61 posts tagged “da capital”
In D.C. the Tuesday before Halloween there is a drag race in Dupont Circle.... The High Heel Drag Race!
There were some awesome outfits, I must say.
These lovely ladies are sitting on the hood of a cop car.
There were some famous (dead) people.... and others less easy to identify....
There was entertainment by one of the local sports clubs, and other topical outfits, such as Larry Craig being pushed up and down the street by a policeman on a toilet.
There were four board games, which were seriously spectacular-- the game of Life on the left-- including Twister, Parchesi, and Candyland. And also some Tennessee Pride sausage... wearing very yellow boots....
A little leather, a little lederhosen (or dirndls at least), and a little Divine...
Andorra catches up with the game of life...
Seriously. The chess club of a emotionally challenged elementary kids? Good golly, you couldn't make this stuff up, because if you did people would say you were laying it on so thick as to be outlandish.
>Start Rant
So, a while ago I posted about a day when my evening commute was just. plain.hellish. In the standing-on-an-overpacked-platform-for-ever-only-to-encounter-more-breakdowns kind of way. There was an even worse set of delays at the end of August. Now, mind you, I could write a post every day whingeing about the less-than-stellar service (every single day, without fail, at rush hour there are residual delays on one of the lines from a broken down train that has been cleared. Every day. Without fail.) I thought a lot about posting a rant when it was announced the metro would likely put in place a fare hike to deal with their budget shortfall. I kind of put it off for a while, though I thought Catoe must be smoking something to suggest a 29% rate increase fast on the heels of major organizational disasters just the month before. I thought about it again when the WaPo had an article about how metro wastes $4 million in electricity every year-- something that could help with closing their budget gap if they'd shut off the damn lights. So now that weeks and weeks and weeks have passed Catoe has announced that metro is going to respond to these problems by clarifying their announcements, and making their employees do their best to grasp that they should announce things in the first place.
Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. has promised to fix communications, adding his name to a list of agency chiefs who have vowed, unsuccessfully, to cure one of the agency's largest and deepest ailments. At a board meeting last week, managers outlined a new take on the long-standing problem. Success, they said, will not be achieved by simply making station announcements comprehensible; it will require a complete culture change, from top managers to all 8,200 bus and rail operations employees.
Hunh. Well that's just fascinating. I certainly don't disagree that the announcement system in Metro sucks. And I also do not disagree that metro workers are often rather opaque in their responses (but, honestly, no less helpful than anywhere else. They just don't usually seem to have the answers). Now, I wouldn't be horrified or anything if I could understand the messages that come over the speaker (though I'm not sure that the Death Start design of the metro stations is conducive to better acoustics), but, really, you know what would make me really happy? Consistent service..
I've lived in two cities that have much, much, much older subway systems: Boston and New York. Like three, almost four times as old. I spent many months in Paris and took the metro every day. And the number of times that there are announcements or messages on the electronic boards that there are delays on one like or another in one week tops the number that I saw in six months in these other places-- all of which have more comprehensive systems with more trains (if you include the several trolley branches on the Green line of the T). So what gives? Everyone is always whingeing that the traffic in the D.C. metro area is awful (apparently second only to L.A.). This may have something to do with the fact that taking the metro in from the suburbs takes FOREVER, isn't that cheap (especially when you add parking), and is usually undergoing something jacked up that has everything delayed. For example, last Thursday coming home there were residual delays on the yellow line due to a train malfunction; on Friday morning there were residual delays on the red line due to a train malfunction; all weekend long there is track maintenance that is delaying everything by upwards of thirty minutes on the orange line; and Monday morning there were residual delays on the green line due to a train malfunction on my way to the gym; when I got out of the gym the green line was cleared up, but there were residual delays on the red line from a train malfunction that happened while I was on the elliptical machine.
Seeing a pattern? This in addition to the fact that the normal running has trains coming every 20-30 minutes on weekends and 30 + minutes after 11pm. And there is talk of cutting back the extended weekend hours (much better to have the drunken Marylanders and and Virginians driving home from Adams Morgan?). Now, what exactly is this fare hike for?
Oh, right, to "improve service." So, we're supposed to pay extra for substandard service? How 'bout y'all provide something that is worth what we're paying now first.
