Planners of the city hall ball had speculated about bringing Brown in when they announced their event in December, but the Godfather of Go-Go was already booked for the Inaugural D.C. Ball, scheduled for the Old Post Office Pavilion.

The 51st Staters caught a break when organizers of that ball were forced to cancel last week, after logistical concerns about loading in equipment, food, and musical gear made the event impossible. So Brown will move his act three blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Allen Tubis, an event planner who organized the Inaugural D.C. event as a benefit for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington (he's a longtime member of the organization's board), says the traffic and security restrictions meant holding the ball at that location would be impossible. For one thing, he says, the Secret Service needed the Post Office Pavilion loading dock for storage space. "Our situation is, if you can't load in the food, the sound system, you just can't do it," he says.

Tubis explored alternatives, such as a smaller ballroom at Metro Center, but "we started looking at the logistics of it, the cost of it [and] it just did not work."

So though ticket sales were brisk, Tubis was forced to pull the plug last week---the first time he's had to cancel an event in 25 years in the business, he says---and he's offering full refunds to folks who had shelled out up to $150 for a ticket. (Another ball held nearby, the MTV ball at the Ronald Reagan Building, was canceled last week for similar reasons.)

But the Boys and Girls Clubs' loss is the statehood movement's gain. "A lot of the people coming to our event wanted to see Chuck Brown. So we've been notifying them," Tubin says. "For $51, you can get a ticket to see Chuck Brown."

Ayawna Chase, a staffer for Harry Thomas Jr. who's planning the city hall bash, said Friday she's sold about 200 tickets so far out of 2,000. Folks from across the country have expressed interest, and Chase---active in the local Young Democrats---says she's gotten a lot of interest from fellow Young Dems looking for a low-cost party option.

Some roadblocks remain: LL is told the organizers still have to get insurance for the event and logistics still need to be worked out, but Chase says that'll be worked out soon. Come Jan. 20, she says, expect the Wilson Building to sport a "semi-ballroom kind of feel."

Flickr photo by dalesun

The mastermind is Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., with the support of council chair Vincent C. Gray and Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry.

"Why not use the people's building for a people's purpose?" is how Thomas poses it to LL. "We needed to have some local event for local people to be part of this."

How exactly a ball at the Wilson Building would work, LL has no idea. There's no real large room in 100-year-old edifice suitable for a "ball" in the traditional sense; the center atrium sometimes hosts small receptions, but not much beyond that. The biggest rooms otherwise are the council chamber and Room 412, a council hearing room.

Thomas lays it out: Each of the building's five floors, he says, will become a "suite" for music, food, or other purposes. The first floor, for instance, will host the band---"That will be our whole entertainment suite," he says. (Thomas wants Chuck Brown.) Revelers will be able to break off into various rooms to relax, and councilmembers, virtually all of whom will host receptions in their offices earlier in the day for the inagural parade, will again be permitted to host people in their individual offices.

The 51st State ball won't be the only inaugural shindig with a local focus. LL has learned that the D.C. Democratic State Committee is putting together an event for the night of Jan. 18 to be held at Department of Transportation headquarters on New Jersey Avenue SE. Tickets to that event, sources tell LL, are likely to reach into the hundreds of dollars (still quite a bit less than the four-figure rates at some of the most exclusive balls). DCDSC chair Anita Bonds hasn't returned calls for comment.

LL was present at the creation of the city hall event, but he didn't know it at the time; at a Nov. 18 breakfast meeting prior to a council legislative session, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham proposed to his colleagues holding some sort of "people's event," perhaps at the Wilson Building, but his colleagues initially poo-pooed the idea.

Thomas says he took Graham's idea and ran with it.

Many details, it seems, are yet to be hashed out. A council source tells LL this is "not a done deal." For this to happen, there would have to be a plan to raise funds for the event, and security and cleanup concerns would also have to dealt with. Thomas says all that will be taken care of; he says he plans to seek private donations to cover the difference between the event's cost and the revenues raised by the $51 ticket cost.