Common Ground

Believe it or not, I am, for once writing a post not to unload a pile of shitty on DCist’s presumptuous, inaccurate and oftentimes snotty coverage of material outside their sphere of influence and within ours. In fact, I’m writing this post to do the exact opposite; to sincerely and unsarcastically commend a DCist contributor for successfully navigating the dangerous waters of reporting material pertaining to our geography in a manner that is actually relevant to Washingtonians, accurately, respectfully, and not being a total douche in the process. If all such material was treated this delicately and tactfully on DCist, I would never have felt the need to launch this page in the first place.

Amanda Mattos, who I think is DCist’s music editor or something, wrote a post today about attending a touring show of what she considered a must-see artist who passed over D.C. to play in Baltimore instead, and addressed the frustrations associated.

Again, for reinforcement, I am not being sarcastic this one time. For once, the other shoe is not going to drop. As it turns out, I’m only an ass 95% of the time.

The artist in question, for me at least, is completely immaterial. I stopped following the newest, hippest, undergoundest artists a few years back. I suppose the most important reason that I stopped following the music was because I outgrew following the music; but another significant reason was because the vast majority of the sets I wanted to catch opted to pass over my market and played D.C. instead. That would have been all, good, and understandable if these touring shows were not playing markets of only two and a half million people, but this was never the case. It was frustrating to watch the dates of these bands playing one one million population market after another and then choose to play either Baltimore or Washington before moving on to the next market. As D.C. has approx. 5.5 mil. to our approx. 2.5 mil., it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which market these artists generally chose when they pretended that we were one market. It also would have been fine if we were actually a single market, but we’re not, and that drive is just too much of a nightmare at one/two/three in the morning to bother with. Add more than one beer to the equation, and that drive goes from being nightmarish and miserable to being more nightmarish, more miserable, and irresponsible and illegal to boot.

Consequently, for either a reasonable Washingtonian or a Baltimorean, for an artist to be worth the trouble, they damn well better be the best God-damned show of the year. Unfortunately, the reality is that the vast majority of even good shows don’t pass that mustard for either one of us.

So artists, please, even if you’re good and we want to see you, you’re probably not that great to make it worth the trouble. Baltimoreans hate the drive and having the D.C. locals sneer down their noses at us for not wearing the new black, whatever that black happens to be this season. Washingtonians hate the drive and watching Baltimoreans grooming one anothers’ fur for bugs to eat. Even if you want to disregard our respective feelings, consider the fact that we’re actually two separate large markets, especially after midnight, and we’ll probably not going unless you play for both of us. On this, I think Baltimore and D.C. can agree.