I draw your attention to a comment from faithful reader “Craig” on my recent Third Anniversary announcement. I know a lot of you use RSS to skim through the articles so you probably didn’t catch it. He said, “Maybe we should have a Twelve Mile Circle Happy Hour to celebrate” and he even offered a suggestion, “Now, the question is, where would the best place be in the DC area to have a geo-oddities themed hour? I think somewhere along the American Meridian would be a good choice.”
I’d been mulling similar thoughts for awhile, wondering if or when we might have a large enough critical mass of geo-geeks in the Washington, DC area to pull something like this off. Maybe we’re there. Let’s explore this further.
The American Meridian is a great suggestion on a number of levels. It goes through heavily-populated areas, it’s readily accessible and it offers abundant choices.
Crystal City
Craig suggest an area known as Crystal City, Virginia. That’s a densely packed community of office buildings, high-rise apartments and dozens of restaurants. I’m extremely familiar with this spot because I come here five days a week.
Funny thing, while I’m completely familiar with the American Meridian conceptually, I’d never followed it on a map precisely until Craig mentioned Crystal City. I suppose that’s the whole forest vs. trees situation. Now I realize that I cross the outdated Prime Meridian between its eastern and western hemispheres twice each workday. Sweet. This leads me to two inescapable conclusions: (1) the people at work are going to think I’m rather odd when I mention it; and (2) my inner geek compels me to dispel their ignorance anyway.
How about Mackey’s Public House, Craig wonders. I reply, that’s an excellent choice but my calculation puts the actual American Meridian line through the Chinese restaurant next door, Charlie Chiang’s (and I’m not going to include a link because it plays cheezy music in the background and I hate the intrusion. Punks). UPDATE: Both restaurants are now closed.
I’ve measured the American Meridian several times and it keeps cutting through Charlie Chiangs although I’d desperately prefer it run through Mackey’s instead. Somehow the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet seems altogether less desirable than a couple of pints of Guinness. Regular readers of Twelve Mile Circle know that I’m fine with “close enough” calculations. However, I don’t know how purists might feel if we met at the place next to the place intersected by the line. Buffet or beer? The choice is simple for me.
Continuing the Notion
Then I got to thinking about an entire American Meridian theme. What if the idea took off and we wanted to consider future meridian events? There’s an interesting situation directly above the restaurants. The line slices cleanly through a swimming pool atop the building.
Imagine being able to swim from one hemisphere to the other. Imagine someone trying to work that into a pickup line. Relationship FAIL.
Here are some other fascinating places cleaved by the meridian:
- Afghan Restaurant, one of the other sites Craig suggested.
- A silly little highway that I told you about several months ago in a totally unrelated article.
- The Embassies of Latvia and Haiti. Haiti in particular deserves a little good news after its troubles.
- Several restaurants in the Woodley Park section of Washington, DC.
- The elephant house at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.
- Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, the former residence of collector and heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.
- Seriously large chunks of Rock Creek Park.
So let’s hear from some DC-area aficionados of geo-oddities or from those from those of you who may travel here periodically. What’s the best timing (maybe after the holidays)? What location (is Mackey’s acceptable to the purists)? Please reply in the comments. I’m the only one who will be able to see your email address when you post a comment, so don’t worry about it escaping into the wild. I’m also fairly benign in spite of my odd geography fascination, as those on the list who have met me in person will attest.
I’ll work this offline once I compile a list of interested people. If it’s only me and Craig then that’s fine too. I’m willing to bet there may be others of you lurking out there.
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