Roberto on Coming to Terms with Himself

"I am fifth generation born in El Paso, Texas. I grew up with my Mom and three sisters, as my Dad was not around. My Mom owned a hair salon and I spent a lot of time there. Back in the day, I never knew if I wanted to do interior design or hair, but I never did either because I thought they were too gay. I always knew that I was gay, but I just thought that I was a freak and there was something wrong with me that could be fixed. Seriously.

"My Mom and I are very close, but she is a really simple woman. One time, she told me that if she found out that her only son was gay, she would kill herself. What do you say to that?  I mean, how could I tell my Mom that I wanted to go to hair school? It was basically like coming out of the closet. You spend your time doing hair and carrying around a bag with rollers and flat irons. I loved it, but that is pretty gay. I only decided to enroll in hair school when I came to terms with myself. Now, I am 38 and finally came out to my Mom three Christmases ago. She turned out to be cool with it. I think that she always knew. She was just in denial.

"For most of my life in El Paso, I lived two lives. In high school, I was still in the closet, so I did the whole girlfriend thing and played sports. Right out of high school, I met these guys from Juarez, Mexico who played on a gay volleyball team in El Paso. I started practicing with them and hung out with them because they were the only gay guys that I knew. The whole time, I also had my straight friends and my straight life. I never mixed the two worlds. If it was not for volleyball and meeting those guys, I don't know where I'd be. I'd probably still be straight and in El Paso. 

"I ended up leaving El Paso and moving in with my boyfriend in Dallas. When that didn't work out, I was talking with one of my volleyball friends who encouraged me to move to D.C. where he was. When I got here, I worked at a law firm and as a courthouse and jail clerk while I went to hair school at night. It was scary to leave my federal job to pursue hair, but I fucking hated it. My first job was in a really conservative salon in the World Bank, so I wasn't getting a chance to be creative until I started working at Bang salon. 

"D.C. is getting better, but it can still be pretty lame in terms of hair and design. Most people here are so afraid to do something different because they work in politics. I get tons of girls who come in and say, 'Do something edgy.' As soon as I give them ideas, they get scared and want to go back to their same haircut. What's that term, freak in the sheets and a lady on the streets. It's like that, I guess. Still, it is so much better than when I came here ten years ago. 

"For the most part, I love my clients. I have had to divorce a few of them, but overall they are great. We talk about all kinds of stuff in the chair. Most of these people are sitting behind a desk all day and they want to gossip and hear my crazy stories. They tell me a lot of stuff, too. And I mean, a lot of stuff. I hear about women who cheat on their husbands or have had lesbian experiences. I've heard it all. I guess that girls love that whole Will and Grace thing and want to have a cool, gay best friend." 

You can find Roberto at Bang Salon at 601 F Street NW.

Saro on Who He Is

"I'm 17. Throughout my life, I have lived in the whole D.C. metropolitan area. Now, I live in Arlington. I came out when I was 15. I always knew that I was gay. As a kid, I played dress up with the girls and loved Barbies. I really wanted to tell people before, but I couldn't. I finally decided to tell everyone how I really was in the 8th grade because I wanted to start high school as a new me. Telling my Mom was easier than I thought because she always knew. It was hard on my father, though. He took it worse than my Mom did. My friends already knew too, they were just waiting for me to say it. 

"Now, it is fun being a young, gay teen. I have a lot of friends and do the normal stuff that teenagers do. I have a lot of straight friends, too. A lot of my friends don't care that I am gay. They know that even though I am gay, there are barriers that we won't cross as friends. Other people can be all fake towards me because they don't want to be perceived as gay because they are around me. So, we can be friends in private, but not in public. I tell you, I am not really one who is pressed to have a lot of friends, though. If you are close to me, you are close to me. If you are not, you're not. That is the way I carry it. I'm a fun, good person and like to party like everyone else. That's all that should matter. 

"When I grow up, I want to work in fashion. I love fashion. I only read Vogue and W magazine. I grew up with style. My Mom is Vietnamese and black. My grandmother is German and my grandfather is Polish, so I grew up around a lot of different cultures and styles. They have all defined my own personal style. Now, I like to dress the way I like to dress and wear my hair the way that I like to wear my hair. This is just who I am."

Sherri on Hair-Flair for Hope

"My family goes back three generations in Washington, D.C. I went to Florida for college, but couldn't take the heat and lack of culture there, so I moved back to this area. I transferred to the University of Maryland and got a job as a DJ. At the time, I was all rock and roll and had a pink mohawk. After school, I cleaned up a little and took a job at IBM. I started off in administration and ended up as a systems engineer, which is something that none of my friends know because I don't have a cell phone and people think of me as a technophobe. I was actually a Unix systems engineer.  

