Bubble on the Potomac

The new affluence flooding the nation's capital sets it a world apart from the country it governs

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Andrew Cutraro / Redux for TIME

Sweet Ride. Uber D.C.'s Rachel Holt in one of her company's digitally dispatched luxury sedans. Some riders use them to get groceries.

The passenger bar, about 12 blocks from the White House, is just beginning the first seating of the night in its Columbia Room, a semisecret speakeasy behind an unmarked door in the back. Speakeasies are very fashionable in Washington at the moment--bars within bars, inner sanctums set aside for the most discriminating palates. But the Columbia Room is a particularly hot ticket. If you're lucky, you'll get a reservation a few days in advance. For $67 a head, an expert bartender serves a three-course tasting of cocktails. He carves a thick slice of lemon rind, places his hands slightly above and 10 inches back from the cocktail glass and with a snapping motion sends a scattering of lemon drops across the icy surface of what one magazine calls "the best martini in America."

The Passenger's motto? "God save the district." The sentiment is easy to understand, for these are good times in Washington and the seven counties that surround it. Even as the nation struggles, the capital has prospered, making it a magnet for young hipsters but leaving its residents with only a tentative understanding of how the rest of the country lives. "It's nice," goes the old joke about Miami, "because it's so close to the United States." Well, Washington is very nice these days.

Every week brings fresh evidence of continuing prosperity: a new restaurant, a new nightclub, another restored 19th century townhouse in a previously dodgy neighborhood selling for $1 million or more. Start-ups are hiring through Craigslist, and just opened lobbying firms have no trouble collaring clients. Storefronts that stood abandoned five years ago fill with pricey gourmet-food shops like Cowgirl Creamery, a cheesemonger that has opened its only store outside Northern California on F Street downtown. Its Mt. Tam cheese goes for more than $25 per pound. It's organic.

Another Northern California import, a limousine service called Uber, launched in December after great success in San Francisco and New York City. "The growth here has been unique in our experience," says Rachel Holt, who oversees Uber's burgeoning D.C. operation. Uber is Web-based and cashless: customers call for limos with a smart-phone app and pay with a credit card on file. It's also deluxe. Riders expect nothing lower on the limo food chain than a Town Car, with offerings going up to Mercedes and beyond. Holt says with some surprise that locals are using Uber as everyday conveyance for commuting and shopping. Uber exploits Washington's unique combination of heavy use of social media, a young and often carless population and customers with fistfuls of disposable income. When the D.C. taxi commission made a move to shut down Uber earlier this year, Twitter erupted in indignation under the hashtag #Nevergoingback. Welcome to ber-Washington.

The Good Life

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