Rally for Sanity and/or Fear

The opposite of Beckapolozza was the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear. Mandy drove up with friends and parked near my place. Teri and I headed down on bikes. It was quite a different atmosphere than Glen Beck's rally.

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Beckapolozza

Glen Beck put on a sermon on the mall. Always entertaining.

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GPS route

DHS Director and I ate at Ray's last night

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was enjoying Ray's with me last night. We didn't exactly eat together. But she was there while I was there. Robie heard the contingent at the host stand talk about security while we were getting seated. We took our time with dinner. Robie seemed like he had some steam to blow off from work. Having the day to day responsibility for ISG would not be a fun task. We finished our drinks and headed out the door. While we talked outside Secretary Janet Napolitano came out with some security and got in a communications rigged van. Her security had two rigged up SUVs parked directly outside the doors. Once the Secretary was ready the three cars drove off.

I wonder if her steak was as good as mine.

tea party, Rosslyn Jazz Fest, and Mike Gordon

On Saturday I got a good night’s sleep for the first time in awhile and woke up a bit before noon. About that time I got a text from “DC Alert” saying a few streets were closed in DC because of thousands of protesters. The protests are always an amusing aspect of DC so off I went on my bike. Estimating the size of protests in DC is a notoriously difficult thing to do. The cops, Park Service, media, and the groups involved all have different opinions and have all been blasted in the past for incorrect guesses. So now the cops and the Park Service refuse to give any numbers. It was somewhere in the tens of thousands.

I saw a few people with protest signs in Arlington before I got across the river. I didn’t see much on the west side of the mall or at the White House but once I headed down Pennsylvania Avenue I ran in to the crowd. This was mostly an anti-government protest with people who drove and flew in from all over the country. Conservative groups did most of the organizing and no part of government was spared. Signs blasted Obama, public healthcare, taxes, gun laws, “big government” in general, the bail outs, and anything else you can think of. Signs compared Obama to Stalin and Chavez. Lots of people claiming the US was turning in to a socialist country. I thought it was interesting how many pro-capitalist signs there were after the financial collapse. Regulation? Must be a bad thing! And I’m a very capitalistic guy. Unlike most DC protests, which are mostly people my age, this one was a bit of an older crowd with families. Lots of little kids holding anti-government signs. A very white crowd as well. They filled up the west lawn of the capital and overflowed in to the streets and mall. It went on for most of the day. DC protests are always good for a laugh.

pics on Flickr from the protest

On my way back I stopped by the Rosslyn Jazz Festival. I wanted to see a jazz harmonica player named Frederic Yonnet as I’ve never heard a jazz harmonica player. At this time around 1:30 a sweet latin influenced band called The Spanish Harlem Orchestra was jammin’ and they were rocking out. People were getting down.

biking stats and map

I ran home to shower, eat, and see if I could recruit someone for Fred Yonnet at 4:00. My friend Sarah, George Will’s neice, was game for relaxing at the fest. Somehow I managed to bike there with both my outdoor festival chairs. She biked down all the way from north DC. Apparently she had seen Fred play with Stevie Wonder last year. It was a cloudy day with a chance of rain and it wasn’t as packed as it was two years ago. Last year was rained out. They have food and beer and the show is broadcast live on the radio. Fred played pretty well. There were a few songs that weren’t my style but the solos rocked out. I enjoyed it. He ended his set with Georgia. Sarah and I boogied after that.

After the jazz fest it was time to see Mike Gordon at the State Theater. I’ve seen Mike play solo before years ago and wasn’t so impressed. He played at the 9:30 Club with one person accompanying him. It wasn’t the jam I expected. This was a completely different show. And the State Theater took on a different feel as well. There were more staff walking around then I have ever seen. For the first time we were searched upon entry. They took out all the table and chairs so they could fit more people. Mike had an acoustic guitarist open for him and he wasn’t bad. Then Mike came on with his quartet. They immediately rocked. Similar to Phish they had some sweet band dynamics and each musician played a key part. I’m sure it helped that I was rollin’ for the first time in years thanks to a friend of a friend who drove us there. There were no long spacey jams; just great rockin’ from all members of the group. It was upbeat with a groove you could get down to. The crowd was pleased.

