Soccer Jerseys

I suppose most people collect something or other in the course of their lives. In addition to CDs, I also collect soccer jerseys. I’ve lost count, but as of now I have something like 40 of them I’ve accumulated since June 2000.

In the Beginning. I was on my first trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2000. It was winter there, though winter means 70 degrees, fog on the beach, and it gets dark at 6 p.m. We were staying in Copacabana, and I was just getting to know the city and all about it. I learned its four premier teams were Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo, and Vasco de Gama. On that trip I got my first jersey, the red/black home jersey of Flamengo; by the end of the trip I had my second, Botafogo (black/white vertical stripes). And I was hooked.

Teams. I rounded out the RJ collection on the next trip (New Year’s Eve 2000-2001) with Fluminense and Vasco, then spread across Europe: Arsenal (UK), Bayern Munich (Germany), as well as French, Spanish, and Italian teams. I stayed away from national (World Cup) jerseys, with the exceptions of Brazil (5 stars after 2002), Poland, and Romania (1973 version). I even managed to get the Iron Maiden variant; after so many rock bands made baseball and hockey jerseys for themselves, Iron Maiden – die hard fans of West Ham United (east London) – decided to make their own soccer jersey.

Rivals. I do commit the heresy of collecting and wearing the jerseys of mutual rivals: Arsenal v. West Ham and Tottenham, Flamengo and Fluminense, Schalke & Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Barcelona. I tend to pick the most important teams and cover the bases.

Brazil: Flamengo (x2), Fluminense, Botafogo, Vasco (RJ), Cruzeiro (MG), Santos (x2), São Paulo FC, Palmeiras, Corinthians (SP), Atletico Paranaense (PR), Internacional (RS) + Seleção (5 stars)
England (Premier League): Arsenal (x4), Tottenham, West Ham, Chelsea (London); Manchester United, Liverpool, Newcastle
Germany (Bundesliga): Bayern Munich (x2), Hertha Berlin, Schalke '05, Borussia Dortmund, Hamburg FSV (x2), Werder Bremen (x2), Vfb Stuttgart, Bayer Leverkusen, FC Kaiserslautern
France (First Division): Bordeaux, St Etienne, Paris-St Germain, Olympique Lyonnais (x2), Olympique Marseilles
Italy (Serie A): AC Milan (x2), Inter Milan, AS Roma (x3), Juventus, Fiorentina
Spain (First Division): Real Madrid (x3) & Barcelona
Romania: Steaua Bucuresti, and national team (1973)

Personalized. Most of mine have either blank backs or a number and no name. Until recently Brazilian teams didn’t put the players’ names on the back. Occasionally I’d get a personalized jersey: Giovanni Elber (Brazilian) with Bayern Munich; David Beckham (two Real Madrid jerseys); Ronaldo (Brazilian) w/Real Madrid; Ronaldo (Portuguese, aka Christiano Ronaldo) with Manchester United; Kaka (Brazilian) with AC Milan; Ronaldinho (Brazilian) with Paris-St. Germain, etc. I tended to pick Brazilian players with European teams, with the obvious exception of Beckham.

Home/Away/3rd. Teams have a home jersey (usually dark), an away jersey (usually light, often white), and sometimes a third jersey (odd color) to wear when their home/away jersey is too similar to the opposing team’s away/home jersey. I’ll pick whichever one strikes my fancy. Santos (Brazil – Pele’s team) has a home jersey which is plain white, so my two Santos jerseys are the away versions with black/white vertical stripes. Neither of my AC Milan jerseys are the standard red/black home jersey.

Sponsors. What’s remarkable about soccer jerseys is that unlike with US sports teams, they have corporate sponsors on them, a practice which began in the 80s; by comparison the jerseys of the 70s and earlier look rather dull and sparse. Many of the sponsors are insurance companies, Internet companies, cell phone carriers or companies (Siemens Mobile or T-Mobile), and even beers – Carlsberg, the Danish beer, sponsors Liverpool, and Holsten, a German beer, sponsored Tottenham. Emirates, the airline from Dubai, has been sponsoring a few teams lately, notably Arsenal.

