Living in NoMa, Washington DC

REI's flagship store occupies the shell of the old Uline Arena, an ice rink built in 1941 that later hosted boxing matches, circuses, and, on February 11, 1964, the Beatles' first concert on American soil, played two nights after their debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. The arena sat mostly vacant for decades before a 2016 renovation gutted it for retail, keeping the barrel-vaulted roof and steel trusses visible inside the store today. Gallaudet University, the world's only university designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, borders the neighborhood's eastern edge, and Union Market's food stalls and shops fill a former wholesale produce terminal a few blocks north. Mid-rise and high-rise apartment buildings have filled in most of the blocks between, built rapidly over the past decade around the NoMa-Gallaudet U Metro station, which puts the Red Line at the center of the neighborhood.

NoMa's safety rating lands in the same range as H Street's, well below Capitol Hill's a mile south, and the blocks under the rail viaducts that cut through the neighborhood can feel stark and empty once the restaurants close.

Ten years of construction cranes have turned NoMa into one of the most densely built residential neighborhoods in the city, a transformation that's easy to see from the sidewalk but easy to miss in a corridor most Washingtonians still associate with a hockey rink instead of an outdoor gear shop.