Flying into Washington, the swimming pools with their violent blue-green hue stand out everywhere, a symbol of the rich American summer. Easy to build and relatively inexpensive, a swimming pool is one of the first symbols of luxury wealth reaches for.

The city’s public pools are also a staple of summer: reliable, relatively clean and a favorite resort for the young. But not that never-mended fiasco called the William Rumsey Aquatic Center at 7th Street and North Carolina Avenue S.E. Though it is sheltered from winter cold and the ravages of the elements, this enclosed swimming pool commonly known as the Capitol Hill natatorium has become a target for increasing community anger.

It is a complete mystery — for calls to the D.C. Department of Recreation produce only hopeful white lies — why minor problems such as surface scaling of the pool’s sides were not properly fixed and tested during the last 17 month, $3 million rehab of the pool that ended in September 2003. Nor is there any expectation that the contractor — who should by now have been fired — will be able to finish soon. The department, weakly apologizing, announces the “good news”: The repair won’t cost the taxpayers a thing, and there will be shuttle buses to other pools.

That cheerful bit of nonsense reveals the truth: that the contractor now has no reason to finish the job quickly. That the city, unlike private entities, has paid the contractor in full. And finally, that there is no way, without a personal connection downtown, to put any pressure on the D.C. bureaucracy, which in most departments fervently keeps to the old clipper-ship saying, “Days are dollars.”

Memory begins to distort from the moment it is first called upon to create an image. But as I recall the Hill’s favorite holiday, July 4 began with a rustle of aluminum lawn chairs.

That light clinking music would begin well before dusk. Hill people came well equipped, the more experienced knowing the site well. And what a site! The favorite place was the deep, shady swale on the House-side lawn, where one could see over the National Symphony Orchestra and appreciate the slight deflection of the Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and, in the far distance, like a gleam of memory, the faint columns of the Lee mansion above the river.

So many stories and so much history on view — Gen. Montgomery Meigs’s seizing of the Lee-family property for a Union graveyard, the grandeur of the Mall and the building of the Monument itself.

Before — that is before Sept. 11 and the security madness began — the Capitol Police gently regulated this neighborhood affair. No alcohol was allowed, of course, but by that the police meant no alcoholic behavior. A blind eye was kept for the bottle of wine in the hamper. Families and friends often spread complete picnics on their blankets and ground sheets, waiting for the opening notes of the NSO.

Now all is changed, perhaps forever. Monday, heavily armed Capitol officers herded anxious people like cattle — one near the House steps brandished a machine gun. That swale is a ruin of dirt and construction shacks, fenced off with stern warnings. Below, the long lines were told: “The west front of the Capitol is full. ... They shut it down,” said Officer Robert Cutter at 7:20, long before the concert was to begin. A “hand stamp” was necessary. A search of belongings. Barriers, sensors. Above, amid the marble and the parking, their Capitol Police guardians whisked through the important people. In many ways, the Capitol has become a Third World country, a kind of Haiti.

A lady, doubtless kindly, warned me not to take pictures. “They might not like it,” she said. “Security.” When an officer was asked why the entire side of the Capitol was shut down, when acres of green lawn were visible, empty. “That’s all they allotted us,” he said. It must be time to ask, Who is “they?” and who are we?

D.C. gun laws: Incoherent on security

Can any coherent policy be deduced from city leaders’ virulent uproar over “weakening” D.C. gun laws?

Let’s see. Police, the mayor and District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) insist that D.C. residents should have no firearms whatsoever in their homes unless they are in bits and inoperable. Yet they also insist that these same residents, considered too irresponsible, hotheaded, accident prone or downright criminal to keep weapons of self-defense in their own homes, should have a full array of legislators — presumably two senators and a congressman (and perhaps a bicameral legislature) to achieve “full representation.”

