H Street Festival

On saturday, I had the opportunity to join one of my friends who works for the clothing company Ann Taylor in one of the most well known festivals that take place in DC. In having this “in” with my friend Lydia I was able to land a great location for the H Street Festival from noon until 3. The festival took place between 8th and 14th Street NE. The day was filled with street food and drink stands, live performances and lastly some crazy eating contests. 

DC, which is usually a place where the aroma is musky and gas filled was somewhat delicious on Saturday due to the amount of street venders participating in the event. Most notably the smell of BBQ from Ben’s Chili Bowl sparked my interest.... so of course I had to indulge in some pulled pork and hush puppies from the stand. The only downfall to these street venders was the mass chaos of a crowd waiting in unorganized lines for food. Once I reached the front of the line I was reassured that it was worth the wait when I received a plateful of all of the goodies that had been filling my nostrils. Aside from food, the party like atmosphere was incredibly fun. People wearing eccentric costumes, blowup political floats as well as choreographed dancers filled the streets in a parade down H Street around 1:30. After doing a little bit of research I was able to find out that the bumping tunes was coming from a slew of DJ’s such as DJ Sam and DJ Jon H who were spinning infectious electronic music throughout the streets. 

In the short time that I was there I was able to view one out of the two competitive eating competitions. The competition that I was “lucky” enough to see was the who can eat the most hoagies in 15 minutes wins $200. The one competition that I missed however was the pie eating competition put on by Dangerously Delicious Pies. 

All in all I was able to take in as much as the festival as possible without being trampled by over 70,000 attendees. This outrageous number did make for an uncomfortable experience any time I had to wait in line or stand around because it was about 85 degrees at the peak of the day. 

This experience gave me a better look into how a relatively  small metropolitan area can throw a party for 70,000 people regardless of its size. Charter busses came from all over the area transporting a good portion of the attendees due to the lack of parking in the area. This reminds me of the second day of class discussion where we labeled what makes up an, “urban environment”. One student brought up the importance of public transportation in urban areas due to the high density of people and small amount of space. I saw this uneven ratio, people to space, blatenly in the H Street Festival. It’s almost a phenomena how people gather by the thousands to cram into a small space, yet I found myself enjoying this community atmosphere on Saturday. 

Reflection on "The Metropolis and Mental Life"

                               

        Georg Simmel’s essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (1903) is a compilation of lectures once spoken by Simmel in regards to social life in the 19th century. These first 9 pages illustrate some aspects of urban culture at the turn of the century. Although Simmel discusses an urban society in a time when cities were so different from today, his knowledge on metropolises remains relevant to modern urban culture.

 
This essay defines the individual’s role and position in city life and their coping mechanisms with the existence of the rise of urbanization. Human interactions in the metropolis are vital in defining the person, due to the short yet instrumental involvement in these small yet dense communities. Simmel states that due to this lack of human interaction, the metropolis mentality is essentially intellectual, not emotional. Everything in urban society is measurable and reduced to what Simmel calls, “blasé”, defined as indifference and alienation from a group. 

In a town or village there is a sense of emotional investment where as in the city there is that lack of emotion in person to person contact.  One must invent an individual personality in order to stand out and become socially mobile. Thus this separates people on both a social and emotional level leading to socially defined wanderers and or strangers. 

Lastly, a metropolis in Simmel’s terms, is a sanction in which liberation occurs due to the lack of binding mentality therefore, one can defines themselves independently. Humans in this case are only worthy to others in measures of external objects such as money and time.