I’m told that last week the Park Police backed by the FBI raided this street party and shut it down at ten. This week the National Guard were giving the girls a spin. I asked the boys if they had anything like it in South Carolina. “No, sir,” they laughed.
Tonight I did find ICE and the FBI staging up for a raid, which they then went off on accompanied by DC cops. No idea what the target was.
There was a lot of cop activity, but they seemed to be protecting the late night crowds at the clubs. I didn’t see any harassment.
The crowds are thick in places. The bouncer at the Camelot “gentleman’s club” offered to let me in with no cover charge, for which I thanked him but passed by. The bouncer at a bar called Recessions stopped me to compliment my beard and discuss beard care for a while.
It’s definitely been an interesting trip. I’m out of here on a dawn flight, and should be back in my mountains before noon.
3 comments:
Thanks for the reports on all this. It's interesting and I'm not hearing it from other sources I pay attention to.
Nor did I before I went. The discussion of DC in the press and online was split into two clearly partisan narratives:
1) Trump's: DC is an unlivable hellhole full of violent crime, carjackings and robberies. This is totally necessary to break that cycle.
2) Resistance: No, it's a paradise of beauty and peace and diversity. Keep out, Nazis.
I wanted to see for myself and just give it straight, whatever it was like. I tried to do that, good and bad, so that there would be a record of the moment.
One thing I think most people don't realize about the cities is that it's not just that the violent crime is concentrated in the cities, but within cities, it's concentrated in neighborhoods, and even within those, certain sections or blocks are the worst. The Chicago crime tracker website "Hey Jackass" (perhaps the greatest infographic website on the internet) has a great homicide map that shows the concentration in certain neighborhoods. This is why a lot of people don't know anyone that's been a victim of gang violence, but in some neighborhoods everyone knows someone or multiple people not infrequently, who have been victims. This is also why the people in the safer sections seem to not notice or care so much.
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