Meanwhile, DCist has a story on the new fare hikes.... which, you know, would be maybe a little easier to swallow if the article hadn't ended with a listing of all the trackwork/service problems to expect this weekend-- i.e. every line but one. (And if it hadn't taken me almost two hours to get to work yesterday because of a jacked up door on the packed train I was riding).
Weekend Track Work to Affect Red, Blue, Green and Orange Lines:
Track maintenance and rail car testing on the Red, Blue, Orange and Green lines this weekend (October 26-28) will cause inbound and outbound trains to take turns sharing one track from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, October 27, and from 9 a.m., to 7 p.m., Sunday, October 28.
>End Rant.
So, I used to have Comcast internet service when I was in the District, and I HATED them. It was THE WORST SERVICE EVER. Seriously. I've wasted hours, DAYS, in the black hole of Comcast Death. I am not alone:
This was the company that has had consumer service problems serious enough to prompt the trade magazine Advertising Age to editorialize that Comcast and other cable providers should spend less on advertising and more on customer service. And has spawned a blog called ComcastMustDie.com that's filled with posts from angry customers.
Uhm-hum. There is no such thing, as far as I can tell, as a satisfied Comcast customer. So how do I feel about Mona Shaw? She's, obviously, my hero.
In other news, I am very happy to report that D.C. has finally decided to do something logical: metered rides! Wheeee! I might finally take a taxi in this town once they get those babies installed. All this griping about how the cabbies will lose money. And yet, I did EVERYTHING to avoid taking a taxi because of the stupid zone system, and I was not alone in my allergy to zone driving cabs.
I walked from the gym to work this morning, as I needed to pop by the organic market on the way in. When I was coming up to Thomas Circle I heard a beep, screen, and a crash-- an SUV and a BMW had gone toe to toe. I didn't see the back of the SUV, but based on the front bumper of the cherry red beemer I'm guessing SUV came out on top.
Coming around the corner I was passing that church on the circle where all the homeless folk hang out. I stepped out into fourteenth to cross the street right in front of a homeless dude hanging on the stoop, smoking, and coughing the cough of deep illness. He yelled out, "HEY THERE, MY SISTAH!"
Now, I must admit, in general my assumption when someone African American yells sistah in my general direction is that there is an African American woman likely standing behind me out of my view. But, no, this morning was, in fact, not the case.
"HEY, MY WHITE SISTAH! COUSIN YOU MAY BE WHITE BUT YOU IS STILL MY SISTAH! WE ALL GO BACK TO ADAM AND EVE IN THE GARDEN MY SISTAH! YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE IT BUT WE IS ALL AFRICANS! EVEN YOU!"
I laughed at this, and then took a closer look and realized that I know exactly where this is in my old hood (and wonder how it could have been misdelivered... I mean... the place has a sign with the name on it...?). There is something fantasically D.C. about it, really....
So get registered! Artist registration is now OPEN, so whether you're a painter, a musician, a glass sculptor, or the leader of a cabaret ensemble, get thee to the artomatic website and get yourself registered, and now! It is a super fantastic time that is had by all. You will be much happier if you do.
On a personal note, I've registered and am now fretting over what to hang. Something cohesive.... stuff the works together, that implies a body of work and not just random ADHD photographic behavior....
Though, in general, despite not knowing what bag contains most of my underwear, I am. My skin is less happy... I've been all dry and crackly this winter, but a weird thing appeared on my arm a few weeks ago-- just before I went out to AZ-- and it hasn't gone away. I finally broke down and went to the doctor today to have it looked at. He seemed unsure what, exactly, it was, but gave me some cream for it (a prescription that took two hours of waiting to fill). I walked to the office afterwards, passing a man getting into his car on P Street. His young son was with him, but was edging ever closer to a pair of Pekinese dogs tied to a tree, waiting for their owner to emerge from a hardware store.
"Seth... Seth.... Come back here, Seth. Don't touch the doggies. Don't touch the doggies. Seth."
Seth turns around, looks at dad. Gauges... pleasure of petting furry doggies vs. wrath of dad. Dad looked like his wrath probably wan't that bad. He was dressed tweedy and drove a lefty car, a middle-aged African American man with salt and pepper hair. He looked like a professor of literature or history. Not comp lit. Not anthropology. He looked like he needed a pipe. He looked like the sum of his wrath would be a wave of guilt-inducing anxiety. Seth finished assessing. Turns away from dad, edges closer to the doggies.
"SETH. Come back here. Seth. SETH... NO."
