Let the light be your guide

I was walking south down 18th street to lunch yesterday, got to N Street and heard a loud screech of tires over on Connecticut. A screech of tires is like someone yelling "Hey you!": you always look on impulse, even if you don't need to. So I looked right a minivan hit a woman crossing Connecticut. She flew up on the van's hood and then shot forward onto the street, tumbling in front of the car. Description can't do it justice. Simply: she was hit hard.

The driver of the van got out and ran to this woman—a well-dressed young professional that the South Dupont/Farragut area is full of on weekdays—but as he got to her, she jumped up and started to try and run away, panicked. It was a surreal sight and one that I won't forget too soon. The driver got her to calm down and sit on the median running down Connecticut, a group of people closer to her gathered around, some on their phones, and as I walked away, I could see the woman conscious, talking and even smiling, but I assume that it was shock. If she got out of that without a concussion or broken bones, it would be a physics miracle.

I assumed at first that it was a case of careless jaywalking, but I remembered how fucked up that intersection is. Most of the crosswalks on Connecticut avenue are confusing half-and-half affairs, where you have a walk signal for the near side of the street and another for the far side, and they're not synced. It's all too easy to get a walk signal for the near side and forget that you're still not cleared for the far. Considering how hard the van hit her and that she just stepped in front of a car, I think it's safe to assume that this is what happened.

The rest of the day, I was hyper-aware both of my street-crossing habits and the practices of others. I saw that all-too-common sight of the "I'm so city" pedestrians, making a show of their urban toughness by walking slowly in front of oncoming traffic. I saw a young couple cross in the middle of a block and then get pissed off at the driver who had to slow to a halt to let them cross.

The point of not jaywalking to me is not about not breaking the law; it's about order. You don't jaywalk not because you want to be a boy scout and adhere to any and every law. You should not jaywalk simply because it's not your fucking turn. You shouldn't jaywalk at the very least for the same reason that you don't just cut in line in the grocery store. No one would ever do that, yet jaywalking is often considered a sign of urban savvy, even with the added element of possible death.

My points are getting lost in rambling here. I just wanted to remind myself (and you) that it's good to occasionally relearn that childhood lesson to be careful when you cross the street. I'm just sorry that I had to relearn it at the expense of a woman who just misread the crosswalk light one afternoon on her lunch break.

On the fence

I already had crime, drug-dealing and murder on the mind after going to sleep fresh off the end of City Of God, an incredibly violent movie that was also, unfortunately, fantastic (I hate that so many great movies are so violent, adding to the lists of the movie geek boys who can't call something 'one of the best ever' unless it involves at least 200 gunshot wounds). And I went to bed wondering what daily life is often like in parts of DC? Is it that bad? Was it that bad? Hey, maybe even the actual City of God in the 80's wasn't that bad, but we all know that there's places where people grow up and live their daily lives in war zones.

I woke up this morning (painfully early, thankyouverymuch failing body) to find this story in the Post:

Criminals to Face New Hurdle On D.C.-Prince George's Line

With the images from City of God in my head, here's a scene close to home of drug dealers controlling neighborhoods and easily evading cops. I hope that the fence brings that neighborhood some peace, but it's hard not to see a short time between the finish of the fence and the day when someone takes some wire cutters to it.

What I find almost as upsetting as hearing about the good people of these neighborhoods terrorized by crime is that this underscores the problem of DC. Having the political boundries that the cops can't cross is just one more example of how DC is so often paralyzed by its small size and close borders, and how it will continue to have such problems until the size of the city is expanded, something that will never happen.

Hungry like the wolf (after waiting)

There's a widening divide between the haves and the have-nots in DC these days, a divide that threatens to split our city apart at the seams and turn neighbor against neighbor. I'm talking of course about those who are waiting for a table and those who've already been seated.

I've never really seen (and experienced) this divide more than at Pasta Mia at Columbia and 18th, the restaurant that's insanely popular and smaller than it is popular. There's a long line extending down the sidewalk outside from the door, and then a tiny area on the inside that will hold about 6 or 7 hungry people. The problem with this is that, with so few tables, the people waiting at the area on the inside have plenty of time (and are hungry and impatient enough not to worry about being rude) to scope out the tables, and don't do much to hide their glaring at the tables where people are enjoying a post-dinner conversation rather than getting up and leaving the table to the cold and hungry.

