Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Guide helps acclimation to D.C. Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 16:22:11 EST Message-ID: \SE B;LIFE \HD Guide helps acclimation to D.C. \BY Cesar G. Soriano \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Newcomers to the area usually need time to learn their way around. But Sheryl Nowitz has eliminated most of the guesswork with legwork. She spent six months eating and imbibing in dozens of area pubs and restaurants and visiting practically every museum and shopping mall - all in the name of research for her book, "Mastering D.C.: A Newcomer's Guide to Living in Washington." Mrs. Nowitz, 26, moved to the city in 1989, right after graduating from Barnard College in New York. Initially, she took a position as a research assistant at the Brookings Institution . But she soon discovered that getting to know her way around Washington would take some study. "I didn't know many people, so I didn't know where to go to buy things or where to meet people. I would have liked to have someone sit down and tell me how to do those basic things," she says. Although there are plenty of books on the market for D.C. tourists, none existed for the estimated 50,000 people who move to the Washington area every year, says Mrs. Nowitz, who married in June. "Especially now with Clinton winning the election, a lot of new people are going to be moving to Washington, and this book can really help them out," she says. In 1990, she left her job at a management consulting firm to put her idea between the pages of a 200-page paperback. She invested $25,000 in her project and, using her degree in economics, founded Adventures Publishing to publish the D.C. guide herself. "I thought it would be more fun and I'd have more control on what I had written." Mrs. Nowitz, who had never written professionally before, broke tradition in guidebook-writing styles. "I wanted the book to be informal . . . so when people read the book they'd feel like a friend was talking to them," she explains. Writing from a fresh first-person perspective, she accomplishes her goal with both wit and wisdom. "Mastering D.C." offers a variety of advice, such as the best neighborhoods to live in, how to register an automobile, best bets for weekend trips, descriptions of local radio stations and newspapers, and even personal anecdotes about her misconceptions of Washington. "When I first came to Washington, listening to the traffic reports, I always thought there were two beltways, the inner one and outer one. I didn't understand there was only one and that inner/outer only meant the direction," she says. Several prominent Washingtonians contributed to her guide: For example, there is an introduction by Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly and a column by Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown titled "My Favorite Restaurants" (Hogs on the Hill and the Palm). Her section on restaurants does not try to rate them but rather lists some of the "more popular and well-known," categorized by cuisine and atmosphere. The same goes for the section on bars, listing such nightclubs as Zei and the Fifth Column. There's even a list of gay bars and restaurants near Dupont Circle. Throughout the book, Mrs. Nowitz offers enlightening tidbits of trivia about Washington - ranging from the less-than-tasteful nickname for the "pickup" bars along 19th and M streets (known as "Herpes Triangle") to the one-man post office in the basement of the Sheraton Washington Hotel on Woodley Road NW Mrs. Nowitz didn't develop her guide alone. Help came from the hundreds of residents she interviewed. "I became so curious that I'd approach people on the Metro who were the most interesting because they were random and very helpful." She says outsiders often have stereotypes of Washington as the "crime capital of the world," and she alleviates their concerns throughout the book. In writing her neighborhoods section, she says, "I tried to steer people to the safest areas and tried to make people aware of it [crime] without causing any undue panic. "There's certainly a lot of crime in Washington and a lot of things people should be concerned about, but it shouldn't prevent you from moving to Washington," she adds. Since its publication in May, Mrs. Nowitz says the guide has been selling briskly in bookstores and has been puchased by companies to give to transferring employees. She enjoyed the research so much that she is now in San Francisco, her husband's hometown, working on a newcomer's guide for the Golden Gate city. The Troy, N.J., native hopes to return "home" to Washington in the spring to join her employees, now feverishly working on an updated version of the Washington guide. Due next summer, the new edition will include movie theater listings, more suburban points of interest and updated lists, as some of the places "went out of business because of the recession," she says. Through her research, Mrs. Nowitz believes she has discovered two truisms about Washingtonians: Everyone has an opinion about the city and everyone seems to be a bad driver. "I'm optimistic about all this," Mrs. Nowitz says of her adventure-in-publishing projects, "but I'm not really looking very far ahead - just seeing how it goes and tackling each year as it comes." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM