Granite Countertops Would Make Karen Less Bitter
By: Shannon Eubanks
Tags: Washington DC, Home, Family, Millenials, Generation X

I blame granite countertops for the reason we Generation X Karens are bitter. If we had had nicer countertops when we had our first apartments like our Millenial children, we would be in much better moods. My first apartment of my own had the crappy countertops with the metal edges and I thought I was living in high cotton. My daughter has some kind of beautiful stone countertops in her first apartment and she makes roughly the equivalent of what I did.

I did not take this pic. It is from the apartment website. If you want to find out more, check it out: https://marendc.com/amenities/

Furthermore, colleges and cities plan in advance to provide the kinds of amenities that will attract these children of privilege: dog parks, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Starbucks, trendy restaurants, yoga studios, FULL FABULOUS GYMS in their apartment buildings, swimming pools on roofs (the pic is of my daughter’s actual pool which I hope she will be able to use next year if COVID goes away), and the list goes on.

I know this is inequitable because she lives within blocks of the exact same place I lived in when I came to Washington, D.C. in 1990. I lived two blocks from the Capitol on North Carolina Avenue, S.E. She lives on Potomac Avenue, S.E., directly across from the Washington Nationals stadium. In my day, that was a semi-inhabited area with mostly broken windows. Today, it’s a millennial playground.

When I came to D.C. all those years ago as a very unworldly 24-year-old, adults did not give one fig about young people. D.C. was run by the “fat cats” in politics and it was very much an adult world and we were just the little peons who were dumb enough to work for congressmen and senators and still not be federal employees. We supplemented our diets by sneaking into official receptions, pretending to represent our offices. No one cared if we ate or not, just that we showed up to work.

I lived in a studio apartment in the attic of a former convent turned apartment building. I paid $585 and it included everything but cable plus some lovely carpet of indeterminate color and an actual eat-in kitchen, if you didn’t stand up straight. That was during the end of the crack wars in D.C. Sometimes at night, I could hear automatic gunfire. My McDonald’s on South Capitol Street was a risky trip at best. It is now gone and covered up by a character-less high-rise that millennials seem to love. The only amenities we had were a front door that locked and tiny little individual mailboxes in the lobby.

I had to park on the street, which was easier said than done, and go to the grocery store in Alexandria cross the bridge in Virginia because there was only one questionable Safeway in southeast at that time and I’m not even sure where it was. I did, however, have a million-dollar view of the Capitol out my little attic window. That was pretty cool. But it was not designed and placed there to attract me. More than likely, it was put there so some poor nun or servant who had to live in the attic could have light to perform her chores by.

At my daughter’s apartment, a sparkling high-rise with studios and one and two-bedroom apartments designed for young single folks, there is a bevy of fabulous things put there to draw these incredibly special children to live in them. The place is set up for millennials and their rescue dogs and designer dogs. There is a gigantic dog park right outside. The concierge (I’ve never had a concierge) even hands out plastic bone-shaped poop bag carriers (he graciously gave me one for my two pooches, fast asleep at home in my 1964 rambler with no concierge in sight). There is a gym, a pool, a beautiful bar/meeting room, sitting areas, fabulous outdoor grills and seating areas, a seasonal bar outside with picnic tables and a parking garage. And did I mention it is waterfront (although it is the Anacostia River)? And across the street from the Nationals Stadium? And near a metro? And grocery stores, and bars and coffee places and shopping and cool restaurants?

They even have Uber. When I was her age, if you went out on the town and drank yourself into oblivion, you had to either crash at your friend’s house or get on the Metro by midnight because it stopped running after that. We didn’t take taxis because taxis did not have ratings systems like Uber.

And don’t get me started on phones, or computers, or the Internet or all the other things that make life so easy that millennials just have to show up. And yet, there is more anxiety among that generation than we experienced. I think it’s because adults ruled the world then and they would not allow us to do anything but follow orders.

Whatever, I still think that maybe if I had had nicer countertops in my first apartment and maybe a nice chair in the lobby, I might be less bitter. I’m really not asking for much. My generation knows better than to ask.