• 7:30 a.m.: The Hill’s best-known polling place, Precinct 89 at Hine Junior High on 7th Street S.E., is thronged with early voters; lines stretch out of the auditorium onto the faculty parking lot. Among notables: Post writer Gene Weingarten, looking grumpy; former “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” editor Bob Deutsch and wife Stephanie, with dog on leash, stride in on a festive note. “Don’t intimidate my dog,” she says. “One dog, one vote.”
• 8 a.m.: Market sage Tommy Glasgow of Market Lunch: “I’m slipping home to Virginia to vote in a few minutes.” His choice? “We ought to concentrate on problems in this country — we can’t police the whole world.”
• 8:30 a.m.: My son Joe, a college senior at Temple University in Philadelphia, is coming home to vote for the first time. He wears a T-shirt, “Vote or Die.”
• 11.a.m.: I vote. Lines are gone. It takes five minutes. My ballot is the 1,159th to be cast. Feeling of vague letdown. Process mundane, yet majestic. Outside, I note that every faculty car in the lot is from Maryland or Virginia.
• 2 p.m.: Lunchtime rush at the polls. A glance at the ballot count shows it to be over 1,300 — a big, big number. Meanwhile, word is out that Marion Barry supporters are already starting to celebrate their man’s return to the City Council (with beard) at Georgana’s Restaurant.
• 3 p.m.: People are taking a new look at politics — it’s become another, larger game, a voting Super Bowl in which everyone gets to throw a ball. Now they want results.
• 6 p.m. As dusk deepens quickly, I bike past the Capitol Hill Club, the home of Republican faithful. No head is without its cell phone. The air is tense. Meanwhile, a few blocks away at the Democratic national headquarters, workers are putting a cluster of balloons outside the Democratic Club. They seem happy, expectant.
• 8 p.m.: At Tunnicliff’s, the air is full of smoke, the din overwhelms the television over the polished wood of the bar. Fans are drinking heavily. Looking for a sign. But nothing happens.
• 8:30 p.m.: I run into Democratic humorist Tim Howe, who produced comedy shows for conventiongoers in New York and Boston. He’s touting a party at the Lucky Bar up on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle. “It’s sponsored by something called Votergasm,” he says, a spoofing group that asks members to “vote and to have sex Nov. 2” Other parties abound, and restaurateurs have responded to a new spirit of politics as spectator sport: Austin Grill at 750 E St. is offering Bush supporters a tortilla “stuffed with slow-cooked pork” while Kerryites get “a New England cod taco.” Andale at 401 7th St. N.W. is touting a “Kerryrita” or a “Bushrita” mixed drink for $5.
• 9:30 p.m.: It’s time for a serious accounting: Barry has won his 8th Ward seat on the council. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) has won her delegate’s seat in Congress; Kwame Brown (D) and Carol Schwartz (R) have won at-large council seats. Ward 2’s Jack Evans (D) wins easily, Ward 4’s Adrian Fenty (D) is unopposed, Vincent Gray, who toppled Ward 7’s Kevin Chavous (D) in the primary, has won hugely. Shadow representative candidate Ray Browne (D) has won over Green Party challenger Adam Eidinger. School board candidate Jeff Smith (District 1) has won, and Victor Reinoso has upset Dwight Singleton in District 2.
• Midnight: Fatigue and tension still mounting. It’s not over. But it is for me.
gallo’s explosion
EMCAC — five years and 10 minutes
Explosive Larry Gallo, is the angry man at the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee (EMCAC). Backed by 400 (by his count) outdoor vendors who sell at the old market, the hefty jeweler glowers, glares and occasionally swears.
Gallo seldom gets his way among the polite gentry who make up EMCAC ; yet last week a Gallo explosion, announced by a single word, “Bulls---,” literally bullied the committee out of five years of inaction.
The cause of Gallo’s wrath, the seeming inability of EMCAC to create a tenants’ council to represent the varied commercial interests at the market, has been a minor thorn in the sides of indoor vendors, flea-market sellers, farmers and crafts vendors. Last week Gallo insisted, with invective, that EMCAC get on with it.
As a result, vendors will select representatives to the nascent tenants’ council, a motion that should have been passed, and action taken, more than four years ago.
It looked as if the new chairwoman of EMCAC, Donna Scheeder, a veteran of politics and a student of Robert’s Rules of Order, was planning to table the formation of the council once again when Gallo demanded that the group fulfill a mandate to set up the tenant group. Such a group is contemplated in the management legislation authored by city Councilwoman Sharon Ambrose (D).
Merchants’ reaction to the new body, which may take weeks if not months to set up, was tepid. To several, it seemed like just another after-hours meeting to attend. At least one leader of the South Hall merchants, Jose Canales, said he was not interested in taking part.
in memory
Farmer Kent Ash: Death of the quiet man
The Eastern Market farmers’ line was in unofficial mourning, with special services planned for this Saturday, after the death by his own hand of Kent Ash, a 32-year fixture at the market.
Artist Michael Berman has asked that a memorial be set up to honor Ash, whom he described as “one of the few remaining growers on the farmers’ line who was a regular vendor at Eastern Market.”
The Ash family did not make public the details of the death.
Ash died Oct. 21 at his farm at Jones Spring, W.Va., where the memorial service is planned from 2 to 5 p.m. Ash, a quiet man with long, gray hair, sold fruits and berries, regularly driving more than 100 miles to make Saturday market day.
Also weighing down spirits of the Hill’s farmer community is the departure of longtime fruit man Ken Marshall, who has sold his farm and retired from business.
Marshall was famous not only for his produce but also for offering employment to teenage kids at his stand.
Eastern Market Manager Stuart Smith said he is fielding requests from vendors who want to join the farmers’ line.
• Barry watch: The beard is all the talk of Ward 8, as former Mayor Marion Barry suddenly appeared with a distinguished white Abe Lincoln a few days before his reelection Tuesday and his return to the stage of city politics. Could it mean a kinder, gentler, more grandfatherly Barry? As yet, the newly elected councilman has not appointed a press aide to field such questions. ...
• Don’t call it a pub crawl. It’s dubbed the “Chill on the Hill,” and involves a tour of 12 participating bars along Pennsylvania Avenue, 8th Street S.E. and 1st Street S.E. Participants will pay $7 ($10 if you fail to bring two cans of food for homeless causes) and will get $1.50 domestic beers at the bars. Benefits to Food and Friends; sponsor, Budweiser. ...
• Harris Teeter shopping is coming to the new development planned for the former Boys and Girls Town site at Pennsylvania and Potomac avenues S.E. The long-awaited upscale grocer will occupy the ground floor of a 200-unit apartment complex to be built there. ...
• Cara Masimo and Robert Ramsey of World Cuisine, the 8th Street eatery that has won accolades for its lunch fare, are planning to open an upstairs dining area that will stretch its offerings to dinner. ...
• The city’s Office of Property Management (OPM) has not yet finalized the cost of the Eastern Market shed, finally finished last month — six months past the expected completion date. OPM’s Aimee Occhetti said that the present total is $531,000, with additional items to be added to the final bill. ...
• New bargain basement for Northeast’s Hechinger Mall on Benning Road N.E.: USA Discounters, a seller of furniture, computer systems, appliances and electronics, is joining that other bargain-hunter’s paradise, National Wholesale Liquidators. …
• Michele Sullivan, owner of 2 Quail Restaurant in the Massachusetts Avenue dining row, has a new hobby: she’s growing her own grapes at the restaurant for possible winemaking. But don’t expect the first vintage to be ready this fall. |
