Here’s some helpful advice for tea partiers who will be visiting the nation’s capital in coming weeks for various political events:

If you are on the subway stay on the Red line between Union Station and Shady Grove, Maryland. If you are on the Blue or Orange line do not go past Eastern Market (Capitol Hill) toward the Potomac Avenue stop and beyond; stay in NW DC and points in Virginia. Do not use the Green line or the Yellow line. These rules are even more important at night. There is of course nothing wrong with many other areas; but you don’t know where you are, so you should not explore them.

The warning reminded me of a scary experience I had not long after moving to Washington.

While I was in graduate school at American University, I had to interview one of the leaders of the Libertarian Party for a paper, so I arranged an interview at the party’s headquarters. I soon wished I had conducted the interview by phone because party HQ was in one of the worst part’s of Washington.

I had worked in Washington for a couple of years by that point, but I lived in Virginia and didn’t really know much about the city. I generally only knew how to get to work by Metro and how to get to the most famous sites so I could play tour guide when family and friends visited. None of those areas seemed particularly dangerous, even to an easily intimidated small-town boy like me.

But I knew Southeast was the wrong part of town when I noticed all of the graffiti and the bars on every business’ windows. I really became scared when my cab driver tried to convince me to let him drop me off on the wrong side of the street from the Libertarian Party’s office and about a quarter-mile past all the businesses. I demanded that he make a u-turn and drop me at the office.

After the interview, which was in late fall, I was horrified to realize that there wasn’t a cab in sight for me to hail back into a safer part of town. I had to walk to the nearest Metro station, which was two or three blocks away. It was the spookiest walk of my life.

When I told my classmates the next day where I had been, they all thought I was nuts for going to Southeast. I wish they had been so forthcoming about D.C.’s bad neighborhoods before the interview.