Congress is taking a beating on both counts. Talk about no-win situations. Congress wants to afford D.C. residents the same rights on guns as most other states (the unavoidable intent of the “keep and bear arms” amendment of the Constitution). The locals scream that Congress is forcing such rights onto them. On the other tack, we are constantly reminded that a wicked Congress has taken away citizens’ voting rights, producing “taxation without representation” in spite of the dreadfully clear language of Article One, Section Eight, giving Congress the right and duty “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District.”

What joins these two notions is the political theory here in town that the Constitution really does not apply to D.C. Or it applies only when we want it to.

But back to the guns. In the no-fault world of D.C. politics, the individual must never be blamed. Language is warped. “Violence” regularly slays people here; guns, not people create “gun violence.” Ergo, guns must be kept far away — perhaps in Virginia or Maryland. D.C. gun laws (which have some remarkable loopholes), still the most restrictive in the country, are named “gun safety” legislation.

Most sensible citizens do what they must. If they are sportsmen who shoot, they keep their guns with friends in other jurisdictions. The new “no enforcement” House-passed measure enables them to return the sporting weapons home. Many here defy the law and keep handguns in their homes as a last resort against criminal invasion, taking the risk that it will worth it in the crisis. The worst nightmare, in this outlaw view, is to be helpless when a criminal is coming up the stairs.

Crime is down, and few know why. Cynics say it has been exported to Prince George’s County. Others credit Chief Charles Ramsey. Still others say the mania for security, which has produced thousands more official and semiofficial police, guards, checkpoints, etc., has baffled street criminals.

But who says that the gun laws have effected the change? With even more incoherence, those against the House bill point to the 21 “young people” who have died violently this year, most of them shot.

Of course no one did it. It was “gun violence.”

METRO

• Lifting all boats — D.C. cruise lines have been riding a wave of popularity this summer, boarding tourists who came to the Cherry Blossom Festival at pre-Sept. 11 levels. Spirit Lines says passengers increased by 16 percent, with many school tours taking the water option of seeing city sites without tangling with traffic. ...

• Road closures on Capitol Hill are many, but few have raised as many hackles as Virginia Avenue S.E. between 3rd Street and South Capitol, ostensibly closed by the Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman for Capitol Power Plant construction but in fact used as an exclusive parking lot by HITT Construction workers, all bearing Virginia or Maryland tags, according to neighbors. Both residents and guvvies used the street, once a free parking zone. ...

• Quote: City Council’s gruff ex-smoker Carol Schwartz (R-At large) got a laugh when she suggested anti-drinking legislation as a logical extension of pending anti-smoking bills. But the best came when Schwartz explained that her joke proposal wouldn’t hurt business: “We’re D.C.,” she said. “Our residents won’t go anywhere else.” ...

• So much for banning beer “singles.” In spite of hours of debate and resolutions, letters, voluntary agreements and pleas to corner stores on the practice of selling single beer and malt beverages to street drinkers, a federal court last month struck down the “Fenty amendment” barring singles in Ward 4. Mayoral aspirant Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4) pushed for the bill; its undoing means the boozing, the littering, the spitting and urinating will go on unchecked. ...

• The trend to a blue nose Hill continues: The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board is tightening “entertainment” at restaurants and hotels and taverns; they now must specify what they plan to offer — from tuneless Irish folkies to jazz bands and on. ...

• Buzzard Point Marina, the Hill’s oldest sailboat center, is increasingly hemmed in as developers bid for sites keyed to the arrival of a $450 million baseball stadium near South Capitol and P streets S.E. Latest part of the Buzzard Point neighborhood up for sale is the very tip of the point jutting into the Anacostia at 1st and V streets S.W. ...

• High praise to former Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B Chairman Peter Waldron for his exhaustive investigative story (in the July Hill Rag) tracing the maneuvers of Dr. Peter Shin through the maze of property and nonprofit law to turn former Medlink Hospital (earlier Capitol Hill Hospital) into a real-estate gold mine on the backs of his creditors.