Dear PoP – What Neighborhood Do I Live in?

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“Dear PoP,

I have a strange question, what neighborhood do I live in? I live on Morton St NW between Sherman and Georgia. Park View doesn’t seem to want to claim us, and I think we’re a distinct neighborhood East of Columbia Heights (Sherman is a veritable DMZ, while I find Georgia to be a more porous border…) My real estate agent says Columbia Hts, but, I feel he doesn’t really know and that CH is the profitable label. I live closer to the GA Ave Metro than I do the CH Metro, and I know I’m not remotely Petworth… Do I qualify for Pleasant Plains?

Morton Street West of GA, represent…”

In my mind this is Park View. Park View (and Pleasant Plains) is technically a sub-neighborhood of Columbia Heights like Logan Circle is a sub-neighborhood of Shaw so it’s not incorrect to say Columbia Heights (though it can be misleading). Even if you technically fall just within Pleasant Plains borders or within a block of the border in my mind I think of this area as Park View. I understand some Park View residents can be fanatical in protecting their neighborhood boundaries. However, this is one of those questions where you ask three different people who live on the block and you’ll get three different answers. In my experiences people who live on border blocks often merge easily between neighborhood names. So you have your pick, but like I said, in my mind this is Park View.