Setlist:

Another Door

Andelmans' Yard

Emotional Railroad

Can't Stand Still

Spiral

Ain't Wasting Time No More* >

La La La*

Sound

Sarala^

Couch Lady >

15 Step

Only A Dream

Encore:

Sugar Shack

Taking It To The Streets

Show Notes:

* Allman Bros cover, Reid Genauer on guitar & vocals

^ Craig Myers original

Facebook pics of show

Obama hits up Hell Burger

Obama decided to have lunch at my favorite local burger joint yesterday. Ray’s Hell Burger is the third restaurant of Michael Landrum; originally known for Ray’s the Steaks. Just as Mike has the best slabs o beef I’ve ever tasted he also has the best burgers of all time. They drip more grease than a pepperoni pizza but it is tasty bloody flavor-giving juice. It's basically $7 for a 10oz burger with free toppings such as sherry sautéed mushrooms in addition to all kinds of fine cheeses to choose from. No fries available which the Prez seemed a bit disappointed about. Although they do have a mean draft root beer. Obama and Biden made the mistake of ordering it medium-well. Medium-rare is the way it is to be served.

Robie and I were walking to lunch, contemplating Hell Burger, when the cops shut down the intersection next to our office. We hung out to watch the show and sure enough after some racing motorcycle cops the Presidential motorcade came through. I took a video of it but it’s a crappy resolution from my phone. I counted about 16 vehicles not including the cops and the ambulance. The limousine was about number three in line followed by communications SUVs with all kinds of antennas and a SWAT-like reactionary force.  They shut down the area around Hell Burger. No one was allowed in or out. Those lucky enough to be on the inside had free reign to hang and talk with the Prez. 

So now us locals are screwed for months.  Michael doesn’t do any advertising; there isn’t even a sign outside the place. Yet there is always a steady stream of people no matter the hour. Within an hour of Obama’s visit the news was on hundreds of local and political blogs. Within hours it was on national news sites such as the Drudge Report and the front page of Foxnews.com and the NYPost.com. Tomorrow there will be tour buses dropping off tourists. The line will be out the door for weeks. This is predictable because this is what happened to Ben’s Chili Bowl when Obama stopped by there last January. 

Well I guess it will taste good in a few months.

WashPost account

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George Will’s baseball party

The place to be in DC tonight if you are a hotshot in politics, journalism, or baseball was George Will’s annual baseball party. He is a big baseball fan so he invites all the DC elite and the Washington Nationals over for drinks at the opening of each season. My friend Sarah is his niece. She invited me to his party last year but she was late getting back in to town and made a late appearance without me. She said Dick Cheney was there (the Secret Service made sure no one stole her bike) and that she upset Alan Greenspan and he walked away from her. This January Obama was over at George’s for dinner.

Sarah told me it was business casual so I wore the same clothes I wore to the office but we didn’t realize business casual meant a tie and jacket with these people. I was the only guy there without a tie although there were quite a few bow ties. He had a valet service out front and a large catering truck in the driveway. The first floor of the house was packed and out the back door was a heated tent. It was an elaborate thing customized to his house and porch with multiple rooms to fit his backyard. 

Sarah and I can’t recognize anyone in politics, journalism, or the Nationals team. We were literally rubbing up against all the whose-who of DC without having a clue who anyone was. I did recognize George Stephanopoulos and Alan Greenspan. Sam Donaldson is hard to miss and he hung out with us for a bit being quite friendly. Cokie Roberts and Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Alito were there. Many of the old faces looked familiar and there were lots of senator lapel pins. Some Capitol Hill staffer would have been in heaven. 

The one beer being served at the open bar was Brooklyn’s Pennant Ale ’55. 

Ale to the Chief!

I had one yesterday and another today...