“All through my working life, I was always searching for this really creative career. I worked at a number of big organizations, but always felt like a fish out of water. Then I got sick a number of years ago and had to leave the work force. I spent ten years flailing around and had no focus. I was spending a lot of time at home and started making colorful wigs out of yarn because I always dressed slightly out of the norm. I started making them for my friends who were in the arts and began holding wig-making workshops. 

“At the time, I lost a number of people to cancer who meant a lot to me. One in particular was Kimberly ‘Kaihea’ Rupp.  She told me that she wished she could come to one of my workshops and make a wig, as she had experienced hair-loss at the time of chemotherapy. At the time, I hadn't figured out how to attach the wig to a bare scalp. I have always regretted that I didn’t figure out how to make her a fabulous wig, but I named this project in her honor. Now we make wigs on bandana-shaped wig-caps. 

“Cancer is a really frightening thing, and I wanted to find a way to make women and children feel like rock stars. I think that people who lose their hair to medical treatments go through a period when they are grieving about their own loss, especially after chemotherapy.  We are all walking canvases of art. I have always believed that the face deserves a proper frame of hair. More than anything, our hair is a simple representation of what our attitude is on the inside. I hope that on the days when people who are ill feel like they don’t have a lot of light, these wigs will help them illuminate their beautiful inner colors.

“Now I wear my wig most of the time. Originally, I did it because I thought it looked cool. I wear it in solidarity with people who have gone through something more terrifying than I can imagine. This project has given me something to identify with after feeling so devoid of life for so long after I had gotten sick. With this project, I feel plugged into life again.” 

Learn more about Hair-Flair for Hope, Sherri's organization, here. To donate money, materials or time, email Sherri at info@hairflairforhope.org.  

Jen on Being Miss District of Columbia

"I grew up on Long Island. I wanted to be a music major in college and got a scholarship to go to the Hartt School in Hartford. I accepted and about a week later, I was hysterically crying and told my Mom that I would hate Hartford. Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to move to D.C. So, I switched and came to D.C. That one decision has completely changed my entire life.

"I watched Miss America when I was little with my sisters, but never thought about actually competing. I had all of these stereotypes of pageant girls. I was the type of girl who would never wear make up, never go the gym, and never do my hair. I ended up getting into the pageant world because my voice teacher here was the voice teacher of a former Miss D.C. She got an email asking if she had any students who would be interested in auditioning. She came to me one day and said, ‘I decided that this year you are going to be Miss D.C. and then be Miss America!’ I just laughed.

"She kept bugging me and I eventually went to the audition and made the Top 15. It actually turned out to be pretty fun. I got on stage and sang a song, O Mio Babbino Caro, and walked around in a swimsuit and an evening gown and got paid. Plus, the other girls were nothing like I expected. They worked on the Hill or were in college. One girl was even trying to get into the FBI. Many states are very 'pageanty', but not D.C. The girls here are all really smart and professionally driven.

"The experience also taught me some of the beauty tricks for pageant girls. You glue your bathing suit to your butt, so you don’t get a wedgie when you’re on stage. We all bronze our abs and legs to make them look more defined. You also put hemorrhoid cream under your eyes and on your legs the night before, so that it sucks in all of the moisture and makes you more defined. Some girls even wear Vaseline on their teeth to help their smile.

"I ended up competing three years in a row. This year, I came to Miss D.C. to win and go to Miss America. It was my senior year of college and all of my friends were applying for jobs. They asked me where I was applying and I said, 'I am not applying for jobs because I am going to win Miss. D.C.' I just knew it. Walking out on stage at the final crowning, I said to myself, I am not going to make that face and start crying. That is the first thing that I did when they called my name. I can’t believe that I did that. I am still so angry at myself.

"Everything changed after winning Miss D.C. and getting Top 10 at Miss America. I got to meet President Obama. I get to go to all of these fun events. I got to sing the national anthem at a Caps and Nationals game. I am working to promote my platforms of recycling and education all around the city. I mean, who does that? One thing, though, is that as much as I want to be myself as Miss D.C., people have certain expectations of what a pageant girl should be. I try and work to balance my life as Jen Corey and Miss D,C. to have a little of each in both. My friends make fun of me for being in full make up all of the time, but my biggest fear is to introduce myself as Miss D.C. and someone says, ‘Really?’ I still have my friend’s houses where I can go to as a refuge and I am still the sweetheart of one of the fraternities at American. I can go over there with my sweatpants and drink a beer, eat a whole pizza, watch the Superbowl, and just be Jen."

