Having parking lots everywhere is an offense against everything right and true and decent and human. They're just soul-sucking, and the tiny desperate trees they always plant, stranded in their islands, just make things worse.

And DC is bristling with the damned things, too: why, my cousin lived in DC for years, and she had to put up with living first in a place in the middle of a national park with a tree-shaded rooftop terrace and then barely a block from 16th & U, and can you believe I actually know somebody who has to choose between having Ethiopian food and Turkish food delivered to her apartment on Friday nights? Or else walk a couple minutes to the three blocks of bars or one of the three grocery stores, or else pick up something from the Target on top of the Metro station on the way home from work, but what a drag, you know? And she has to trudge down the Mall all the way from the Capitol to the White House whenever she wants to stretch her legs after work, and there's this garden show or something coming up.

It's brave of you to come to DC, truly it is. I'll do my best to shelter you from the riff-raff of parking lots.

ETA a shorter version: I won't blame NYC for Newark if you don't blame DC for suburban Rockville.