Ale to the Chief! 

A Presidential Pale Ale to celebrate Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009

We the Brewers of Avery Brewing Company, in order to form a more perfect ale, require new leadership that can liberate us from our quagmires in foreign lands; embrace environmentally sound energy alternatives to imported oil; heal our ailing healthcare system; free us from tyrannical debt and resurrect the collapsing dollar. We hereby pledge to provide him with an ample amount of our Presidential Pale Ale to support in the struggle for the aforementioned goals! 

Hail to the New Chief!

Inauguration

The day has come. It seemed as if the whole country was waiting for these last eight years to be over (or at least 95% of the DC population). We are going to wake up tomorrow and everything will be different right? 

The swearing-in ceremony started at 11:30am and the parade was supposed to start at 2:30pm. The MPD said that there were 500,000 people on the mall at 9am. I was still asleep. We rolled out around 10:45 perfected our arrival on the mall at about 11:30. The security zone was huge and started up around K street again. We could bike all the way down to the mall though so that just meant open streets to us. You couldn’t walk across the parade route of Pennsylvania AVE so many thousands were walking west around the White House. We ditched our bikes and easily walked on to the mall at the last minute with thousands of others. 

Reports from 6am said that thousands of people were already on the mall having trouble getting through security check points. Barriers were pushed down and DC cops had no control. The news reported that many VIP ticket holders, who arrived at some early un-Godly hour, never even got through their gate to the Inauguration. Later on the west end of the mall were we were at things were calm. Lots of National Guardsmen were on hand and were friendly. We hung out at the WWII memorial and Lisa shot some video. I never saw the east end of the mall but I assume it was a sea of people. Metro reported a new record of 930,000 people as of 6pm. 

Once the swearing-in ceremony was over I think everyone started walking home. Whole streets were filled with masses of people. We breached security on 19th ST and rode back to Keren to have some ful. I rode home afterwards and there were still thousands of people walking back from the mall of course. Even back in Virginia there were people walking back in to my neighborhood.

The parade started over an hour late due to Kennedy's collapse at their luncheon. Had I known I might have tried to use that time to find a spot on the parade route. Obama got out of the Presidential tank and walked twice. It would have been nice to see that, the crowds along the route didn't look too bad. I'm sure most people had issues getting there. A million people just don't fit on the sidewalks of Penn AVE. Thankfully nothing tragic happened on this day our President was so accessible.

Can't you sense the change today?

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UPDATE: Metrorail’s Top Weekday Ridership Days

#      Date           Ridership             Event

1    01-20-09  1,120,000  Obama Inauguration 

2    01-19-09     866,681   Obama inaugural events

3    07-11-08        854,638   Baseball/Women of Faith Conference

4    06-09-04        850,636   Reagan State Funeral

5    06-25-08        846,388   Smithsonian Folklife Festival/Baseball 

Hey, America Feels Kinda' Cool Again concert

One of the hundreds of Inaugural events going on was this Justin Jones, Citizen Cope, Sheryl Crow, and Beastie Boys concert. It was quite an interesting bill. But apparently…

Fresh off their combined efforts on the Get Out and Vote '08 voter awareness tour, Beastie Boys and Sheryl Crow will play full sets at a very special all ages "Hey, America Feels Kinda' Cool Again" Inaugural Gala presented by Rock The Vote.

"full sets" was not at all true although I wasn't expecting it given the time and place.

We of course rolled in around 10:00 after Justin Jones and Citizen Cope. It was perfect timing actually right before Sheryl Crow. The place was full but not as full as I would have guessed. It was a good show, my first time seeing the Beastie Boys. They both played short sets. The B Boys threw down for being in their mid-forties. It ain’t Fight For Your Right To Party time anymore. At the end though they picked up instruments and threw down. Supposedly the guys from Entourage were there and I thought I saw the actor character dude up on the backstage balcony.

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The metro mid-day was nuts! People from all over the country were crowding my main mode of transportation. The Columbia Heights metro platform was packed at noon. Everyone had Obama crap on. I had to take a few pics of tourists.

