Looks like 1.8 million folks attended Barack Obama's first swearing-in.

At least, that's the figure that seems to be winning the estimating game so far. The number comes from Mayor Adrian Fenty's people.

This marks the first time any DC mayor has taken the lead in announcing an inaugural crowd estimate.

The National Park Service used to handle those chores, until Louis Farrakhan made a stink about the agency's estimation of 400,000 for 1995's Million Man March, also on the Mall.

It looked like the Park Service was going to jump back into the number crunching business when earlier this week an NPS spokesperson told the media to expect an official inaugural estimate on Thursday.

But yesterday, the agency cited the Farrakhan-inspired Congressional ban on crowd estimation and declined to throw out a figure.

Go with somebody else's number, NPS officials told inquirers.

So, 1.8 million it is.

For now.

Looks like I'm going to an inaugural ball tonight.

A friend offered me tickets on Saturday.

I told him I don't own a tux -- ostensibly, it's a black tie affair -- and it was too late to rent one.

But my friend said that, given the state of the economy, tuxes aren't the only acceptable garb this time around. Plain ol' dark suits will abound and won't be sneered at.

I don't own a suit, dark or otherwise. (Well, I still own my wedding suit, but the scales tell me I'm half the man I was when I got married -- plus the man I was when I got married. So it's just a keepsake.)

Actually, heading into the weekend I didn't have a dress jacket or even a clean pair of long pants that fit me.

But I figured I'd give my nearest thrift shop a shot. I was there for 20 minutes and walked out with a black wool suit, black shoes and a fab Lou Rawls live LP.

Total cost: $20.54

Looks like I'm going to an inaugural ball tonight.

Charlie Brotman is announcing his 14th consecutive Inaugural Parade as I type this.

Brotman is a DC legend. Along with his work with presidents, he's a fixture on the local sporting scene. He announced Senators games at Griffith Stadium. He handled PR for Ray Leonard when Sugar Ray was among the most famous athletes in the world. And for decades he took care of publicity for nearly every major golf or tennis event that DC hosted.

And everything Brotman does, he does with a smile.

Now back to me: In 1980, I went to the pro tennis tournament at Carter Barron with some fellow teenage drunks. We intended to heckle the top seed, Jimmy Connors.

And with the courage provided by the extra large beers sold at the event -- no fooling, beer buyers were offered "regular," "large" and "tub," and we only went for the latter -- we heckled and heckled and heckled the guy who had been the world's top-ranked player for most of the previous decade.

"Where's the centerfold, Jimmy!" was our go-to line for Connors, who had only recently married former Playboy playmate Patti Connors.

Read More "Me and the Inaugural Parade Announcer" »

George W. Bush wore a blue tie to the ceremony.

Barack Obama wore a red tie.

Symbolic show of acceptance and reaching across the aisle?

Coincidence?

Did they call each other?

Am I late to this party?

ABC News, at least, has gone on record saying that "more than" 1.4 million people came to the mall for the speech.

The previous record was held by Lyndon Johnson's 1965 swearing-in.

"But this isn't official, of course," said ABC anchor Charles Gibson announced.

Wait a minute! The record's not official? How come?

Oh, right.

Getting shut out from actually seeing the swearing-in had its privileges. Well, privilege: I had retail row of inauguration swag on F Street NW pretty much to myself.

I got caught up in the moment. Hell, for today at least, I'm ready to believe the guy deserves an action figure.

Only a superhero could attract so many people to one place at one time.

I paid $15 for the doll.

This is the scene on E Street NW about an hour ago. Most entrances toward the Mall were already closed off, with police telling folks different stories about what would be open and what wouldn't.

Nobody in this photo, save maybe some law enforcement types, would make it down there by the time Barack Obama gets sworn in.

For City Paper's current issue I wrote about Butch Street, the National Park Service analyst who used to provide the media with an official crowd estimate at inaugurations and other large events on the Mall.

Congress kicked Street and his agency out of the estimating business for DC events after the controversy over the size of the Million Man March in 1995. Street said 400,000 showed up; organizer Louis Farrakhan wanted the government to declare a crowd in the seven-figures, to match the title of his gathering.

So, there's no official arbiter anymore.

And news accounts of yesterday's concert on the mall show how mussed up historical records will be until the Park Service gets back at it.

CBS says "a crowd of tens of thousands" showed up to see Springsteen.

Radio Free Europe told its audience "some 75,000" were there for Aretha Franklin.

The Irish Times wrote that "a crowd of hundreds of thousands" showed up to see Bono.

