Film

In the hyper-optimized world of retail, you can often find a popular variant of most cuisine in the international section of your local grocery mega market. But there is something appealing about a small corner store that sources the lesser known and possibly more authentic variants of a cuisine. There might be different versions of household items that you use everyday that you might prefer. There might even be food cooked by the loving grandma at the front counter — and food will likely not disappoint. They’ll probably be a good source of intel on local restaurants that excel in their cuisine. These places are as important as a country’s embassy in being an ambassadors of culture.
Hana Bakery, 17th & U St.
You’ll often read how we don’t build beautiful things anymore. Typically reasons that are given are some bureaucratic cocktail of regulations, lost labor expertise, and NIMBY-ism. But I think it is also about how we don’t appreciate the beautiful things we already have. DC’s metro stations are much less sterile than most American cities — the square honeycomb structure for their roofing is iconic. That’s important, because after a long day at work, the last thing I want to see on the roof of a subway station is a pigeon or a rat.
Dupont Circle Metro Station
In a book world dominated by Amazon, a few independent bookstores remains important neighbor touchstones. Taking a step away from the returns from scale positions, there is something that feels principally wrong about one company controlling access to written information that is consumed in a deliberate way. The recipe for this particular anti-Amazon alliance is some combination of quirkiness and variance in discovery. You go to Amazon when you want to read something in particular, you go to a local Independent bookstore when you want to find something to read. Or maybe I just go to these bookstores for the old book smell.
Capitol Hill Books

Behind a weekend morning breakfast run is a complex system. It often involves a series of very early commutes from far flung suburbs by the workers at the restaurant. It involves preparation of the food that might have started a day or two day ago. It involves planning for getting the ingredients to the store in the first place. That complexity is hidden behind a neat little Square POS terminal, but it is there at all times.
Cafe at U
One-item shops: Shops that can be defined by a single item. Even they sold nothing else, they would still be in business. If it’s a simple item, that’s all the better. One sub-genre here might be based on a high-fixed cost setup which would be financially infeasible for most to recreate. Output: pure and fresh juicy goodness.
Cafe at U (cont’d)
How do we make our cultural institutions more accessible and legible? One tradeoff to think about here is the time-money one. When someone is young, they have more time than money, and vice-versa for when they are older. A way to use this tradeoff is by discounting things for young people (age-restricted) to fill up excess capacity (fulfills business case). The Kennedy Center’s MyTix program does this by allowing anyone under 30 to get substantially lower than sticker price tickets for all but the most popular of its events.
Georgetown Waterfront

Outside of The National Archives is a monument that says that “The Past Is Prologue.” But that message can be wrapped. Consider the fact that during the US Civil War, both sides’ had a song they called Battle Cry for Freedom. But freedom meant different things to the two groups. In the same way, some may say that the country’s best days are behind it and the future should be more of the past, while others say that the process of getting to the present from the past — a process that included significant expansion of civil rights for all varieties of groups — should be the future.
The National Archives
So how does a country of more than 330 million people move forward when they fundamentally disagree on so much? And how can the past inform how the future should look like? Should we look for the Great Men (and women) in history who unilaterally decided what should and shouldn’t happen? Or should our approach be more structural in nature, like a trader being okay with loosing on a few trades as long as the scoreboard ticks in the right direction?
The National Archives (cont’d)
How do parents intentionally cultivate curiosity in their kids? What are the lessons that adults can learn from that process to stay in touch with the naturally inquisitive nature that most of us are born with?
National Museum of Natural History

The sense of shared property that a country’s population has is a fascinating concept. Susceptible to the tragedy of commons, it is to some extent a measure of a shared national identity. Do you feel like your country’s military works for you? Do you feel that your representatives in government do? Do you feel like the government buildings and surrounding areas belong to you?
The National Mall overlooking the US Capitol
Different medals signal different things. In general, the bigger the medal, the bigger the achievement. Some civilizations were based on this model of survival of the best. In a post-abundance world where distribution of resources is the key problem, an ideal civilization would try to create some balance between given the best a platform to fulfill their potentials and a chance for the not-so-fortunate to play at a level playing field.
Medals at The National Gallery of Art
There are some buildings that we assume always existed. But they too had to be conceived and built by people. It becomes easier to imagine what else could be built once you realize this. But note that even in the more classical of spaces, modernity still creeps in.
National Gallery of Art