We Are One

The craziness began on Sunday with the We Are One concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Thankfully the temperature was freezing and not in the single digits as it had been the previous few days. It was decided for the Inauguration that Virginians were banned and all bridges from the Common Wealth were closed to private vehicle traffic on Sunday and Tuesday. I also heard that earlier in the day the metro was completely packed. No matter, I’m mobile on my bike.

The concert was billed as the “Opening Inaugural Celebration”:

President-elect Barack Obama with the help of an all-star line-up of talent will kick off the inaugural celebration in Washington, D.C., with a free and open event at the Lincoln Memorial, between Constitution Avenue NW and Independence Avenue SW on 23rd Street.

Musical performers scheduled for the event include Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, HeatherHeadley, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Usher Raymond IV,Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am, and Stevie Wonder.

Among those reading historical passages will be Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington. The Rt. Reverend V. Gene Robinson will give the invocation. Rob Mathes will be the music director and arranger for the backing band, which will support all of the artists

As I rolled on to Constitution AVE from the half closed Roosevelt Bridge you could see streams of people flooding in from the city neighborhoods and the metro. All roads south of K street were closed (basically all of downtown). Tour buses lined the length of the Constitution AVE. Original estimates for Inauguration Day were as high as 5 million people. That was downgraded to just a couple million and I don’t think anyone had much of a clue how many would show up this Sunday. They had many thousands of port-o-potties and the security perimeter all set up for both this Sunday concert and Tuesday’s events. I’ve never seen so many port-o’s in my life. Verizon said they had 10x the network volumne compared to a normal day, I would have guessed higher. I think I saw at least one COW.

I found a nice open un-secured entry point through the security perimeter onto the mall and locked up my bike. The stage was on the Lincoln Memorial and this open entry point was down near the Washington Monument. I hung out in that area for a bit and took some pics. Some camo FBI agents were standing ground on top of SUV platforms with scopes and sniper rifles. They didn’t appreciate me taking pics of them; at least one yelled at me. Of course in such an estimated crowd of 400,000 I wasn’t the only one taking their picture; I saw a nice close up in the Washington Post online. Their sniper rifles were well concealed.

I never made it up towards the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Memorial. After hanging near the Washington Monument I jumped back on my bike and cruised around to the south side of the mall. Towards the end of the show before Obama spoke I tried to re-enter the security perimeter and some cops wouldn’t let me. What do they care if a few more people walk on to the mall? I had to jump back on my bike and cruise east a bit back towards the Washington Monument to get back in the thick of things. Why have the security perimeter if you aren’t going to check people and their bags anyway? The crowd was enjoying the show and I saw a few thousand people dancing to Stevie Wonder singing “Higher Ground”. 

There were a ton of groups trying to stick together. People came from all over. And everyone had some type of Obama paraphernalia on. They must have made multi-millions on all the shirts, jackets, buttons, flags, and everything else. I only saw one “activist” group protesting to stop homosexuality. That is always entertaining as someone will inevitably challenge them and get in to a never ending argument. 

There are tons of concerts and parties the next couple of days with all the celebrities and bands in town. Let the festivities begin!

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Inaugural party time

Every day another 100 inaugural parties get announced.  After passing up a ticket to the Western Inaugural Ball they released the music line-up. Thankfully I didn’t pass up The Dead or The Derek Trucks Band. So many groups and celebs will be in town for the thousands of inaugural parties. 

On Sunday there is a big “We Are One” concert at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. I plan to ride my bike down to the mall for the concert and the inauguration. It should be the best mode of transportation being that all bridges from VA are closed to private cars and the metro will be more than full. City and federal officials are saying to expect chaos.

The 9:30 Club is hosting a couple big inaugural concerts and I’m going to one on Monday with the Beastie Boys, Sheryl Crow, Citizen Cope and Justin Jones.  

