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Is it fair to say you’re from Washington if you’re not really in D.C.?

2023-12-15 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

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We’ve all met them, right?

The people, when you’re somewhere in parts of our great nation, who say, “Oh! I grew up in D.C.”

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“Where in D.C.?” we ask.

“Oh, actually, Falls Church.”

Or Bethesda. Or Vienna. Or whatever isn’t part of the 68.3 square miles — Capitol Hill, U Street, Crestwood, Glover Park, Anacostia, Mount Pleasant, Navy Yard or any of the other vibrant, electric, leafy, colorful, soulful, fraught, beautiful neighborhoods — that make up our nation’s capital.

We’re a brand.

So why should anything that really isn’t in D.C. claim to be “Washington?”

Yes, I’m looking at you, Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards, the two teams whose owner this week announced tentative plans to leave D.C. for Alexandria.

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Come to think of it, the Washington Commanders should’ve been the Landover Commanders all along.

Baltimore has the Ravens. D.C. should get the Commanders.

I’m not alone here.

“As a longtime resident, taxpayer and supporter of our city, I am irritated when I hear people — and some teams — claim to be ‘from Washington’ — eager to be cool, to be seen as residents here in our nation’s capital, when in fact they live in Maryland or Virginia,” said Thomas Martella, 74, a retired management consultant who lives in Northwest Washington. “Nothing necessarily wrong with either state or residents therein — they’re just not ‘from Washington.’”

Amen.

If the teams are branding themselves as from Washington, do they have to be — legally?

“It’s actually a really interesting question,” said Elliott Alderman, a D.C. attorney who specializes in trademark and copyright law. “I don’t know if there is a clear answer.”

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He said there is a term that can come into play here. And it’s the most Washington thing ever: “Primarily geographically misdescriptive” is in an amendment to part of President Bill Clinton’s 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act.

It’s from Subsection (f) (15 U.S.C. 1052(f)) … Just kidding, readers, I won’t do that to us. Though if you were to understand any of that, you at least work in Washington.

For the rest of us, the Patent Trademark Blog explains that “a primarily geographically misdescriptive mark is quite similar to descriptive mark except that the goods or services don’t actually originate from the geographic location” and that misrepresentation is part of why consumers are into it.

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Oh, well.

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Alderman said there’s precedent, such as the New York Jets and New York Giants playing in East Rutherford, N.J.

A bunch of other teams play in the ’burbs. There are the San Francisco 49ers, who actually play in Santa Clara. The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington, the Buffalo Bills play in Orchard Park, and the Miami Dolphins play in Miami Gardens (at least Miami is in the name on that one.)

Martella is not buying that argument.

“They are still in the same state as that city, legitimate suburbs in that city’s state,” he said. “That is not the case with D.C.”

Martella checked with his attorney friends to see if there’s a legal case for yanking the “Washington” from those teams. His pals shut him down.

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So did another attorney I called.

“I don’t think there’s a trademark issue,” said trademark lawyer Cecilia Rochelle Jones, who has lived in Washington since 1992. She sees the emotional side of things, though.

“But for the fans? Yes, it matters.”

Billionaire Ted Leonsis, the owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, said the fans are everywhere. Borders, schmorders.

“That notion of community in the DMV really is what our business is about,” Leonsis said at an event announcing his intent to move the teams. “That’s the higher calling for sports. That is the higher calling on everything that we do — to build these legacies through winning championships from doing the right things in the right way by our fans so that people can appreciate the community that they live in. It’s no secret that this great airport here was considered Washington National, and yet it’s in Virginia.”

Not the whole airport thing again. The real debate, Ted, is whether you call it “National” or “Reagan.”

Leonsis is chugging forward on his plans to move out of Washington in a huff, even after Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) made a $500 million offer to keep the teams in the heart of D.C. at Capital One Arena.

This was not a sudden move. Leonsis has been asking for $600 million to help remodel his place for a while. And the packed community meeting about crime in the arena’s neighborhood on a hot August night told everyone that the situation is a tinderbox.

“In Chinatown, we’re seeing a lot of drug use and sales. We’re seeing an increase of complaints and harassment,” D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) said at the meeting this year. “We’ve seen some shootings down by the Capital One Arena, other assaults with weapons.”

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In March, Monumental Sports told WTOP that it is hiring up to a dozen off-duty officers on game nights on top of the police presence the city has in place.

Crime is up in Police Service Area 101, home of the arena. There were 39 more crimes in that area this year compared with last, according to police crime statistics.

But let’s drill down. Assaults with deadly weapons, car thefts and thefts from cars all went down. Thefts, robberies and sexual assaults went up. It’s a mixed bag, and it’s hard to paint this as the Dodge City Leonsis is trying to getting out of.

Living in the city — any city — isn’t always easy for everyone. There’s parking, taxes, crime, teeny-tiny dogs (and their abductions).

Plus, we have to deal with being disenfranchised voters — remember that taxation without representation thing?

But it’s a distinction. Washingtonians — native and adoptive — are proud. You earn the right to say you live in D.C.

And if the Caps and the Wizards leave, they’ve lost it.

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