6/27/2005

Moving to DC...

Sunday was spent helping a friend (10 in 10 years) pack the U-Haul. He spent 8 years here pursuing a PhD in bio-chemistry and taught MBA classes at UB. He's now gone to another neighborhood...Adams Morgan in Washington DC. While publishing his first book last year and working on his second he kept talking about "density" and the need to be closer to people doing the same and similar sorts of consulting.
CoolTown Studios (if you are reading my blog, you should be reading that one, too) just posted about Adams Morgan last week. In a post Typical Neighborhood Scene at 2am? the scene reminded me of Pano's at that hour. And then the next day the companion post takes you up-stairs from the diner and shows you What's Really Going on Up-stairs.
adamsmorgan-lab2
Affinity Lab
Affinity Lab is a collective work space designed to inspire, encourage and promote the individual and collaborative production of digital media. The Lab has been developed to facilitate the needs of a variety of media production companies, freelancers and entrepreneurs of growing enterprises in Washington DC.

Founded by the partners of Articulated Impact, the space is located in midst of the eclectic shops, restaurants, pubs and coffee houses of 18th Street in Adams Morgan. The Lab is a cross-industry, cross-discipline cabal of producers, entrepreneurs, artists, activists and techies who seek to blur the boundaries of profit/non-profit, digital/analog, commodity/currency, business/pleasure, art/activism.

Dream on
This is the sort of entrepreneurial incubator and small business Buffalo needs

And then there's Tryst!
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2 comments:

Rufus said...

Tell him that there's an Italian restaurant in Adams Morgan next to the DC Arts Center (DCAC) that is pretty good. The squid ink pasta is fantastic. Also, the Madam's Organ bar is a DC institution. And, he absolutely has to find Ben's Chili Bowl on U St.

I don't know how we can attract those people to Buffalo. I'd love to see more though, just so long as we can reach the "density" of a place like Adams Morgan without reaching the "density" of downtown Toronto. Actually, Arlington VA is where I see Buffalo going. It's full of tech workers and consultants and such, but still has a sort of village feel. On the other hand, they have a great public transport system, so people don't need to drive anywhere.

Anonymous said...

We recently visited a friend who lives in the neighborhood adjacent to Adams Morgan (forget the name) and who spends much of his professional time (he's an architect) at Tryst.

What the post and reply don't take into account is the fantastic cost of living in DC. Our friend lives in a street that is by no means gentrified (think streets just west of Richmond, but rowhouses), but his house, which he bought a few years ago, is now worth a quarter of a million dollars. If he had to buy it again he'd never be able to.

David's friend notwithstanding there's no need to give up on having Buffalo be a place those creative types can thrive. We do need a place like CoolTown Studios, but how hard could that be. Where's the creative person with some space to set this up?