Learn more about Miss District of Columbia here. Hear Jen's rap song "Dream Without Boundaries" with Kokayi here.

Ann on Being a Korean Export

"I came to Washington, D.C. in 1969 from Korea. A U.S. Army soldier married me and brought me here. See, I'm a Korean export! I always tell people that I must have been very beautiful, that's how I left. When I was little, I thought America was a paradise because Americans gave us chocolate and blankets after the war. But there was no way for me to visit America because I was not rich. So, my girlfriend and I decided to date American guys.

"When I met my husband, I spoke very little English and he didn't speak Korean. We just used our hands and said, 'Hi' and other little words. My husband is over six feet and I am under five feet. I said, 'I can't marry you. You are too tall!' I wanted to go to America, but I thought that too much of a height gap was not right. He told me that height didn't mean nothing. My husband is from Washington, D.C. After we married, we moved here.

"I thought America was a paradise when I was in Korea, but it was a big mistake. Koreans are short and tall, poor and rich. In America, you have extra ones. Here, you have color and race problems, too. I said to myself, 'What am I doing here?' I cried for five or ten years. I told my husband, 'There are so many women here. Why did you have to bring me here!?' I missed my food, my language and culture. Back then, there were not that many Koreans here. But now I have adapted and this is my country. I also took on an American name, Ann. Ann was the name of a character from the comics who I liked. People would always mispronounce my Korean name, Sok, and call me 'Sock.' So, I decided to go by Ann.

"In America, my first jobs were working with hair. In Korea, everyone cleans their hair and wants to make it nice. Here, it was totally different. Doing hair was more like doing laundry! One of my friends told me to go and work in a Korean wig shop. In Korea, wigs were used to help people who were old or losing their hair. I think wigs as fashion was really an American thing. Korean people eat a lot of garlic and that is why their hair grows so long and clean. For a long time, Koreans sold their hair to Americans to make wigs. About ten years ago, there was a hair shortage in Korea and places like India and China started selling hair.

"A few years after working at the shop, I opened my own store. At first, we did hair and sold wigs and beauty supplies. Five years later, I started selling homeopathic products because I was using them. They really helped me and I thought I could help my customers by selling them. Now, I have been in this location since September 4, 1995. This wig store paid for my three children to go to college."

Ann's Beauty Supply and Wigs Co. is located at 125 L St. Southeast.

Sandy on Playing a Part in Something Bigger

"I first came to D.C. in 1991. I really just fell in love with the city. Before D.C., I was working in a costume shop in Philadelphia. When I came here, I worked at Backstage when it was still in Dupont Circle. Eventually, we moved to a bigger space in Southeast and then I bought the store from the original owner. Before us, there really wasn't a supply house in the District of Columbia for either theater books or dance wear. We are also one of the few places where you can do custom costume orders. You can come in with a sketch and we will build it. 

"Theater and art are things that I have always loved. I also did a bit of acting, but I stopped because I got too nervous at auditions. My love for costume design really picked up in college where I was able to combine my love of sewing with learning about the historical components of how things were made and the materials that were used at different times in history. 

"In D.C., I have gone in directions I never thought I would go into with costume design, like working with lobby groups. These groups usually do not want the kings, queens, and renaissance style costumes I thought I would do when I first got into this business. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asked us to make a broccoli costume. An environmental lobby group had us build smoke stack and tree stump costumes. Another group had me make large hamburgers and huge pill capsules stuffed with styrofoam pellets, as they were picketing places that used meats with antibiotics. Now, a couple of those restaurants say they will not use meats that have antibiotics anymore. I am proud of things like that. I feel like I played a part in something bigger. 

"With costumes, I think that when people wear them, their personality can change. But I also feel that a lot of times, their personality has been there the whole time and they just don't let it loose. In this business, I learn a lot about people and their behaviors. I can usually tell how long a couple has been together when they come in.  A lot of newer couples want matching costumes where even the fabric has to be the same. Whereas couples that have been together for years are okay for one to go as Elvis and the other to go as a clown. They don't have to match because they are more secure in their relationship. It is fun to figure people out through working in this business. There is definitely a psychology behind costumes."

Backstage is located at 545 8th Street Southeast. 

