The city is in quadrants, with the Capitol building at the origin. The axes are North Capitol, South Capitol, East Capitol and the Mall (with Constitution and Independance paralleling the Mall.) The quadrants are appropriately named NW, SW, NE and SE. The north-south roads are all numbered, with numbers increasing as you get further from the origin. The east-west roads are all lettered, with letters increasing as you get further from the origin. Block numbers are all regular – 100 numbers per block.

The only real confusion are the streets named after states. They cut across the grid on various diagonals and don’t have much of a pattern to them. In general, I tell tourists to simply not drive on those. It’s easy to navigate the grid if you stay on the numbered and lettered streets.

Of course, I also tell people to avoid driving in DC altogether. Traffic (and photo-enforcement of whatever the city can get away with) make the whole place very driver-unfriendly. I recommend parking somewhere that is free or cheap and taking Metro everywhere.

That was when gas was 32 cents per gallon.

But we’re glad you braved the Not-Grid so you could join us for dinner. A Meaty Pleasure!

http://www.exploredc.org/index.php?id=3

(You’re correct, of course, it ain’t no frigging grid).

Enough police? Not really (look at the crime rate). It would be better if those they have were protecting the public instead of snarling traffic and writing tickets, however.