Ok, well, I guess this is what the man is talking about. Says Brian Beutler:

I cannot possibly fathom why D.C. lacks the number of book stores, record stores, coffee shops, night clubs, 24-hour restaurants, etc., etc. that you’d expect based on it’s relatively large population of wealthy, single young people. I love my D.C., but I’ve also found that San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and Chicago all have way, way more urban perks than Washington does.

Now one potential explanation, and I very much could be wrong, is that Ezra and Brian generally confine their experiences to a limited area within D.C., and that area is one which has not had all that long to develop. That is, if you take into account other neighborhoods up Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues that bloggers may not visit much, then you get more of these kinds of businesses. Another explanation is that some of the businesses you’d expect to find in D.C. are instead in Arlington (or Silver Spring or Alexandria).  But I think the main issue is that the District has not been all that dense, residentially, for all that long (or rather it was, then it wasn’t, and now it is again). Many of the dense areas of the city were hardest hit by population loss during the city’s long downturn; much of the population that stayed lived in detached, single-family homes away from today’s popular core. Plus, since housing supply is slow to catch up to the number of people who now want to live in the core, housing isn’t cheap and shops skew toward a wealthier crowd.

In other words, give it a little time. Residential density is growing across the city, and a more diverse retail base will follow.