Hollywood on Being in the Position to Have No Competition

"I came up in Philadelphia. I like that town, it really is the City of Brotherly Love. As kid, my family was not interested in what I was doing. When you are young, you can't say or do anything about that, but as soon as I was old enough to walk away, I did. I was about sixteen when I left home. After that, I went traveling and saw some crazy stuff: Ku Klux Klan members in South Carolina and go-go girls in New Jersey.

"I spent most of my time in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Then, I came to D.C. about 20 years ago. I got tired of people with gold in their mouth in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, they were too busy. In New York, everyone seemed to think they had it all. D.C. has that executive look, you know the monkey suit with the briefcase. That drew me in here because I am a dresser. I wear clothes that make people come to me. The inclination is to keep Hollywood on your mind. I want you to say, 'I got to see him again.' I always look 'sugar sharp' as they say in Detroit. I would be unrecognizable if I put on a regular costume like everyone else. But you can see me from a distance. They know me all over the city. When people see me they go home and change their clothes and say, 'Damn, did you see what Hollywood had on? What we got on ain't gonna work!' See, I'm in the position to have no competition.

"For me, life is about understanding the circumstances of where you're at. I wouldn't live with a bear knowing that bear could attack me at any time. I wouldn't try to fight a shark. I don't need to prove things to people. You gotta be real in life. I'm real about what I do. You can wake me up at 2 a.m. and I'm gonna tell you the same thing I'm telling you now. You can't catch me in a lie because I don't know how to lie. Progress comes when people don't lie to each other and are real.

"Last thing I want to say is that I wish black people would stick together. Other nationalities do it consistently no matter what the issue is. I'm sorry that we have to get so much money from the government and we still don't stick together. If I had money and was in charge, everybody would eat, have a place to sleep and have jobs. I'd be like Leon Sullivan and help black people learn trades. I guess my problem is that I help too many people. That's why I don't get a woman or a horse or a cow. You can't get anything when you're a good guy. Because of that, I stick to myself. I eat by myself. I drink by myself. That is the safest way for me to live."

Adam Ross and I conducted this interview.

Terrence on Dressing for the Occasion

"I grew up in D.C., 14th and Randolph St. Northwest. I spent most of my life in D.C. until I moved to Montgomery County and then joined the Army. I served for eight years, including tours in Germany and California. I came back to D.C. in 1985 after being discharged. I had a brain aneurysm in California and now the left side of my body is paralyzed. I came back because this was home and pretty much all of my family lives here. This place had changed a lot while I was away and continues to change all the time. Just look at some of our neighborhoods. I mean Chinatown is completely different than how it was when I was coming up.

"Today, I had a job interview doing security so I had to dress for the occasion. I woke up this morning and this is what I felt like wearing. Come on man, I got this job. I have been in the Army for eight years. I know what I am doing when it comes to security."

Jason on the Old Post Office

"I have been working as a park ranger in D.C. for four years. I used to be a teacher and feel like this job allows me to teach and be outside at the same time. I grew up around the Park Service as my father works for them. This job is great as it is a progressive education on this city. They give us a lot of research time to learn about buildings and the city. During my four years, I have worked at the Washington Monument, Jefferson, Lincoln, Vietnam, FDR, and Korean War Memorials. Now, I split my time on the Mall and the Old Post Office Tower at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

"The Old Post Office was built from 1892 - 1899 as an urban renewal project. It was constructed as both a post office as well as the Postal Department's National Headquarters. This area was once known as Hookers Bay. Hookers Division stayed here during the Civil War and that brought a lot of prostitution and alcoholism. In addition, the canal connecting the Capitol to the Potomac River, used to construct the Capitol Building, had become stagnant and disease infested. The government built this beautiful building to try and bring up this part of town. The style is called Richardsonian Romanesque. It is based on the work of H.H. Richardson who is known as the first major American architect. This building is almost an exact replica of the Allegheny Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which Richardson thought was his best piece of work. So, D.C. has a replica of one of the most important pieces of early American architecture. 

"However, when it was completed, people didn't like this building because the Richardsonian style was then about twenty years out of date. People used to call this the old tooth. They also thought it was too decadent and an example of government waste. It was not as functional as many people would have liked. Because of that, the building was almost destroyed in the 1930's, but because of the Great Depression the government couldn't afford to tear it down. It stood for about forty years during which time the FBI used it as a D.C. field office as did some other government agencies.  

