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For most of the area’s 1,500,000 permanents and 500,000 transients, movies offer the big night out. How much longer, in the face of TV competition, remains to be seen. At the present time, attendance runs 100,000 a day. Most film houses in white neighborhoods are restricted to whites. Negroes have their own. One of the most famous is the Howard, in the NW colored section, which often augments its shows with top-flight Negro stage shows. At such times the place is apt to draw more white customers than black. Washington has its hep-cats. Many of the younger social and diplomatic sets get a bang out of hot licks. These people who willingly sit next to dark folks in the Howard refuse to permit them in their own theatres or restaurants. That’s typical Washington thinking.

The high-class shopping street—the Fifth Avenue—is Connecticut Avenue, running from La Fayette Square, past the Mayflower Hotel, and out into Cleveland Parkway, past residential hotels and swank apartments.

There are plenty of first-grade shops here, with chic imports, expensive antiques and other gewgaws to lure the feminine dollar. Despite the great wealth of the District and the presence of an international set, all is not pheasant for these merchants. New York and the magnet of its style-conscious stores is too near. Even Baltimore gets some of the trade which can’t find enough smart things at home. But a curious reverse process has been taking place in recent years. Whereas many Washingtonians travel to New York to shop and to dine, a couple of Washington’s best-known institutions have been reaching out and taking over some of the same places in New York which Washingtonians travel 225 miles to patronize.