Once getting to this inside area after an hour's wait outside ("This food had better be the best fucking pasta I've ever eaten"), I experienced the height of the have-nots. I scouted out all the tables and had a running inventory of all of the tables of four and where they were in their meal. I scouted out the parties that were almost done and did everything in my power to get them to hurry up and finish and let us have their tables.

But then, of course, once were were sitting down, we had absolutely no intention of rushing at all. Which is the way it should be.

Lessons learned? Well, even someone who barely knows me would know full well that I never learn a lesson. But I think that, ultimately, in this case, it's the haves who are in the right. The have-nots need to just be patient. Or perhaps be smart enough not to go to a resaurant that routinely has hour-plus waits.

The kids in red are making me red and giving me the blues

For the last two weeks, the corner of 19th and M has been overrun with over-enthusiastic recent college grad-aged kids in red DNC shirts, asking everyone who walks by, "Would you like to help get George Bush out of the White House?" They're making my life miserable. I can't go get lunch or buy a CD or get an ill-advised caramel apple muffin without being asked if I would like to help get George Bush out of the White House. I live in constant annoyance of them. I walked a block out of my way just to avoid them.

I think it's a bad question to be asking. I know they think that they're trying to capitalize on Bush's increasing unpopularity, but I think that focusing on getting Bush out of the White House rather than getting Kerry in is a really flawed tactic. Sooner or later, undecided voters are going to compare and contrast the two, and if the DNC's tactic has just been "Bush bad", then people are going to eventually going to ask, "But what's good, then?" It's been conventional political wisdom for a very long time: don't give voters a choice between an known evil and an unknown, especially if "evil" is still leading in the polls.

But even besides the flawed politics, they're just annoying, and they don't have to be. One or two days of it, fine. But they've been there for TWO WEEKS. I've never voted for anyone but Democrats in my entire voting career and if they're pissing me off, I can't imagine how irritated the undecided voters and questioning Republicans in this neighborhood are getting. All they have to do is make sure they're not in one spot for longer than two or three days and then move on (Ha! Get it?! Move on?!) to another street corner. They're driving me crazy and they need to leave.

For a while, I joked that I was going to respond, "If you ask me one more time, I'm voting for George Bush." But they've annoyed me enough that I don't think I'll be voting for Kerry. While something really catastrophic would have to happen for me to even consider voting for Bush, these little campaigners have made my vote almost definite: I'm voting for Nader.

Ralph Nader stands in the way of entertainment

This is (one of the reasons) why I love living in DC: I decide to take a break last night from rearranging my bedroom (had to be done) by going over to the Borders near my house, only to find that the way to the DVD section is blocked by folks listening to Ralph Nader. Only in DC! Well, I guess it's anywhere that he's talking, which is probably a lot of places. But still...it seems very DC to go into your local bookstore and find a presidential candidate.

I was really impressed by the things he had to say. It's a shame that he's not the Democratic candidate. Now, granted, when you're sitting listening to one person's rhetoric, it's pretty difficult not to be at least a little swayed, and swayed I was. I don't believe that the gap between Kerry and Bush is as small as he believes, but I thought that he had some great points about how the Democrats have screwed themselves in recent elections, and it was pretty sobering to think that the way both parties approach corporations and work issues really aren't very different.

There were a couple of near-crackpot statements, such as what he would have done about terrorism, but he had a great point when he said the he had worked for years to get cockpit doors more secure and locked, but without a tragedy, no one would bother even thinking about it.

Plus, there were some hecklers, which make any public event worthwhile.

If you're wondering why I haven't updated in so long, I believe the quality of this post goes a long way to answering that.

Do The Metro Squeeze

Anyone who still doubts that this country really has an obesity problem can easily see the harsh, shocking, flabby truth on any given morning on the DC Metro trains. Watching these enormous people trying to squeeze into seats that are barely big enough for normal-sized people is disturbing enough, but having to try and fit next to them...it's a nightmare, I tells ya. I now choose my seat mostly based on the size of the person sitting in the window spot, and where I used to hope that an attractive woman would sit next to me when I have the window seat, I now just pray for a non-obese person.

This morning, I sat in seat next to a woman who was huge, but looked like she was actually trying to give up a little space. It didn't work. She was so huge that I couldn't even fit in the other seat without being pushed over the arm rest, so I got up and moved. I just couldn't fit.

I can't wait until I get to stop riding the Metro. The only things I'll miss about it are the reading time and the aforementioned attractive women.