"By the 1970's, it had really fallen into disrepair. At that point, they were going to tear it down as originally planned, but Nancy Hanks who was the head of the National Endowment for the Arts convinced Congress to save the building as a historic landmark. It was renovated in 1983. Now, it houses the offices for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation and some other government agencies. It also became the first building in D.C. to serve the three functions of housing government offices, supporting a commercial area and food court and being a tourist destination staffed by the Parks Service." 

Learn more about the Old Post Office here. When not working as a park ranger, Jason plays in the band Sun Committee. Check them out here. 

Cory on Bringing More Character to D.C. Design

“I started working as a designer right after graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara. With time, I got tired of my boss and Santa Barbara and quit my job on September 10, 2001. That made the next day all the more tragic for me. I was in limbo for almost a year and ended up getting into the design program at the Corcoran in D.C. I packed up my truck and drove cross-country in about five days. When I got here, I was totally out of my element. It took me a good while to adjust because people have such a different mentality on the East Coast. People were so tied in to their professions and ambition here in a way that I did not experience on the West Coast. To this day, that singular focus on profession gets to me because I feel like people here are not present and can’t appreciate the little things. But, that sense of ambition is something that I absorbed and apply to my work in design. After graduating from the Corcoran, I started working at the Affinity Lab in September 2005. The lab is the perfect combination of everything I love about back home and here. 

"People always ask me, ‘You moved here from California!?’ They’re confused, but I say that I have never felt more at home anyplace else. There is a sense of history here. California is so easy and beautiful, but this place has edge and challenges you. I am always looking to position myself in a place where I am being pushed. You go to Philly, New York or Chicago and you know what those places taste like. D.C. tastes like poi, it’s flavorless and goes well with certain things. Being here, you are pushed to find those certain things, which makes you appreciate them so much more when you find them.

"One unfortunate thing about D.C. is that there is not much inspirational design. I always feel like D.C. maintains a support system for the mundane. I don’t get to experience a lot of visually challenging things there. There haven’t been enough people here focused on pushing the boundaries. Most people who come here have one focus: how to find fame, fortune or notoriety in politics and business. When you are going for those traditional professions and you don’t have something that supports experimentation, you don’t get really intriguing cultural elements. We need to create more what the fuck is this moments with design in D.C! Everything is too conventional. D.C. needs more character big-time. A lot of the character traditionally comes from the historical communities in cities. Sadly, many of those communities have been pushed out or are under-appreciated by those who come with a singular focus. Through my design, I am trying to bring more of that here."

See Cory's work here. 

Sheldon on His Mom's First Visit to D.C.

"I grew up in South Carolina. I've been in Washington for nine-and-a-half years. I think that one of the largest motivating factors for me to move to D.C. was spread somewhere between personal and career motivations. You know, I am an openly gay black male and I spent most of my time, up until that point, living in the rural south. I knew that there was a limit to my own personal quality of life and development down there. Unfortunately, that is just the way that life down there is structured. So, I wanted to explore that part of my life in D.C. In terms of career, the pace down there was much slower. Things like actualizing a career take a long time. I was working for an organization where my next move up would have had to depend on the death or retirement of the person above me. I just didn't have the energy to wait for twenty or thirty years for a promotion. On the other hand, it can also be faster down there as people get married and have kids earlier. I'm 33 and most of my friends have kids who are about to enter middle school.

"When I first moved here, I lived in Alexandria, Virginia, and worked as a psychotherapist with sex offenders. Living and being in this area was like a gateway to so many different worlds that I never saw in South Carolina. With time, I saw the writing on the wall that therapy was not the path for me. I did some work in the fashion industry and then started performing and acting while waiting tables. Now, I work at restaurant Marvin. I did my first show in 2007. At that point, I was in between directions in life between activism and performing. The juxtaposition of the two forced me to do my activism through performance. My first show was a one-man performance called Faggot. The show was about my relationship with that word growing up in the south. It was also about how that word can have a potentially deadly impact with the growing level of youth suicide related to sexuality. In 2009, I got back on the performance track and performed a narrative about the two halves of my life: growing up in rural South Carolina looking for a man as a father figure and then moving to D.C. and looking for a man as a partner. For me, it is a very necessary and personal exercise because I wanted to deal with the honesty of my own story so that I could go on and tell the stories of others, no matter how painful it may be. A lot of this story was about my own family and my relationship with my mother.

"My mother only fairly recently came to terms with my sexuality. We had the first conversation about my sexuality in 2001. It was a very challenging conversation for her. She had her ideas of what it meant to be gay. Growing up in the rural south, she had a very narrow view that gay people ended up alone and in institutions. I always tried to encourage my Mom to come up to Washington D.C., and see for herself, but just was never interested. I knew that it was largely because she was not settled with my sexuality.

