Day from hell day from hell DAY FROM HELL! … Martin Luther King day here, bitter cold, whole place in lockdown which means lots of black people being barked at by supercops. Not what Martin had in mind I think … I have a dream, a dream that I will get a taxi … the Mall, stretches from the Washington Monument down to Congress, starting to fill in the early dark with people wanting a good possie, the cops chasing em away, where will they go … sirens screaming everywhere … this is either the drill of all drills or something really big has happened … will check it when i get to Union Station, great barrel-vaulted welcoming behemoth, provider of free wifi … Union Station closed … white tents up all around it, looks v v v sinister, anthrax scare? sarin? nothing on web no-one knows anything … metro station closed too very very very strange …
Hundreds of souvenir sellers around the station or the bars close to it, stretching down to the post office … cops close them down they move on a block and a half away, shooing away the hot dog vans … amazingly creative amounts of stuff stirring kitsch and pathetic all at once … obviously fraudulent official programmes, buttons with a little red white and blue flashing edge, radium no doubt, no doubt, Obama hundred dollar bills on an A4 sheet of paper with a black background done at Kinko’s, couple of kids in the photocopy bay at Fedex churning them out …
Sirens sirens sirens sirens … copcars with the cherrytop lights permanently on, concrete bollard sections being lowered in on cranes, endless sections of mesh fencing going in …
Try three hotels before there’s a working wi-fi … in the first, a sort of boutique hole in the wall, there’s some gathering of radio industry lobbyists … have their own peak body … who knew … intermingled with package tours and people who got rooms off the discount websites … loners with Obama badges on … dressed in the cutting edge of 10, 12 years ago, black and white, in from Georgia and Montana, Oahu and Nome … they’re nursing beers or slow glasses of wine … looking around nervously … first timers in DC among a backslapping beltway crowd … “we’re looking at emerging digital markets in the midwest” … “we came from Canada” … “but you couldnt even vote for him” … “three elements of success Rush Rush Rush” … “I’m not going to sleep so I can be out there first” … presumably wondering whether this was a mistake, a presumption … but drawn like everyone to something, something beyond them … that is them, as well … and in this hotel where THE WIFI DOESN’T BLOODY WORK …
Radisson next. Check it out in the carpark … perfecto, but the lobby is maximum security … inside everyone in gowns and penguin suits waiting for town cars … old, waspy crowd, what are they possibly celebrating … they don’t look like limo liberals, more chamber of commerce Kiwanis types … a sense of opening a crypt as if they’ve been waiting for the inauguration of President Spiro Agnew since 1971 … overexposed wrinkled flesh like that English photographer whosisname Martin Parr the full horror of being in every mascared crevice … amber light from the fittings, mustard carpet … even the old guard wants to party at its own supersession …
In a liquor store on the corner, the clientele are off-message as to the new policy that the dream has been achieved … a frightened asian student on the night shift behind the wire grille teased mercilessly … “man why your pints so much” …. “for the inauguration ‘ … “man 16 for a pint that’s almost a bag of weed!” …. oh god …
Finally in the Washington Court hotel pure reception bouncing off the place next door … Hopperesque décor, pianist playing Glowworm in the Club Bar, a haunt of the black bourgeoisie … the women know how to dress for an inauguraton, bird of paradise dresses, spangly nails hair up to here … the men, well, the men seems to dress like pimps … not my fault people I am a camera seeing not thinking … you no leica … but tailored pinstripe suits the full fur overcoat, the emerald, cerise felt hats … it’s a thing …
Soon we’ll find out whether the sirens and lights were another part of the endless rehearsal or the distant echo of hundreds dead, a mile away, a block away …. for the moment the city is joyful, gentle with itself … politeness overbrims, a return of the feel from last November … hard again to believe it’s happening … and in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue the lights burn late as W dreams of what might have been … preemptively pardons his whole administration and contemplates his historical role as feed line…
I leica this reportage. You get the sense it’s damn crowded. You get the feeling the social strata are easing into the melting pot and might come out technicolour. That like the web the only mortal sin is lack of connectivity. Keep going GR reflect as much of it as you can without blowing your diode. If the Dude can just get through this next 24 hours alive I’m going to feel good about that. Arguably he’s already stopped one war for a while by just being there. You know you could see the joy in his speechifying at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday. And that was a uplifting thing in itself. A happy powerful centred black man – that’s quite subversive.