Can you see the crowd surfers?
(I know this is 16 days late and I apologize…)
Being a 4 year DC resident has conditioned me to stare straight ahead while I pass people on the sidewalk and I hate that. It’s not me and it’s not what I feel, but I do it because it’s the way of the city. So at 11pm on Election Night, when drunk strangers barreled towards me, I cringed, and maybe even ducked. At first. ( I was in Adam’s Morgan, after all). But, despite how much this election meant to me, maybe I had underestimated its force on a grand, uniting scale. City-wide elebrations were inevitable, but what I was about to see would blow my mind. The moment Obama was crowned, (I mean announced), my friends and I ran out into the streets, along with everyone else in the neighboring bars. People were yelling and honking, but that’s any night in Adam’s Morgan. I wasn’t surprised by anything until we rounded 18th onto U St. I didn’t know it was possible to simultaneously shout AND smile, (a huge, beaming ear-to-ear smile), but I saw it, and so I believe it. Cars rolled by and their drivers hung out of rolled-down windows, honking and cheering fanatically. Grown men skipped and bounced through a chain of never-ending high fives. DC was speaking a new language– ecstatic bursts of song and shout and sugar-high glee. We finally reached the mecca of celebration: 14th and U St, the notorious corner for shootings and stabbings and also historic spot of the 60s riots, which burned everything to the ground except beloved Ben’s Chili Bowl. But on this night, violence was a thing of the past. Tonight it looked like Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve and an Andrew WK show all at once, so we jumped right in.
In the streets, bus shelters trembled from the weight of the masses dancing on their roofs, drum circles echoed the block and spread in booming ripples. Strangers embraced and meant it; it was the giddiness of a spontaneous pillow fight, the gratitude of a release from jail and the transformation of hundreds of neighbors who may have passed each other on the sidewalk yesterday without even a nod of hello, but tonight, they couldn’t be having more fun together. And then it was obvious. This election was not just historic and revolutionary for Obama- it was for everyone. It was the people’s Election. It stirred up a city who has grown numb to each other; strangers were now embracing in a place once referred to as “the murder capital.” A city who once seemed too scared/busy/uninterested to care about each other was now best friends with everyone in sight. A massive, spontaneous march down 14th St in the rain led to the front of the White House, where police ate peanuts and chuckled at the crowd surfers and endless chants of “Na-na-na-na-hey-hey-hey- GOODBYE”!!
Like a drunken, giddy one-night stand, the people of Washington DC gave in to their yet unfulfilled desires to mingle with each other on a primal level, to meet a fellow DC denizen without stopping to exchange business cards. They just wanted to feel the warm touch of a stranger that night, and lose all inhibitions together. Well, congratulations Washington DC, for penetrating those stuffy comfort zones and really letting loose for the night, if only that night, to revel in the passionate afterglow of indulgence. Tomorrow morning as you dash toward the metro, suitcase in one hand, latte in the other, don’t feel guilty when you pass that “stranger” from last night. That train is leaving in 2 minutes and it’s not waiting for anyone. Plus, you’re carrying your suitcase in one hand and latte in the other- and you guess you could put them down for a second, but then you wouldn’t even be sure what to say, and–oh, it would just be too weird.
Just remember, you’ll always have Election Night.