"But, in 2008, she came to me and said, 'I'm ready.' I had already been up here for eight years and I knew what that meant. My mother is not a very expressive person, but she was ready to see what my life was really about here. She came up here and saw my life and met all my friends: gay, straight, black and white. I really showed her the diversity of this city and of my life. She was so taken aback. She could not stop talking about how much she enjoyed herself in Washington D.C. I think that me being in this place offered her tremendous comfort. Being a therapist, I understand the complexity of parents having to deal with a child who is gay or in any way different than they intended them to be. All parents really want is for their children to be happy. If her understanding of gay life was a very miserable existence, why would she want that for her child? When she came here and saw that was not the case for me, I think she was settled with it. But, she never said anything or asked, it was just understood. A month later on the phone, she asked if I was gay. I said. 'Yeah, absolutely.' At the end of the conversation, she took a big sigh of relief. One of the most comforting things that my mother ever said to me, remember she is not a very expressive person, was, 'You seem to be doing very well in Washington. You are surrounded by a lot of people that really like you. I am happy for you. So, do you have a 'friend'?' That was a really big step for us. She's been back to Washington, D.C. two times since and we talk two-to-three times a day. Now, every time she's here, she wants to spend more and more time with me in Washington."

JD on Style and Class

“I grew up all over this city: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. I have lived in every part of this city for at least five years each. It was cool, but uptown is where the style is at. Southeast has a little something something. Southwest is suburban. Northeast is in between. But, uptown DC is where you need to be. I love it here. When I grew up, there were lots of drugs around. There were lots of drug dealers and prostitutes in the 70’s. Then crack came in the 80’s. But, the city has changed.

“In my time here, I can say that a lot of people don’t understand fashion or style in this city. They think they know, but they have no idea. They think that what they see in the music videos is style, but it ain’t. They be wearing an orange hat with an orange shirt. Just because you match don’t necessarily mean you’re in coordination with the style of the times. You got to give it your own twist and wear what you feel. If it feels good to you and looks good to you and it’s tailored right, you good. That is the way it should be. D.C. needs to look to the red carpet, that’s style. That’s what we need to bring here, some style and class. My D.C. style is funky with a little twist of retro. I feel good in everything I wear.

“I think that part of D.C.’s lack of style comes from the lack of boutiques. This city needs to find a way of bringing small businesses back into the district. It’s hard with all of the malls around. We need more small businesses which bring money, jobs and style to the community. With small businesses here, it’s a win-win situation for the business and community. It’s not like that with them big malls. Look, style was not started in malls, but boutiques. You can interact with someone in a boutique. It’s not like at the mall where you’re just the next person in line. In a small business, you gonna know your customers and make time to interact with them. Hands on with everything, that’s the way a business should be.”

Read more about D.C.'s particular fashion style from Lara.

Tone on Being Well Groomed

"I'm from Brooklyn. I came to D.C. about thirteen years ago. I wanted a change of pace and a different environment as New York is so congested and crazy. The thing that keeps me here is the women! Not really...OK, really it is the women!

"But, on the serious, it is a calmer pace of life here. It's a big break from the city. You get tired of the New York city atmosphere after a while. As I get older, I want to wind down a little bit. I wouldn't want to live in New York again. It's like going from calm to crazy. No matter what, though, I will always be a Yankees fan. That rubs some people here the wrong way here. I guess people are just always coming after the best! Sometimes, I feel like a raisin in milk as everyone is coming after me. You've got those who are cool with it and those who aren't, but I am not going to change my logo for anyone.

"I've been at this barbershop for six months and have been cutting hair for twenty years. A guy named Isaac taught me everything I know. The money is good. I love the camaraderie of the barber shop. I cut women's hair, too. It is a great joy to cut a woman's hair. You get to cut the woman's hair and maybe, if the conversation is nice, it may turn into a date. I've had quite a few of those! But, back to the barbershop. We get to talk, you know, and learn different things from each other. It is real, like, therapeutic, better than going to a psychiatrist. You can express yourself in here. You get some arguments, but there is always laughter and some serious issues. I don't think there is anything in the world like a barbershop. This is like a community center. It's just about communication in here.

"And a barbershop is gonna make you look good. It is important for a man to be well groomed, you know. A well groomed man is everything. You can't be well dressed and not have your hair and face done. It comes with the image. I cut my hair on a regular basis, maybe once a week. You would never see me without a haircut or shave. I don't want to look at myself when I am not groomed."