Seth turns back, looks at dad, assessing again. Okay, dad's sounding angry, but how angry does dad ever get? And look! Doggies!! Seth moves on to reason, three year old style.
"I was just going to meet the doggies and see the doggies and I can see them closer. I can see the doggies closer. I can see them."
"Seth, we don't touch doggies we don't know."
Actually, Seth, that's a pretty good rule of thumb in general. Mostly, it's a good idea not to touch things that breathe that you don't know-- people, doggies, polar bears, vultures, rabid raccoons.
"But I djust wanted to pet the doggies. Djust pet them a little."
"No, Seth."
"Why not?"
Dad paused, I'm betting contemplating whether or not telling Seth that we don't do that because you never know which doggies will savage you would scar him for life, making him fear all animals forever. He settled on a solution.
"Because those doggies aren't happy, Seth."
Mind you, I get what dad is doing. But the dogs really didn't look particularly unhappy. What they really looked was uninterested. In Seth, in dad, in me, in anything that wasn't their owner coming out of the hardware store ready to unleash them for the rest of their walk and maybe home for some kibble. I wonder how this will get translated in Seth's young mind.
***
I still can't find my notes on New York. Though I also can't find many things that I would like to find. Like more socks. I did, however, find a roll of film I shot there, and so I have a picture from the trip, P watching the big city peoples doing their thing through the coffee shop window.
Moving is, perhaps, the one great consistency (besides my parents and my friend Julee) in my post-high school life. In general, I migrate once a calendar year. Since 1989 the longest I have been in residence at a single address was a little less than two years. The shortest at a place that I wasn't visiting was three weeks. Moving is the bane of my existence; I can't seem to shake it. It is like a fungus-- even when you think you've gotten rid of it, it comes back. When I moved to D.C. almost three years ago the plan was for this to be it. I wasn't going to move again until I was moving into a house that I owned.
I am about to move for the fourth time in thirty-three months. That's once every eight months, so obviously my "this is it" plan didn't work. On the upside, I'm moving into a house. On the downside, it ain't mine. There is, of course, a real upside to this move... big enough to mitigate the unbridled horror of moving. Twice. Once cross country, once across town. And I'm very happy about that. Still.... I hate moving.
It's a pain to move always, but when you have no time to pack (as I don't) it's just chaotic. In the midst of all of this I ran out of boxes and tape (twice), so I headed down to Staples in the icky weather on Wednesday to get both. On the way back I was on the ever so packed bus that runs up Connecticut, and really not often enough. Jam. Packed. Sitting across from me was an elderly woman wearing a shower cap who had a young Indian man and his elderly, non-English-speaking father locked in conversation. And I mean locked in a head-lock kind of way. She kept making a sound like she was calling pigs or something. "hoooooooooWHEE!" The young man was doing his best to be polite. But at one point he just couldn't figure out what she was talking about, which is understandable since I couldn't either. She consoled him by saying, "Don't worry about it, son, I guess I'm a little drunk. I did have a little drinky-dinky-do or two." And then giggled to herself, fondly reminiscing about the drinky-dinky-do.
On the bus yesterday morning there was a man that stomped on the bus, yelled out a stream of curses, then turned around and stomped off the bus. I can't say as I was unhappy to see him go. When I take up residency in Virginia I won't be taking the city bus anymore-- I'll be metro-ing in from the 'burbs-- except to do work stuff around the District. I will be sometimes taking a suburban bus to/from the metro stop, though I'm not sure how much entertainment that will provide. I'm not sure how I feel about this; I'm not sure I'll have anything to blog about anymore.
An hour after I got to work the power went off, killing my plans for what to get done. *sigh* That's the second time in three days that I had my plans for project completion foiled by Pepco and the weather. On the upside, I used the time to clean my desk, making it possible for me to see my desk, which is kind of how I prefer it.
In other news, I woke up this morning to discover that my aloe plant decided it could not bear the pain and horror of living in the basement for one moment longer and attempted suicide. Which seems rather odd, plant deaths usually being rather slow and protracted if not the result of violence done upon them. Even more odd, it settled on the particularly unconventional plant suicide method of dashing its brains out on the tile floor after leaping from a great (well, maybe not great, but great enough) height. I woke up this morning to find it laying, sadly, in a pool of its own dirt. I have no idea how it got down there, no idea how it leapt over the little railing thing on the plant stand. I don't have pets, so it did this unaided. Silly, stupid aloe! If you could just hang on for another two weeks you will have a lovely window seat upon which to sun yourself! I attempted resucitation, but now I just have wait to see if it is going to die the more conventional slow, protracted death. Sigh.