Comfort. The shirts are extremely comfortable, made of the latest high-tech fabrics to breathe well; and I always get the short-sleeved versions anyway. They’re great to wear in the summer or on the treadmill at the gym. They also often have collars, so they’re almost like polo shirts.

Sources. Most of the time I ordered them from Subsidesports, a company in England with a great selection, plus they do a great job of personalizing the jerseys. Almost all of my Brazilian jerseys were purchased in Brazil. A few I bought from stores here and there, but it’s rare to find a store in the US that carries these. There was a very brief time a few years ago when the local Foot Lockers and similar places carried them when it was a brief fad, that is long gone. Finally, I’ve ordered some jerseys from the teams themselves, which lets you get a 100% authentic jersey with any player’s name on it. The official jersey has the team crest embroidered, and is of noticeably better quality than some knockoffs - as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.

Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness

My computer at my old office crashed, along with the next few planned blog entries, so I have to adlib here and come up with something quickly. As it happens, I finished off Reefer Madness, a book by Eric Schlosser, best known for Fast Food Nation. I may as well review both of them.

I went into FFN expecting it to be an all-out crucifixion of McDonald’s and the fast food industry: nasty, obnoxious artery-clogging filth; and evil, soulless corporations enslaving millions of hapless workers in hopeless, dead-end McJobs. I was wrong.

First off, nowhere in FFN does Schlosser condemn fast food as unhealthy. Sure, he doesn’t claim that it’s healthy or good for you, but simply the absence of positive nutritional value is not, in itself, an indictment of this class of food as poison. He falls well short of that. In fact, he goes into considerable detail about the conscientious efforts of the various chains – particularly Jack-in-the-Box – to guarantee that its food is safe and free from bacteria and other impurities which could cause food poisoning or disease. Any discussion of the long-term effects of a lifetime of McDonald’s consumption is outside the scope of his book.

He was particularly impressed with the skill of the industry at developing artificial colors and flavors, centered in their chemical plants located along the New Jersey Turnpike (which any of us familiar with that strip of highway has surely seen at some point). Note: artificial almond flavor is actually LESS dangerous than natural almond flavor, which contains trace elements of cyanide. Yep. Though the amount of cyanide in an almond is so small, you’d have to eat literally thousands, or even millions, to have a chance of dying. Death by almonds? Not likely.

He was also impressed with the scope, organization, planning and efficiency of McDonald’s. As I recall from my days as a business student in college, practically every management professor and textbook was impressed by the thoroughness with which McDonald’s structures its operations. The machines in each restaurant are specifically designed to work in a certain fashion with zero discretion left to the 16 year old no-experience, bad attitude slackers who make up the workforce.

Granted, that makes the job itself as soulless and dull as any on an assembly line in a factory – after all, the goal is to mass-produce fries, burgers, etc. and quickly serve them to hungry, impatient customers – but it means we, as customers, can count on the same food, in the same quality, and the same quick service (if not sincerely pleasant!) whether it’s a McDonald’s in New York, L.A., Paris, London, Moscow, or Tokyo, allowing for regional variations in menu and taste, which is by design, not any failure of the local operation to meet corporate standards.

Naturally the personnel practices of McDonald’s and other chains are never going to impress Michael Moore, but Schlosser falls far short of condemning the industry as feudal. That is reserved for the next book….

Despite its title, Reefer Madness is not just about marijuana, though 1/3 of the book is devoted to that subject. The theme of the book is America’s underground economy: marijuana, illegal immigrants, and pornography. Here is where Schlosser takes closer aim at questionable employment practices, particularly among illegal immigrants in California’s strawberry farms (and to a lesser extent Florida’s fruit industry). Not only does he roast the growers in California who mercilessly exploit the Mexicans, he explicitly questions the Invisible Hand of capitalism and invokes Adam Smith to specifically invoke the dreaded words “market failure”.
Unfortunately, he does little to suggest what the solution to that market failure is, beyond a passing idea of paying the workers a penny more per unit. But consider this: first of all, we already have minimum wage laws; second, these are illegal immigrants, who shouldn't even be in the country in the first place, much less working. What exactly is the argument that people who entered the country illegally and are violating the laws by working (albeit with the obvious cooperation of their employers) should receive the benefit of our labor laws? This issue was completely ignored.

