Attention Marylanders

[hkellick]

OK, this is a call out to those of you who read my LJ and live in or have lived in Maryland.

K and I are going off to Silver Spring this weekend, to look at the city and possibly a couple of apartments.

I'm looking for stories, good and bad, about Silver Spring. Tell me what you know. Good places? Bad places? Good apartments? Bad apartments?

I need to know what the apartment adverts aren't telling me.

Thank you in advance!

Comments

[nesme.livejournal.com]

I work in Downtown Silver Spring. There's several chain restaurants (Ruby Tuesdays, Eggspectations, Chipotle, Baja Fresh, Panera Bread, Maccaroni Grill) as well as a good Tex Mex place (Austin Grill) and a Middle Eastern place (Lebonese Taverna). There's new things coming in all the time due to the kind of urban renewal going on here. We're expecting Thai, Pho and Japanese/Chinese to be coming in soon. If you are willing to travel to Wheaton there's a Scottish Pub called The Royal Mile.

There's a nice Giant Food and a Whole Food Market in the downtown area. There's several shops, a Borders, Curves, Gold's Gym and two movie theaters. The mall stinks, though.

Things do get a little rough downtown at night. Evidently some of the DC gangs meet at the mall. The Billiards place I frequent hasn't shown any signs of roughness, but I still have someone walk me to my car. I've never heard any gunshots or seen any crime myself, but one of the guys that works here got robbed at gunpoint a month ago about two blocks from work. He walks to and from work every day, though, and that's the only problem he's had.

[lite.livejournal.com]

Hello completely random person!
Heh.

I'm not really surprised that downtown gets rough at night. D.C. is a huge city with a lot of people and they tend to conglomerate in downtown sorts of places.

I recognize some of those chain restaurants: Ruby Tuesday, Maccaroni Grill and Chipotle.. but I have no idea what Eggspectations, Baja Fresh and Panera Bread are.
Tex Mex sounds cool for me. Dunno about the girlfriend, sadly.

As far as malls go, I usually go to Laurel (it's close to work) or, if Laurel doesn't work, we sometimes go to Arundel Mills. Moving near a sucky mall is not the end all, assuming we can find a BETTER area (Hyattsville sucks: too much poverty.)

I don't know Silver Spring much at all which is why I asked for help.

This got long :)