On a final note (for this post anyway) I must note that Manolo the Shoeblogger has just given one of the best descriptions of academia I have seen in a long time:
The Manolo says, of the course, there are those who believe that one would be foolish to give up the golden perks of academia, such as the pleasures of frequently reading the papers in which the word “hermeneutics” appears twice in the first sentence, once juxtaposed next to the phrase “Gilligan’s Island”.
What? No more faculty meetings in which the professor of Marxist marketing comes to blows with the elderly Emily Bronte scholar over the matter of parking spaces?
I am so grateful to my super fantastic friend, the techne, for introducing me to the Manolo. Also, I am deeply jealous of the woman who wrote her question to the Manolo. If I were capable of baking that is what I would do. Also, those shoes are so cute.
Nothing seems to put D.C. and its suburbs into a panic quite like the idea of precipitation occurring in the winter. I had never, before coming to D.C., been sent home from work for weather. Snow days were something that I associated only with school; it hadn't occurred to me that you could have snow days from work, but for extreme (and extremely rare) circumstances the only time up to moving here that I'd been told I didn't have to go to work was in Ithaca when we got three and a half feet of snow overnight. The city declared a state of emergency for a couple days while it tried to dig the town out and barred people from driving unless they were operating an emergency vehicle. I worked at the cable company and was told that I didn't have to come in, but since everyone knew I lived downtown (maybe a mile from the office) it was clear that my presence was expected (they were appreciative, but I didn't really feel like I had much choice). Three and a half feet overnight and my snow day was optional.
So I found it shocking when, my first winter in D.C., I was sent home early for an inch of snow. It was still falling, but after hours of little white flakes (the little ones that never give more than a dusting, not the big, fluffy, thick, wet flakes that mean business) there was only an inch on the ground at three in the afternoon. I mean I was literally stunned. To the point of not being able to speak for a moment. I looked outside at the swirling, light flakes that were destined to drift around in little eddies but never collect into an obstruction and thought, this is a joke, right? It was not. Moreover, we had a two hour delay for a snow "storm" only slightly more weighty soon afterwards. When I was a kid I used to pray for ten plus inch storms that started really falling at around 3am. If they started earlier than that the plows would have dealt with it and school would be on. Any less than ten inches and you could forget it. When I was in grad school the admin from the area studies program I was in retired. She noted that in almost thirty-five years of working for the university the campus had never closed for snow.
So I wasn't sure what to expect when I looked out the window yesterday morning-- the radio came on with a list of all the counties who had canceled school. There were delays in the counties closer to D.C. I looked outside to find.... nothing. Not a damn thing. The cancelations? For a winter storm warning. A warning. No actual snow. The threat of snow. It might snow later. And how much? It might snow an inch.
But it isn't on when I get home. Sigh. However, since it's after dark I can see that not everyone has lost power. The house where I live is, in fact, the demarcation line. The apartment building next door has power. The apartment building across the street has power. The street lights from the building next door down the hill are on. But the street lights from the house where I live up to the park are out, along with the four houses on the little cliff. Of which mine is the fourth. Apparently we are our own grid.
So I grab a book and head out to have some dinner. I listen to the messages on my phone and my landlady has left a message saying that the power was out and that Pepco said it would be back on around seven. It's already seven thirty. On the way home, around nine o'clock I see a bunch of Pepco trucks (making me wonder how they were planning to get the electricty on by seven when the trucks weren't in the neighborhood until nine?) and I ask one of the guys working what the deal is.... He doesn't know, could be an hour, could be four, and once it's on it may not stay on.
Great.
At home it's freezing. I always carry a maglight in my bag (years of living in developing countries where electrical service was sporadic) and I gather up a bunch of warm clothes and crawl under the covers hoping that the pipes and I don't freeze over night. The lights come on an hour later, happily, but the apartment was still way too cold to get anything done.... egads. And this morning the weather actually is bad-- all iced up, so the buses aren't really running. Today would be the day for the fed to give a snow day. The airports are all closed, all the schools are closed.
But no. A two hour delay. Sigh.
But today is Valentine's Day, and I have a wonderful Valentine, so, eh.... whatever ;)