On the other hand, these people do provide a valuable service, and they do something which no one else in the country is willing to do -"it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it". In fact, the growers may have a difficult time hiring Americans to pick strawberries even if they were willing to pay a decent wage and America's strawberry consumers were willing to pay a higher price. The guest worker solution - proposed by others and criticized by Schlosser - seems to be the most appropriate recognition both of the need for these workers in our economy and their illegal status.

Given how heavily he slams not only the industry but capitalism as an economic form, this is all the more reason why he should have spent an equal amount of time providing a solution – one which would not have caused more problems than it solved. I didn't hear much of that from him besides his cursory rejection of the guest worker proposal. All very well to sneer at “the invisible hand” and write off the Libertarians as naïve children who fail to recognize the true complexity of modern society and economics, but if you can’t propose a realistic solution, or a better alternative to other proposals, you should just shut up. Two words: RENT CONTROL.
The other two thirds of Reefer Madness concern marijuana, with a strong emphasis on how stupid many of these mandatory minimums are, and the hypocrisy of politicians who demand the death penalty for drug dealers – except when their own children are caught selling pot by the pound under their very noses. He’ll get no argument from me: amen, brother, he’s preaching to the choir…. Obviously marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, yet gets hammered as if it’s cyanide. Come on. Both the idiocy of the harsh drug laws and the rapant tyranny of the asset forfeiture laws (discussed briefly therein) could fill entire books.

The third part is porn. The majority of this section is a lengthy biography of Rueben Sturman, the man who singlehandedly created the US porn industry; covering Sturman basicially describes how the porn industry itself got started here. Here’s where Schlosser is more simply informative and isn’t up on his Marxist-Socialist soapbox. It's hard to tell whether Schlosser considers him a victim or a hero; on one hand he developed an important industry, on the other he evaded taxes until an IRS agent finally brought him down. Perhaps he's neither - or both.

Entertaining, on both counts. Unfortunately the porn section didn’t provide any samples…

Skorzeny Speaks

"The Most Dangerous Man in Europe", Otto Skorzeny, actually wrote memoirs, Skorzeny’s Special Missions. He’s best known for being behind the paratrooper rescue of Mussolini in September 1943, as well as "Operation Greif", the famous Battle of the Bulge operation wherein German soldiers, dressed as American troops, infiltrated behind US lines causing all sorts of confusion and trouble. I’m not sure why he was called "dangerous", as he didn’t seem personally dangerous to anyone, and his own operations had limited scope and effect. But his story is certainly interesting. Here are the high points:

 1. Born in 1908, died in 1975, from Vienna, Austria. His name is pronounced "Skor-Tseny", which I had figured out without ever having heard it pronounced; yet he notes that some Germans could not pronounce it properly.

 2. He was rejected by the Luftwaffe for his age, not his size. So he joined the Waffen SS, eventually winding up in the Das Reich (2^nd SS) Division. SS men tended to make up a sizable portion of his commando units, but he recruited from the Army, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine as well. Their unofficial motto (not the official motto, Mein Ehre Heisst Treue (My Honor is Loyalty)) was "take it easy". Surfer/stoners in the SS? Amazing.

 3. Midway through the war, before the Mussolini rescue operation, Skorzeny was summoned to the Wolf’s Den (the HQ in the forests of East Prussia) to meet with Adolf Hitler and the other top brass of the Nazis. It was a real "we’re not worthy! we’re not worthy!" moment. At one point, Hitler had a group of German officers around him, and he solicited their opinion on Italy. Most gave various different responses, Germany’s ally, fascism, etc. Skorzeny simply said, "mein Fuhrer, I am an Austrian", and Hitler understood immediately.

