I'm sure many of you (all 10 of you) are wondering what the Fourth of July is like in DC. This was my objective, too, when I set out yesterday. I discerned, twelve hours later, that the Fourth of July in DC is made up of the following elements:
- Inter-high school parade
- Write-in Presidential candidate canvassing
- Obscure religious proselytizing
- Completely screwed-up concert
I only have 38 minutes left to describe these things, so I'll hurry. The photos are from a cell phone camera and thus kind of blurry.
Inter-high school parade
The first thing I saw when I arrived on the Mall near the Reflecting Pool were tired high school kids taking off their uniforms and getting into buses. It turned out that this was the tail-end of a parade. As I walked towards the Capitol I saw the parade itself, which was very cute, as a sort of large version of a small-town parade. There was a float with Washington and Lincoln, a float with a reenactment of the Iwo Jima flag raising, and performances by all the high school bands in town, even Latino dancers.
Write-in Presidential candidate canvassing
I wandered away from the parade looking for food and saw a big tent with the word "ALLEN FOR PRESIDENT" written on it. As I approached the tent I saw many other posters with "Smith for President" written on them... not Allan?! It turned out this was a write-in canvassing tent run by five separate would-be Presidential candidates: Christopher Popham Smith, Daniel Kingery, Joe Oliva, Ruth Bryant White, and the aforementioned Allen, who didn't give me his card but I believe to be Donald K. Allen. They all appeared perfectly sane, but none of them are on the ballot anywhere. Also, the tent was completely empty; passersby seemed to be somewhat nervous to approach these people. I referred them to ballot-access.org for help getting on the ballot. That's what America is all about.
Obscure religious proselytizing
The National Mall was packed from one end to the other with people bringing picnic baskets and blankets. There's no surprise I hadn't heard about this event before; it's huge enough without advertising. The Park Service had tents at every entrance checking people's bags, which created huge lines. On every street corner next to the Mall you could buy water, pop, or pretzels from three or four vendors, most of whom had hungry Americans from all over the country lined up. The result was a spectacular, even newsworthy amount of trash stretched out over however many miles I walked along the length of the Mall. Many people were wearing Obama shirts; nobody was wearing McCain shirts. In fact, the quantity of Obama merchandise that was moving from those streetside carts was really impressive.
At one end, there was the Washington Monument, WW2 memorial, Reflecting Pool, and so forth. Directly after that, the Folklife Festival was still running. The thought of entering that area, which is packed even on a normal day, horrified me-- from a distance I could see it was one teeming, gridlocked mass of human bodies. I felt really sorry for the Bhutanese (as you might recall, they were not experienced in showmanship).
But the most interesting thing, to me, were the religious groups at the far end of the Mall, which was previously unoccupied. Jews for Jesus were wandering around somewhere, giving combination maps and Christian tracts, which were then dropped on the ground for me to pick up and puzzle over. A born-again Christian group had occupied one square and were blasting live Christian music, giving out free water, and making friendship bracelets "with a message" (presumably the Jesus message). Right near the exit, an ultra-fundamentalist group called the Holiness movement who were dressed in Amish-style modest clothes were singing traditional songs. In the middle, and most interesting to me, were the Hare Krishnas.
The Krishnas were running a sort of fair that apparently had been done the same way since the 70s: big tents, posters underneath them explaining vegetarianism, reincarnation, the life of their guru, and so forth, and less religious activities such as Indian music, a sara dress-up booth, and free food. Yes, the Hare Krishnas were serving free drinks and meals to the 300,000 people on the Mall. As there was no water fountain, I was parched and took a huge gulp of their lemonade; I then talked to the nice woman at the book fair booth, and bought a deluxe Bhagavad Gita from her (apparently the Krishnas' holy text) for a donation of $10. It was a good time.
Completely screwed-up concert
I arrived on the steps of the Capitol around 4PM and sat there for four hours. It turned out it was a fairly bad seat. There was a really fancy concert going on below that started at 8, and when it did start I couldn't make out the singers.
That's okay, because the concert was a fiasco and would have been horrifying to see up close. It would have suited a small-town event, but this concert was being broadcast live on PBS and to armed forces around the world. The announcer was ad-libbing. The first two performers were clearly coked up-- an old C-list rocker who dropped his mic and may have been lip-synching, and a past American Idol winner who was making jerky movements with his hands, running impatiently around the stage, and had his mic cut off. There were then some nice non-celebrity performances, and Jerry Lee Lewis came on. Dude was old (at least 70, I'd Wikipedia it if I had extra time on this machine). He belonged in a nursing home. He could play piano superbly, but they had heavy backing in case he screwed up, so you couldn't really hear it. Then, as he was singing "Great Balls of Fire," the Park Service decided they really needed to start the fireworks before they got rained out, and the audience started running to the sides of the concert platform. Jerry Lee Lewis was either ticked off or decided he wasn't needed anymore, and walked off the stage with almost a minute left in the song.
The fireworks, which came from behind the Washington Monument, were very nice. I didn't take a photo of them because for me that is the essence of reification. I mean, come on, everyone knows what fireworks look like. The point is to enjoy the experience, not try to preserve it. It's difficult to take photos anyway. There was an Army band playing on the concert stage, which was annoying-- I like my fireworks with silent contemplation.
Everyone then crammed onto the Metro at the exact time (great practice for Japan) and after being squeezed for air for half an hour, I escaped, made it safely home, and watched 1776 on TV.
Conclusion
There is no need to come to DC just to watch the fireworks. Stay home and enjoy your local fireworks.