Tone works at Carl's Barbershop at 1406 P St. NW. Read more about barbershops from Hollywood.

Svetlana on Brightest Young Things

“When I got to DC, I knew no one. At the time, I had a boyfriend who lived in LA, such a bad idea. I spent a year traveling back and forth and not giving DC a chance at all, just meeting a person here and there. Then, I broke up with my boyfriend and I decided to focus and really like DC and make it mine. I always used to take pictures and write stories on MySpace, basically narrating what was going on around town. My site really grew and I started getting 500 people a day or so checking out my photos. And, all of these people would come up to me and say, “Hey, you’re that girl who does those pictures.”

“So, my friend, Jason, suggested that we put the website out into the larger world. In 2006, we converted my site into a shitty blog and called it Brightest Young Things. I always wanted to call the blog that after Evelyn Waugh's novel, Vile Bodies. I wanted the name to be funny. The book talks about all of these kids running through London in the 1920's and they have nothing, but partying and live a very superficial life. In the book, they call those kids bright young things. Some people get the joke and some people don’t.

“Right now, our traffic is about 100,000 visitors a month. Sometimes, upwards of 10,000 a day. Now, we have 30 photographers, 60 contributors, and it’s a tight group of friends. So, we just went full-time in July. In the future, we are going to do more festivals and things that take over whole neighborhoods, especially parts of the city that many people don’t normally think of.

“I think that the parties we throw couldn’t happen in any place but DC. DC is an exceptionally smart city and its, like, a conquerable city so there is a sense of familiarity and everyone knows everyone. If you give people a chance to have fun and do something different and creative here, of course everyone is going to jump at it. To think that I needed something to do to avoid thinking about my breakup and now I have BYT, it’s pretty awesome. “

Brightest Young Things is organizing The Bentzen Ball, a comedy festival, this weekend. Get tickets here.

Georges de Paris on How the Presidents Measure up

“I come from France. I’ve been a tailor since I was 14 years old. My family wanted me to be a lawyer, my father was a supreme court justice, but I wanted to be a tailor. My sister is a lawyer, though.

“I’ve been in DC for 50 years and opened this shop in 1982. A lady brought me here to DC. She was French-American, but it didn’t work out. After that, things were difficult. You know, I became homeless. I lived on the street at 14th and K St, NW, for a number of months. But things turned around.

“In my time here, I’ve seen a lot of people, a lot of personalities, come through this door: presidents, senators, some poor people and some rich people. First president I worked with was Lyndon Johnson. I was recommended to him when he was vice-president and I made some alterations for him. When he became president, I still did his suits. Presidents I go to see, but senators and Cabinet secretaries, they come to me. But the president, you have to go to the White House! Now, I do suits for President Obama and Vice President Biden. They’re all very nice people.

“The presidents all come to me because of my style, the presidential or ambassador style as I like to call it. The thing that is distinctive about my suits is the perfection. The details. Remember when people thought that President Bush was wearing a radio receiver when he debated John Kerry? That was my suit the president was wearing! He was not wearing a receiver, but a bulletproof vest that no one told me about before when I was making alterations. Instead of telling people the truth, the secret service tried to blame me, the tailor. But, I tell you, my work is perfect.

“In my sixty years in the business, I don’t believe that a gentleman should change his style. He should change suits, but not the style. Some people ask me why I don’t update my style and be more for today? To them I say, look, you can wear whatever you want, you can wear blue jeans, but I prefer classic and conservative. I’ve always been like this. Even when I do my laundry, I wear slacks.

“To me, working with the presidents doesn’t feel like a big deal, but when I walk around people say, ‘Hey, that’s Georges de Paris, the tailor for the presidents!’ One time, I was trying to get a drink from a bartender and someone pointed me out as being the tailor to the president. The bartender looked at me and said, “Come on, man, go back to your country. You’re a liar.’ I said, ‘Ok, I’ll go back to my country, but let me get a drink first.’”

Read more about Georges de Paris in The New York Times and NPR.

This post is part of a weekly series of People's District stories on the Prince of Petworth, check it out here.

Hamzah on the Color Underneath Those Button-Downs

"How do I feel about the city? I just moved here from New York, and my first experience out in DC was on a Saturday night and I realized that my friend and I were the only ones out in t-shirts. Everyone else was in a polo or a button down. We were like what the..how does a city roll like this? And I did not understand how an entire bar could be filled with so many cookie-cutter people.