 The situation in Italy was getting confused and dangerous, what with Mussolini captured by the Italian military and some of the top Italians making noises about making peace with the Allies (negotiating in Lisbon, Portugual) and switching sides. Reichfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, briefed Skorzeny, rattling off a long list of names and saying "loyal" or "disloyal". Skorzeny, said, "whoa, maybe I should write some of this down," and Himmler replied, "you fool! Nothing is to be written down, you have to memorize this!" So Skorzeny was thinking to himself, hey, I met the Fuhrer and Himmler today, amidst all this excitement I’d be lucky to remember one name, let alone dozens, and he wants me not to write this down?? Come on.

 4. Hitler on Mussolini. As an Austrian, Hitler had a particular contempt for the Italians in general. In Mein Kampf, he scoffed at the Kaiser for including Italy in the Triple Alliance: "what moron combined Italy and Austria-Hungary in the same alliance?" Sure enough, Italy opted out in 1914 and switched sides in 1915.

But despite this opinion of the Italians, he had warm and sincere feelings for Mussolini, who he considered his personal friend. He asked Skorzeny to rescue him, "because I owe it to him as a friend." The German-Italian alliance was motivated by ideological compatibility; Mussolini had taken power in 1922, and literally wrote the book on fascism. Hitler and Mussolini were kindred souls, even if the Italian war machine wasn’t quite up to the demanding standards of the Wehrmacht, or if their hapless exploits continually required German rescue (Greece and North Africa).

 5. At some point during the battle for the Eastern Front, Himmler got the firm idea to destroy the Soviet blast furnaces at Magnitogorsk. A quick analysis showed the operation to be completely impractical – no information existed on the facility, and even if they knew something about it, it would have been impossible to get a team there and then back. From this, Skorzeny learned "to display immense enthusiasm for any plan, however idiotic, which they put forward, and keep on reporting progress." "St Bureaucracy", as he later described it.

 6. During the 1938 Anschluss, he was responsible for defusing the situation and ensuring the takeover was bloodless. Later on, in 1944 when the Hungarians threatened to defect to the Soviets, Skorzeny planned and carried out the operation that shut that down immediately.

 7. Himmler, considering the new V1 rockets, asked Skorzeny if it would be possible to launch one from a U-boat against NYC. Himmler's take on this was: these Americans have had it so easy, the war hasn't hit them at home. If we smack them in NYC they will back off. Skorzeny started by speculating that this U-boat/V1 thing may be possible. But then he cautioned Himmler: attacking NYC would be counterproductive. FDR had been trying to convince Americans that Germany is a threat to them. Shoot a V1 into NYC and you'd simply confirm what FDR had been saying. Don't underestimate the Anglo-Saxon strain in the Americans. Like the British, their morale jumps sky-high when directly threatened – note the contemporary parallels with 9/11.

 8. He studied the Allied commandos extensively and admired Bill Donovan (OSS commander and founder of the CIA) – and was ultimately interrogated by him after the war. He saw that the Germans had their work cut out for them; while the British wouldn’t have any trouble finding French, Belgians or Dutch willing to fight against the Germans, even to risk their lives doing so, the pool of available British and Americans around Europe willing to betray the Allies was somewhat small – as was the supply of Frenchmen willing to work against the Allies who had just liberated their country.

 9. Skorzeny was briefly involved in counterintelligence in Holland, against British operatives. He loved the Sten gun, particularly the silenced variant. He met Admiral Canaris, head of the German Abwehr (military intelligence) – who he found to be VERY obtuse and inscrutable.

 10. He worked with frogmen and helped develop German midget submarines. In a way he was a German SEAL. This was in addition to jumping out of planes as a paratrooper.

 11. For Operation Greif, he had to round up Germans who spoke English. He actually only found TEN who could speak English with an American accent and pass themselves off as Americans. 30-40 spoke English fluently but with an accent (imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger in a US uniform trying to convince someone he’s not German – "no, I’m Austrian!") and the rest could say "yes" and "no" but otherwise had to keep their mouths shut. Skorzeny fails to describe his own English fluency, if any, but in any case the Fuhrer specifically forbid him from personally leading the mission, saying he was too valuable to risk losing.

