common here to honk your horn or to yell at someone in the streets, but it’s perfectly acceptable, neigh, encouraged, to loudly announce “Stand on the right!” to unknowing tourists in a stationary side-by-side formation on the escalator. This wholeheartedly embraced method is not born out in research and in fact this week, a social scientist published a paper arguing that it is actually not the most efficient way to get to the top of sometimes VERY VERY LONG escalators because when you get on the bottom of the escalator, you have to pick a lane immediately and one of those lanes is at a standstill. (I took the below video to highlight the very cool architecture of the DC Metro system, but then realized the video is a perfect encapsulation of the stand-on-the-right-walk-on-the-left ethos. Also, notice you’d never have fewer than three stairs in between you and the next person).
Yesterday at Orangetheory – a workout in which you’re given a number and must use the corresponding treadmill, circuit training station, and rower for the duration – we were instructed to enter our distances from an especially hard run onto a computer. As all the sweaty-yet-energized folks queued to enter their results on a computer screen, the spaces between were so respectful that me, at the end of the line for 10 people, was clear across the room. When the pre-prescribed space between set by the treadmills was eliminated, people veered so far on the side of respectability that it was ridiculous. Or am I ridiculous to want to be a little closer to everyone? To see these protective bubbles as an allegory for how I’m finding life in DC upon my return: siloed, governed by a respectable decency, filled with a rule following populace. (It’s not all bad though: I also find DC to be beautiful, diverse, arty, musical, delicious, treed, and filled with the smartest folks around). I’m not arguing for anarchy here, but there is something about the sacrosanctity and capaciousness of personal space here, the widespread adherence to unspoken rules aimed at fostering efficiency, and the comically long lead times for making social plans that contradicts the spontaneous human connections I’m longing for.
Living outside of the U.S. for more than a decade changed me countless ways, some of them tiny and frivolous like my preference for tepid drinking water, and some of them large like realizing that in countries like Spain, there’s an acceptance of all ages – from babies to the very old – in social spaces. That protective bubble, that four foot of personal space is much smaller in other countries I’ve lived in and traveled to. I’ll never forget arriving as a newlywed to Yemen, our first post abroad, and watching my ex change US dollars into Yemeni rials at a counter at the airport and seeing a man essentially rest his chin on my ex’s shoulder to wait for his turn.
Last night, my craving to be around people coming together over live music hit and I got myself to The Atlantis, an intimate venue next to DC’s slightly larger and more famous 9:30 Club. The show was sold out but someone had dropped a ticket off, so I got in for free. I got my gin and tonic from the bar and it seemed I’d have to stand right there at the bar, which was the last row of the crowd, but then I noticed there was actually plenty of room for one or two more people in between everyone in the crowd, if everyone popped their bubble or deflated it a bit. So I did what I do sometimes, a move that has made me no friends in the past, and found a spot that could more that fit me, in front of a person who was taller than me. I did not apologize profusely for taking the space but I did acknowledge my transgression with a friendly smile. I heard mutterings behind me. I didn’t really care.
If all this sounds like I’ve turned on DC, I haven’t. But I am remembering what being here in the dog days of summer feels like. When the humidity settles onto you like a layer of hot suds. That, and all the Washingtonians being away on vacation on a lake or the ocean right now also makes the city feel sleepy. I myself just booked a (spontaneous, natch) trip to Maine where I’ll spend my days kayaking, hiking, and writing. I’ll be turning the journal I kept for the past year – a terrible and wonderful (in the sense it was full of wonders) year – into a memoir. I’ll come back refreshed, inspired, and ready to get back at it, taking up space.
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