Obama comes over for dinner

I mentioned once before that my friend’s uncle is George Will.  At the beginning of the baseball season I was invited to George's season opening party.  Some MLB players, Alan Greenspan, and Cheney himself were all in attendence.  Sarah got back in town late so I didn't end up going.  

Apparently B-rock went over there for dinner last night.  I wasn’t invited for some reason.  I’ll be sure to let Sarah know of my disappointment.  

hangin' with the Pres

I had to turn down an offer to attend one of the official Inaugural Balls today. A friend of mine who is in to politics has a brother who is the chief of staff to a new senator. She has Inauguration tickets and she thinks she is getting tickets to the Western Inauguration Ball. It is one of ten official balls that the Obama’s and Biden’s will make an appearance at. Quite the big deal if you are in to that sort of thing. 

Me not so much. I’d have to decide which tux to wear and make sure my date was up to speed on all the new dance moves. She let me off the hook because she was looking forward to both formal and informal fun and since I’m seeing someone that precludes the latter. No worries. I hear the events consist of getting in line to check your coat, getting in line for a drink, standing with thousands of others, then getting in line to get your coat. It is at the convention center with five other official balls. I guess the tux will have to wait for the next formal occasion on my calendar.

UPDATE: Apparently I made a big mistake and am missing out on the event of my life as at least one woman is willing to sell her ovary for a ticket (if you want a 3some her friend is available too).

DC celebrates B-Rock!

Once the election was called people started pouring in to the streets of DC. I was at U and 14th where there was a planned gathering and drum circle. A few thousand people were also there. Fireworks were going off. The whole intersection was taken over and people were climbing on trees, bus stations, newspaper machines, and everything else. The cops didn't interfere at all and did a little traffic management being that no one was getting through the intersection.  Lots of cars and buses had to do U turns.  Everyone was in quite the happy mood dancing in the streets. Even the cars that were stuck were having a good time.

The cops did get control of the intersection once but then lost it when more people came from Adams Morgan, the 9:30 Club, and their homes after the 11:00 news.  At some point people start yelling to head to the White House.  Apparently another large crowd was down there.  They should have walked on to the White House lawn.  What would a few secret service guys do if 5000 people started walking up to knock on the door?

I took pics with my phone but being that I've never really used the camera before and it was dark out they aren't exactly high quality shots.

The Washington Post also did a story.

UPDATE: videos

(get in line to) Vote Now!

I happened to walk past my neighborhood polling station on my way home from dinner tonight.  At 7pm I could see more than 100 people in line in the lobby of our county offices.  Someone walking out mentioned "1 and 1/2 hours".  I bet it was longer if you got in line at 7:00. 

On NPR someone said that 40% of Colorado has already voted.  Don't vote now, save time and vote on election day!

UPDATE: The Washington Post did their own story video style here.

Careful who you date!

So I was out on a date tonight with someone I just met. Living in DC its hard to avoid the subject of politics. I happened to mention how much I hate the political wrangling. This is a risky thing in DC, as at least half of the people in the area have a career in politics. Alas, I have my opinion and I'm sticking to it. So I mention to this female how I'm an "anyone but Hillary" person. And she mentions her freakin' aunt is Maggie Williams! Hillary's new campaign manager! Well I thought the date was pretty much over then. Cuz we were arguing about the two party system as well. She was all for the two party system. She said we couldn't handle more then two, and accused me of being unamerican for not supporting one of them. Talk about the relationship being over. I'm so frustrated with the two main political parties its not even funny and I was about to walk out right there. The only thing that kept me seated was the dumbfounded state she put me in with this opinion of hers. I couldn't believe she was actually serious.

Well we ended up having a good time cuz she actually does have a sorta decent head on her shoulders outside of politics. She is young but has done a lot of traveling, started a non-profit along side her normal career, and has some decent ambitions. Oh how good it is to be young and dumb. Being a former semi-pro surfer doesn't hurt either.

It will be fun to argue with her about Hillary and the two party system. Arguing is always fun. Cuz I'm always right of course.