 They had a difficult time getting enough Allied uniforms and equipment; one supply center sent them greatcoats, which GIs never wore, and another sent sent field jackets labelled "P.O.W.". The German soldiers wore German uniforms under the American ones: the theory was that international law only forbids enemy uniforms if you actually use your weapon, so they were instructed, if going into combat, to take the American uniform off first.

 Another problem: when it came time to find these Germans who spoke English, the brainiacs at the German High Command decided to distribute a memo throughout the entire German armed forces. "D’oh!" And of course, the Allies got wind of the plan within 8 days – yet somehow they never acted on this knowledge. The commandos caused all sorts of confusion and problems. There were rumors that Eisenhower was marked for assassination, and several US officers and men were mistakenly arrested as German spies. Skorzeny mentions that during his post-war interrogations by various Allied officers, they were convinced he was either involved in some plot to kill Eisenhower or to whisk Hitler off to some hidden location outside Berlin, possibly even outside Germany.

 When they used captured Jeeps, they aroused suspicion by carrying the full 4 men per Jeep; US practice was to only carry 3 at a time.

 He got into more trouble for this than for anything else. Yet he got the idea from the Americans, who had run operations dressed as German soldiers. And sure enough, during his war crimes trial, a British Commando officer, Yeo Thomas, testified on his behalf that the Allies had done the same thing, so he was acquitted.

 12. There is, however, a disturbing element to this book, which was written well after the war: absolutely NO mention of the Holocaust. From his own activities, Skorzeny probably had no personal involvement with the various elements of the Holocaust. But being in the SS, associated with various top level SS leaders, it’s impossible to believe that Skorzeny was unaware of what was going on. He must have known. Yet he doesn’t offer any apology, even insincere, such as "regrettably, mistakes were made."

 The closest clue, and a bad one, comes from his comments on the Nuremburg trials. He remarks that his fellow defendants – high ranking Wehrmacht officers, Nazi leaders, and SS officers – cravenly pleaded for their lives and whined that they were only following orders, instead of defending their actions. Granted that Skorzeny himself had nothing to apologize for – he was acquitted – but certainly the architects of the Final Solution had much to answer for. His comments, and complete lack of reference to the Holocaust, suggests that he personally approved of it but decided to be discreet and not offer this controversial opinion in the book.

 This spoils and stains an otherwise impressive book about an impressive figure. He was probably the most versatile and capable special ops officer the Germans had during the war. I found his own story, in his own words, to be impossible to put down.

DC Revisited

I live in Northern Virginia – about 10 minutes outside the District of Columbia, better known as "DC", as in Washington, DC. Lately I’ve been going in more often and seeing parts of it I’ve never experienced before. I learn something new about it each time.

 Format. DC is in the form of a diamond, cut into 4 quarters: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. The north-south division is Constitution/Independence Avenues which straddle "The Mall", and the east-west division comes from North and South Capitol Streets. These streets, however, are off-center of the diamond, a few blocks east of the apex, so Northwest is larger than Northeast. Much of what we would think of as "Southwest" is better known as Arlington County, Virginia, cut off from the rest of Southwest DC by the Potomac River, so actual Southwest DC is fairly small.

 North-south streets are numbered (going down as you go east in Northwest towards the Capitol and back up eastwards of the Capitol); east-west streets have alphabet names (A, B, etc. – K Street being the major business area). Diagonal streets are named after states: Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Connecticut being the major western streets (lots of embassies along Mass. Ave.) and New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania Ave. being the major east side streets. Georgia Ave, though, runs north-south, also known as 7^th Street. Each of the state streets continues well past the DC-MD line and well into Maryland, becoming major commercial avenues in the suburbs. Wisconsin Ave. turns into 355 and goes all the way up to Frederick, Maryland, an hour out of DC. We knew it as Rockville Pike and grew up along there as kids.

