Gotta love New York, for a quick sec, at least. I took the train up the corridor last week for a day of meetings in Manhattan, and on the way back to Penn Station the cabbie shot down Seventh Avenue through Times Square. Wowzer! The billboards and marquees flash and glow from 10 blocks up the avenue. I nearly broke my nose against the window as I tried to catch a glimpse of the barely clad women in billboards that stood two stories tall. Kinda gross, actually.
A few hours and a train ride later I was driving north up D.C.’s Seventh Street toward Chinatown, our version of Times Square. To my left there was the Portrait Gallery and a line of restaurants tucked into the street’s original facades; to my right billboards and signs on the Verizon Center flashed and blared. Even with the arena’s garish signs, the streetscape was in scale with our town’s low-slung, understated feel.
