NORTH CLEVELAND PARK: See, It Does Exist
DCIST CONTINUES TO REVEL in its revisionist history by poking fun at those who insist that there is indeed a North Cleveland Park neighborhood in Upper Northwest. The term Van Ness didn't really take root until the Red Line went through in the late 1970s. This is a point that I've made in DCist comments on the original offending post.Denying that there's a North Cleveland Park is like saying that Burleith or Glover Park is Georgetown. Sure, I might be going overboard by calling the area of Adams Morgan north of Columbia Road as "Lanier Heights" but for someone to tell me that Lanier Heights doesn't exist is just foolish.
It's OK to refer to the area immediately adjacent to the Van Ness-UDC Metrorail station as "Van Ness," but to refer to Politics and Prose as a "Van Ness bookstore" is not correct. A bookstore "near Van Ness" is, however, acceptable.
2 Comments:
The term Van Ness didn't really take root until the Red Line went through in the late 1970s.
Though, oddly, North Cleveland Park is north of Van Ness, which is between North Cleveland Park and "Downtown" Cleveland Park.
Okay, I just saw this post, but since it's about me, I feel called to arms!
It's totally fine that you have your cute little archaic map there with the adorable "North Cleveland Park" on it. I'm just saying that the times they have a'changed, and no one calls it that anymore. I lived in CP (corner of Conn and Sedgwick) for three years, and had friends in CP and Van Ness, and no one called any area "North CP," or even head of it, for that matter.
I'll admit that "Van Ness bookstore" was a stretch, and I knew that when I wrote it, but I don't think there's a good name for that area (Chevy Chase is too far north, and also makes it sound really far north), and Van Ness is the closet metro, which is how I think a lot of people in DC refer to locations in the city. But yes, it's not quite VN out there.
I stand firm on the obsolescence of North Cleveland Park, however. (Is there a South Cleveland Park?)
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