Well, I have a few more things for you to consider towards those "crush-level" crowds next week.
Last week came word that all the tickets for rides on MARC commuter trains between Baltimore and D.C. have already been sold out, with scalpers reportedly getting $50 or more for the $25 round-trip tickets.
(That is to say, the dopey MARC system I used to use all the time -for Oriole afternoon games- which, counter-intuitively, is actually cutting back on daily trains to and from Washington's Union Station to Baltimore's Penn Station.)
Now, via email, comes word from the ever-vigilant eyes at DC Watch that the geniuses at WMATA, the Washington Metro, and Mayor Adrian Fenty's office and others, have decided to CLOSE the main Metro transfer stations in downtown Washington, thus knee-capping local residents and tourists alike, actually adding to the difficulty of their mass transit trips for the Inaugural and parade.
I know lots of people who during past Fourth of July musical/fireworks displays on The Mall, actually walked a few miles home to Arlington at night because of how poorly-managed and over-crowded the Metro system was.
I was one of them.
There'd be outlier people who never use the system -and their kids- actually dangling their legs over the edge of the marble platform, without a care in the world, as daily users like me and my friends kept our distance from them, knowing exactly what could easily happen.
I saw that repeated over and over thru the years, when some friends and I walked from The Mall to across Key Bridge, hoping to get on at the Rosslyn Metro, yet once we got down those very long escalators to the west-bound Orange line platform, we encountered a crowd that looked like O'Hare Airport during a freak blizzard, stranding thousands -dazed parents, with kids everywhere crying, except here, with legs dangling over the ledge, with Metro Police and security nowhere to be found.
A mob of people in an area far too small, just waiting for a reason to freak-out.
And nobody in charge around, but a few folks downtown doubtless watching via CCTV, chuckling to themselves.
We stayed for 10-15 minutes but the crowd was SO DENSE and unruly that we got concerned about our collective safety, went back up the escalator and walked the last two miles home, completely exhausted, as if the D.C. summer heat wasn't enough.
That's the crystal ball past-as-prologue preview for next week, as people from towns all over America without subways and commuter trains converge on D.C., eager to test their luck with limbs dangling over Metro platforms, one slip from the real Third Rail (of Politics.)
"All the planning is going into making it as difficult as possible to bring a private car into close-in Northern Virginia for inauguration events."
Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Marc Fisher kills governement officials and planners with a thousand cuts.
Inauguration: The Million Things We Don't Know March
If I hear anything amusing or interesting from anyone I know about Vanity Fair's event in DC, I'll let you know.
No doubt, nothing quite as scary/amusing as Maureen Dowd's wrath at being turned away from VF's Inaugural shindig at The Corcoran in 1997.
As many of my friends and colleagues recall me telling them at the time, that Irish volcano rumbled for DAYS!
And yet in a sign of the changing times, Maureen penned the VF cover story last month on Tina Fey. See the story at http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/tina_fey200901 and a video at
(To celebrate Cate Blanchett's February VF cover, this weekend I'm going to re-watch Veronica Guerin, the first film of hers where I glimpsed her true acting greatness.
Speaking of La Dowd, on the slim chance you haven't already heard or read about it elsewhere, she's feting David Geffen this weekend in Washington, and needless to say, it's a safe bet to say it will be sans Clintonistas!
(FYI: The Florida Inaugural party is at The Corcoran next Monday night.)
Interesting piece in today's Miami Herald, Lennar sues 'watchdog' over fraud allegations
Up until now, though I've often taken the Miami Herald to task in this space for its all-too-frequent sloppiness, laziness and bad writing/editing, I've never actually mentioned the moment when I first witnessed the tangible sign that the Miami Herald had, fundamentally, changed for the worse, once I returned to the area.
I'd read the Herald 2-3 times a week in print and online the rest of the week while in Washington, and would now be in a position to read it in print every day.
That moment came in 2004, when I happened to notice a front page article and photo above the fold about giant developer Lennar -thru the widow of Lennar's founder, Leonard Miller, arguably, one of the most powerful businessmen in South Florida of the past forty years- giving $100
million dollars to the University of Miami Medical School, where they'd name the school after him. http://www6.miami.edu/ummedicine-magazine/winter2005/deansmessage.html
The Herald even thought to run a positive editorial about it that day.
Not mentioned anywhere in those two pieces, which might've been of interest to all the people who've flooded South Florida since Hurricane Andrew?
That Lennar had been one of the builders most at fault for the shoddy, sub-standard building practices in South Florida pre-Hurricane Andrew (i.e. Country Walk, the residential development in South Miami that started to disintegrate from winds even before Andrew hit.
Coincidentally, on page 3A of that day's Herald, in their god-awful 'Other news' column was 2-3 sentences about a huge planned development in suburban Maryland -south of DC- that had been mysteriously torched.
I knew for a fact that it was a Lennar project, something that was easily verifiable, as subsequent NY Times news accounts made clear.
See 100 Investigators Gather, Seeking Clues to Vast Arson in Maryland at
Maryland Indicts 5 in Fire That Swept 26 New Homes at
But the Herald, ever dependent on Lennar's big advertising dollars during flush times to encourage the South Florida real estate boom, didn't mention any of these pertinent facts that particular day, nor did it seem to ask any questions about the fire of the Lennar officials, before or after the ceremony -the most expensive case of residential arson in Maryland history.
Doesn't mention in the newspaper that one of South Florida's largest companies has suffered a big financial and marketing punch to the gut on a huge project.
That's when I knew the Herald I'd once known, for all of its many, many faults, was gone, replaced by a curious lack of curiosity, or desire to connect-the-dots.
And now, Lennar's suing folks who might just be telling the truth about them.
St. Pete Times columnist Robert Trigaux expertly connects those particular dots better than most here.
After that, check out some of the interesting facts and behind-the-scenes anecdotes the Miami SunPost revealed about Lennar just a few months ago:
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Inauguration Island and Dorothy Brizill's Security on Steroids.
They are like nothing you will read or see elsewhere. http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2009/09-01-14.htm
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from Marc Ambinder's great blog at The Atlantic, http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/ , which I also receive
via email, see the photo of the new limo of President 44, President Limo Porn
