LBPOSTSports.com columnist Ryan Thies is in Washington D.C. to witness tomorrow’s inauguration.
I had a teacher in high school that backpacked through Europe after college. He was a history buff so in addition to seeing West Germany, he was willing to go out of his way to go see Berlin. It was Fall of 1989 and he stumbled upon the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is what I pictured “history” to be – right place, right time, and suddenly the world is different. I now realize that my definition of history needs to be expanded because January 20th is going to be historic and it’s been on my calendar for months (technically years.) November 4th was amazing but tomorrow at noon (EST) its effects become permanent and our world will be different. This idea, of “planned history”, didn’t fully hit me until last night.
Most red-eyes out of LGB are crowded- waking up in a new city must appeal to people. But something was different at Gate 3 on Sunday night: there were grandmas in bedazzled Obama jackets and there were college age guys in Obama baseball hats, there were people with expensive looking Louis Vutton luggage and there were people with beat-up duffle bags. But all of us had (at least) one thing in common- we were all on our way to witness history.
Traveling from Dulles to Capitol Hill took twice as long as normal- and that was at the crack of dawn on a Holiday. The bridges were closed for everything except buses and taxis. Even on surface streets, there were metal or cement barricades everywhere, usually accompanied by an unmarked black SUV.
Make no mistake, this city is hosting a party. But like most parties, the host is massively inconvenienced. I assume this is what it would be like to host the Olympics, but it might be worse. I also assume that as excited as DC residents are for an Obama Presidency, they are just as eager to get this whole thing over and done with.
But for the next 2 days they are the center of the universe and local businesses are going to milk it for all it’s worth. Nearly every single business has some sort of Obama paraphernalia; from liquor stores (“The Inauguration headquarters, sponsored by Miller”) to photo shops, the President-elect is already a booming industry. This has always been a weird city, but the mood right now is a mixture of unbridled enthusiasm and dollar-hungry capitalism. But I’m certainly not complaining, because those Obama Cookies at the coffee shop this morning looked delicious.