"People have a façade here that they don’t have elsewhere. I feel like you can meet cool people, though, who will let down their guard and tell you what they’re like. So, I am discovering that there is a lot more to DC than what I found at the bar. There is some color underneath those button-downs."

Check out some polling data on life in DC vs. NYC here.

Jeff on Building a House of Washington

“I am a city planner trained as an architect. One principal characteristic that distinguishes Washington, DC, from most American cities, and most European cities, too, for that matter, is the rectilinear urban grid overlaid by diagonal streets creating all of these awkward, strange street corners. If you read the urban historians who discuss Washington, DC, they see it as a real disadvantage to the design of the city.

"What is interesting, though, if you look at what the urban planner Haussmann did in Paris and the outcome of his slashing avenues through the medieval street network of Paris, there are actually a lot weirder building lots in Paris than in Washington. But, the design mentality of post-Haussmann in the late-1800s, as opposed to the mentality when DC was designed in 1798, meant that people were more willing and interested in making weird-shaped buildings on weird-shaped lots. Thus, when DC was being designed, a lot of these lots sat empty.

"Now in design, there is a lot less admiration of pure forms. Symmetry is out. Why have a square building when you can have a rhombus or a parallelogram or something that is kind of funky? These weird leftover lots in DC give an architect the opportunity to do a building with an exciting shape without violating the shape of the lot.

“I wanted to make a house that was of Washington and couldn’t really exist anywhere else. I went looking for a very sharp triangle. My wife and I rented a Zipcar, mapped out the flatiron lots around town and visited every one. And, this was the one that seemed the most available, but it still took a year and a private detective to find the owner and another year to clear the title. Even though our house occupies the footprint of what was historically here and I just wanted to fill the same lot, it took three variances and nine months to do that. According to the zoning laws, I was also required to build a garage on site, but I didn’t have a car. Parking a car on site would have meant replacing a public good, street parking, for a private good, my own parking space, and I didn’t want to do that. I spent months fighting that too.

"The key issue in DC is that the current zoning code does not take into account strange lots. If you wanted to build a traditional urban row house on a lot in DC, you would not have a problem, which puts DC far ahead of most American cities. It is these weird left over blocks where you have the problems. I am no longer surprised when I see how long it takes to rehabilitate empty lots here because the tax burdens and title problems associated with a lot of them make it really difficult to actually do anything."

Learn more about what Jeff is doing in DC and around the world to promote smart growth and sustainable design here. See his house here.

Ben on Saving DC Hair from Ridicule

“So, as a stylist, I am trying to bring DC hair a little more edge for the men and a little more runway for the women. Not too much where it is, like ok, too drastic, but just enough for people to say, that’s nice. No more bobs, no more Hillary Clinton cuts. I mean, come on, can we see Hillary in a dress, too? Just something a little fashion forward, that’s my job.

"The Obamas are doing a great job, especially Michelle. She is bringing fashion forward for DC. She is a young first lady. I think she is able to pull off being fashionable and having great hair. I mean, she is representing and I commend her on that. I think that people here need to follow her lead and stop thinking in the fashion past and start thinking about the fashion future.

"Let’s get the city on the right path, at least in terms of hair. I’m doing my part to move this city forward because I believe in fashion. I am constantly reading fashion magazines from Europe. Let’s bring some of that to DC hair so people stop laughing at us."

Let Ben save your hair from ridicule. You can find him at the s/p/alon and see his reviews here. Read more about DC fashion from Lara.

Lara on DC's Particular Fashion Style

“I’m from Miami Beach, I just graduated from Tufts and moved to DC three months ago. I just got a job working for Annie Creamchease, which is a DC vintage shop. It’s really great stuff, really cute. It is one of the few places here that let people have style.

"When you walk around DC you will notice that everyone here is on a mission. They are wearing suits, they are wearing ties, they are wearing heels and they are not going to parties, they are going to work and they are completely like, conservatively dressed to go to work, dressed for desk jobs, trying to be really professional. It is hard coming from a place where I can wear a bathing suit and a cover up and walk into a bank and there is no problem. So, DC is definitely a different feel from Miami, but people are much more friendly. The style here is very particular – New England meets southern comfort. I don’t know, I am sure that people here get dressed in the morning and they put thought into the outfits, but not in a fashion forward way.

"When I walk around, it occurs to me that I feel under dressed. The other day I was walking around downtown in a flowy white sundress and people looked at me like I was a martian. They were in their suits wondering who is this person and what is she doing...she is certainly not working. Its an interesting attitude that is definitely felt throughout the city."

Read more about style in DC at Project Beltway.