 DC is connected to Maryland by land, with an invisible border you observe by a sign as you drive by on one of the major roads. It’s divided from Virginia by the Potomac River, so the connections there are by bridges and major highways (much more obvious that you’re going from one to the other). 395 comes up to DC from Virginia, but does not connect with 95 coming down from Maryland. They spent the money earmarked for the hookup on the Metro instead, so 95 splits off into 95 and 495 (the Beltway), whereas 395 sprouts off into New York Avenue, Pennsylvania Ave., and the Capitol Bldg. district. 395 goes across the 14^th Street Bridge (final destination of an Air Florida Flight, as Howard Stern famously remarked as a finale to his career as a disc jockey in DC in the early 80s) which puts you on 14^th Street running north-south. Memorial Bridge brings you to the Lincoln Memorial and the Rock Creek Parkway (if you can avoid getting completely confused) – an unfortunately rare destination from Virginia considering the bridge’s beauty and origin from Arlington Cemetary. Route 50/66 put you on Constitution Ave. coming in eastbound from the west. Key Bridge, a close second to Memorial Bridge in aesthetic appeal, brings traffic from Rosslyn to M Street in Georgetown and K Street, so it gets heavy traffic and more use than Memorial Bridge. I used to walk across it when I lived in Rosslyn.

 The Beltway. It’s not just a circumferential highway surrounding DC, Arlington County and Alexandria. It completely surrounds DC and has two bridges across the Potomac, the American Legion Memorial Bridge and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (which has a drawbridge), each of which connect Maryland and Virginia. It’s been used metaphorically to describe a state of mind: "inside the Beltway" (thinking of Washington’s federal bureaucracy, the Establishment, the insiders, etc.) vs. "outside the Beltway" – everywhere else in the country, a kind of "us vs. them" mentality depending on who is talking. Other cities – including Baltimore, right up to the northeast of DC – have their own beltways, but the DC Beltway has a unique political significance.

 My own experience. I grew up in suburban Maryland, and my father worked at the Department of Commerce. The DOC building is on Constitution and 14^th Street, is one of the last of the huge government buildings built in the 20s and 30s, and the last built without central air conditioning installed. Its official name is the Herbert Hoover Building, though I don’t recall anyone referring to it as such. The lobbies and hallways are archaic and you can tell it’s an old building, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, with the A/C units hanging out of the windows. In the basement is the National Aquarium, which has a decent selection of fish if you consider that it’s fairly small. My dad used to take us there as kids. The Air & Space Museum, and other Smithsonian institutions, were the other reasons for us to – briefly – explore DC.

 In 1979 we moved to Paris, which meant we’d only see the US on home leaves every other even-numbered year. I mentioned 1984, when we stayed in a house on McArthur Blvd., though this is as far southwest DC as you can get without going into the Potomac, and as noted, the house’s poor A/C had us running to McLean, Virginia (right across the river) in search of sanity at our relatives’ house.

 I came back to the US to live most of the year on campus at the University of Maryland, College Park. I missed the DC alcohol age grandfathering by 3 months (I turned 18 in January 1987, instead of October 1986) so my excursions into DC were very limited during this time. One time my friend Phil took me to a place called Brazil Tropical (off Pennsylvania Ave.) for my first caipirinha, ages before I went to Rio de Janeiro and had one there.

Once I passed 21 and my brother and friend were still single, we’d hit two of the major zones for straight 20s something singles: Georgetown and M/L Street (closer to 18^th Street and the K Street district). This would have been the mid-90s as my brother got married in 1998 and my best friend in 1999. No more clubbing after that....

From September 1998 to April 1999, and then again from January 2000 to November 2000, I worked at a government contractor, CACI, on their L Street office. This was at L and 12^th, one block off K Street, and for all intents and purposes well within the "K Street" corridor. I took the metro from Rosslyn to McPherson Square and got to know this central business district, where all the fancy commercial offices are, and the major DC law firms. The deli’s in this neighborhood have names like "Gourmet Provisions" and charge twice what you’d consider reasonable. Thank God the McDonald’s on New York Ave. kept its normal rates, not that I’m a big fan of Evil Clown.

