10 minutes really isn't that bad. If you get to the station randomly, you would expect a 5 minute wait on average, which is plenty reasonable. If the trains are packed elbow to elbow, it's a different story, but I haven't seen pre-covid packed trains in a while.

I'll echo everyone else's comments. Your best bet is the Filmore in Silver Spring, especially if you're looking for nationally touring acts, but other venues will occasionally have shows too.

Out of curiousity, what metal venues are you seeing out towards Fairfax? Are you referring to Jaxx/Empire? If so, that permanently closed in 2015, and unless you count something like Jiffy Lube Live for huge summer shows way out in the Virginia Countryside, there aren't any metal venues anywhere near Fairfax.

I generally make the trek from Arlington to Silver Spring for the Filmore. Check out the lineup on their website to see if you like the bands that come through, but I'll be at the Spiritbox show in April.

Baltimore has a much bigger metal scene. Bands often play Boston/NYC/Philly/Baltimore, but skip DC entirely.

It's due to historical momentum.

They were originally installed at a time when cash was more common (and Metro still used paper farecards), so they made sense back then.

After paper farecards were retired and Metro went to SmartTrip only, they were actually unnecessary for a brief period of time. Basically, Metro let people complete rides with small negative balances, so no need for an exit fare machine (e.g., if you enter the system with $4 on your card, but take a longer ride that costs $5, you could leave with a card balance of -$1 and just pay that dollar the next time you load up the card).

However, that was short lived. Metro no longer allows people to carry negative balances on their cards. In the example above, they would allow you to enter the system with $4 because that's enough to cover a shorter ride, but if you take a longer ride that costs $5, you have to use the exit fare machine requiring $1 in cash.

It's annoying for regular users, confusing for tourists, and Metro has to pay money maintaining these older machines at every station. Rather than upgrading the exit fare machines to accept credit cards, they should really just allow negative balances again. Sure, they'll miss out on a few bucks from people that allow their card to go negative and never refill it (mostly tourists), but they'll save much much more than that by not needing to maintain the old machines.

The offensive coordinator of the XFL's Seattle Sea Dragons? Your post is just as vague as the OP providing zero additional context. Why is everyone being so cryptic about this stuff?

I go down every year that I can. They're absolutely beautiful, and to me, it's a ritual marking the start of spring much like Memorial Day marks the start of summer and Labor Day marks the start of fall. The experience is great on bike once you get past the cars. I did a bunch of laps around Hains Point last night. I chuckled passing the same cars with every lap I did around the park though (that had moved maybe 30 feet for every 3 mile lap I completed on bike).

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful for them. My legs hate me today, but I basically did lap after lap after lap around Hains Point on my bike. Tons of car traffic and tourists near the Jefferson Memorial, but that thinned out pretty dramatically once you go closer to Hains Point.

I agree that the list is arbitrary and can produce weird results, but I don't understand your comment about the other places being "car-infested, parking-lot-plagued, zero-food-diversity cities." I haven't looked at the whole list, but last year, I moved from Jersey City to Arlington, VA just outside of DC and #2 on the list. Arlington is very walkable and very transit friendly (four of the six DC Metro lines go through Arlington, and I live car-free without any issues). In many ways, I'd argue Arlington is actually more walkable than JC, and it's also much more bike friendly. There are plenty of diverse food options here too, both in Arlington and in neighboring DC, with the Arlington to DC trip comparable to the JC to Manhattan trip.

Obviously, DC is smaller than NYC, but it still has a lot going for it at a lower price point. Instantly dismissing the other cities as terrible because they aren't in the NYC area is a little silly.

I'm also interested in this (specifically places that will be showing the game with sound). Pretty much any sports bar should have the game on one of the TVs, but most won't have it with sound. I'd prefer to stay in Virginia, but I'd be willing to travel into DC for the right place.

I watched the semifinal against Cuba at World of Beer in Arlington on Sunday, but it didn't have sound. That game was competing against March Madness, but there's no NCAA basketball tonight, so hopefully better luck convincing a sports bar to show it with sound.

Well, the Hudson is right there.

Assuming the data is correct (a big assumption), there are a few potential drivers for this.

First, you're likely dealing with a mixture of fields. For instance, I believe you're required to get a master's degree to teach in a lot of local jurisdictions, but teaching doesn't pay well. If the population of masters degree holders includes a lot of teachers, that would bring the average down. That's going to be true for a lot of fields with well educated people working low paying jobs in the public sector or at nonprofits. In contrast, many high paying jobs in fields like computer science or finance only require bachelor's degrees.

Second, people sometimes stay in school because they can't find a job immediately after undergrad. Around 2008-2012 or so, that was fairly common as a tactic to wait out the recession. It's possible that the candidates that got jobs immediately out of school interviewed better than their counterparts that stayed in school, and it's also possible that they're getting paid more now as a direct result of that.

Third, masters degrees mean less job experience. If you look at two identical 30 year olds, the person with the masters degree will have less real world experience because they were in school longer, so that may imply a lower salary.

If you control for the various factors above, you might get the more typical relationship with more education implying more pay, but it's possible that we have multiple confounding factors at play.

This is why I prefer rock/metal music lol. The vast majority of concerts I attend are in the $30-40 price range, unless it's a multiday festival that's more like $400 for four days of music and 100+ bands across different stages. Paying $1000 to see a pop artist perform for a couple hours is insane.

Liberty Science Center is legit. I moved out of the area over the summer last year, but one of my favorite memories was drinking and learning a bunch at the same time at one of the LSC After Dark events.

Back when I was in consulting a few years ago, I lived in Virginia, but was frequently on client site working in NYC living out of a hotel during the week. I was required to file taxes with NY state for the portion of time spent in the city. I don't recall the specifics, but it was a bit of a pain in the ass.

Best coffee is Cafe Esme near Hamilton Park. I moved out of the area down to DC a few months ago, and I miss Esme every day. Nothing down here compares.

>Blockchain is a legit technology.

I think you're giving the crypto people too much benefit of the doubt. All blockchain offers is a secure public append-only database. There are precisely zero use cases that aren't better handled with traditional database implementations.

Have you tried the local jails? Before too long, most of the people organizing crypto schemes will be there, so you can talk about all sorts of exciting projects.

Pre pandemic and pre renovation, I used to work across the street and get lunch there all the time. It was always lively with people from the office towers nearby. Post pandemic, we went WFH (as did a lot of others), and the place was never the same.