 A few blocks south is the Mall, the southern end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Capitol. The Mall is flanked on one end by the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the Reflecting Pool (remember "Forrest Gump"?). At the opposite, eastern end is the Capitol. It’s lined by the various Smithsonian museums including, but not limited to, the National Museum of American History, the Museum of Natural History (north side) and the Air & Space Museum (south side). The Mall’s most recent purpose has been grounds for protests, first the Free Mumia series of World Bank/IMF series – from 1999 to 2003 - and then the next set from March 2003 (invasion/liberation of Iraq) onward to the present. However – as "Forrest Gump" points out – the area was rife with protest during the Vietnam War and even the Bonus March of the Great Depression.

Pennsylvania Ave. itself was supposed to have an unbroken view from the White House to the Capitol, but some dumbass Treasury Secretary decided that his ego trumped L’Enfant’s plan and dumped the Treasury Dept. building in the middle. A suitably creepy building along Penn. Ave. going towards the Capitol is the Old Post Office Building, with its tall clock tower, which is now an indoor mall usually full of tourists. The "new" post office building next door dates from...1935. This does it for the tourist part of town.

 DC does have large swaths of ghettos, run-down shithole land, off in Southeast and lots of Northeast. As I noted earlier, Southwest is rather small. Northwest is generally decent territory – it includes very posh residences along Foxhall Road (my uncle, who was a lobbyist, used to live there), and the American University neighborhood is very nice.

Lately I’ve gotten more aquainted with the Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan areas. Dupont Circle is where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire Aves. meet, crossed by 19^th Street. It’s a trendy district where you can count on seeing too many guys holding hands and fans of "Will & Grace", Judy Garland, etc. ("Not that there’s anything wrong with it!" as they insisted on "Seinfeld"). Adams Morgan is essentially 18^th Street north of U Street, up to and including Columbia Road, and is a multicultural district, primarily hispanic, with plenty of Spanish spoken. When the Brazilian team won their fifth World Cup on Sunday, June 30, 2002, we celebrated the victory right at the top of 18^th Street. It was a huge block party with bongos, cheering, Brazilian flag waving, and shouts of "PENTA CAMPEAO" over and over again.

 Just last weekend we took a walk through the Meridian Hill Park, which dates from the early 20th century. It has a fantastic cascading fountain (like you’d find in Italy, of all places), and statues of James Buchanan, Dante, and Joan of Arc ("which of these things is not like the other, which of these things does not belong") which is, to say the least, a bizarre combination to find in an otherwise beautiful park – even nicer than Parcul Cismigiu or Parc Monceau. 16^th Street goes up a steep hill, and features some of the most bizarre architecture you can see in DC, short of the gothic, Adams Family monstrosity of the Old Executive Office Building or a close second, the Willard Hotel. Much of it dates from the turn of the century, when cable cars allowed development up the steep hills on 16^th Street, Wisconsin, Connecticut, etc. Some resemble castles, some resemble Arabic/Middle Eastern, and even when the neighborhood changes from apartment buildings to houses, you still get the early 20^th century eclectic style, with many bungalows or the mail order houses you could find in old Sears catalogs (yes, you could buy an entire house from the catalog back then). Much of the buildings between Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle share this schizophrenic heterogeneity. Perhaps H.P. Lovecraft would have felt at home here – or perhaps it would have been "too new" for his tastes.

 Getting around. The Metro in DC, unlike New York, London, and Paris, is a fairly recent addition and doesn’t have anywhere close the coverage it does in those cities. In Paris it’s like a station every 4 blocks, in DC it’s more like 10-15 blocks. Driving in DC is a hassle. In theory the city is set up intuitively with the numbered, lettered, and state streets, but in practice it degenerates into insanity with one-way streets, streets ending and picking up half a neighborhood away, the Rock Creek Park cutting the northern part in half, plus terrible potholes and bad drivers, many of them cab drivers from who knows where. Even when you do get to where you’re going, you still have to find a parking space, which is as much a nightmare in DC as in any other city. Walking around the city, however, is fine (as least in good weather), assuming you don’t mind walking long distances. I got used to it in Paris-sur-Seine (and that shithole version on the Dambovitsa) so I don’t mind it too much in DC, it’s the parking BS I can’t stand. Even so, whenever I’m in DC I’m immediately inclined to leave ASAP.