Richard Nixon's hometown paper, the Whitter Daily News went with "more than 300,000."

The Sudbury Star of Canada divulged that the president-elect "enthralled a crowd of 500,000."

Britain's Daily Mail was less conservative, reporting that when Obama spoke at the concert, he was "facing more than half a million people."

Far as I can tell, as diverse as these numbers are, nobody guesstimated that a million folks showed up.

Farrakhan must be pleased.

Workers at the Capitol Hill headquarters of C-Span, Fox News and MSNBC have begun showing up for an extended stay at the massive building that houses their DC operations.

Because of security and traffic concerns, most of the news teams' staffers won't be leaving their offices until their inaugural duties are done.

For many folks, that means they won't go home until Wednesday.

One problem with this arrangement.

"There are two showers in the whole building," a C-SPAN producer tells me.

Turns out the only full-service restroom is located in a tiny health club on the ground floor of the media center.

I ask the C-SPAN producer if he plans to spend any time over the next two days standing in line behind Greta Van Susteren and other media types to use one of the spickets.

"Nope," he says.

Van Susteren always looks she just got a whiff of something awful, anyway. Now she'll have an excuse for the grimace: The whole compound could reek like a Port Authority bathroom in no time.

As if the funk wasn't going to be enough with the building just full of its regular tenants, CBS crews from out of town are squatting on the third floor.

As another famous person with a "Van" prefixed surname, the great Ronnie Van Zant, once wrote: "Ewwww! That smell! Can't you smell that smell?"

Yeah. Smells like cable news.

Talking to Michael Dolan, you get the feeling that maybe anything is possible with an Obama Administration coming in.

"My band played an inaugural ball!" says Michael Dolan. "Being a Washingtonian, it doesn't get any better than that."

Dolan (Gonzaga College High School Class of '68) is a writer of books and TV scripts, and, nearest and dearest to me, a former Washington City Paper writer.

He, in fact, wrote the most famous or infamous story City Paper has ever published, a 1987 muckrake that revealed the video rental habits of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. Federal privacy laws were actually changed because of Dolan's piece.

Read More "Ex-City Paper Star Gets Presidential Gig" »

There's not a lot about Northern Virginia now that reminds me of the way it was when I was growing up there in the '70s. It's wealthier and more refined and liberal. Democrats win every big race.

JVs is a link to the old Old Dominion, however.

Judging from the scene inside JV's, a wondrous Falls Church honky tonk that's only a few blocks from my boyhood home, you'd think the state was still redder than Six Flags' financials. Another American flag or MIA placard hangs every few feet overhead. It's no accident that bikers use the place as their Ground Zero during Rolling Thunder weekend.

If there's a bar inside the Beltway with a more overtly conservative clientele, I haven't been there.

I went to JV's in 2003 to watch George W. Bush's speech to the nation the night he started bombing Iraq. I figured it would give me insight into how the rest of the country felt, since everybody I knew downtown was against the invasion.

The bar was packed that night, and I remember seeing a guy from the neighborhood who'd I'd known for years raising his beer and yelling "Let's kick some fucking ass!" when Bush finished talking. Everybody cheered.

Read More "Wonder How the Other Half Is Partying? They’re Not" »

Bruce Springsteen killed the mall crowd and a national radio audience (I was a part of the latter) by co-leading a version of "This Land Is Your Land" with Pete Seeger.

That's as great an American tune as has ever been written. As the world sees it, Springsteen is his generation's greatest American songwriter.

The setting was totally American.

Except for that dang Takamine guitar Bruce was strumming.

Takamine's a Japanese product that Spingsteen has long endorsed.

This country's in some trouble on the manufacturing front. We don't make anything anymore that the rest of the world wants except cluster bombs and guitars.

When it comes to guitars, in fact, we still rule. In the last 60 years, there hasn't been a picker on the planet that hasn't coveted our Gibsons, Fenders and Martins.

Woody Guthrie, the guy who wrote "This Land Is Your Land," was known for painting his rockin' slogan, "This machine kills fascists!," on Martin guitars.

Come back, Bruce. Your country needs you.

In the wake of members of every other media organization on the planet, I went by Ben's Chili Bowl this afternoon.*

THIS JUST IN: There's still a crowd in and outside the place!

The line should get manageable again sometime around 2017...

*Cliche as this drive-by was, the trip left me totally jazzed. The elation outside Ben's is catchy! Go there!

Photo courtesy of Me

Friends, as we observe the inauguration of a new president, there are still two Americas: Those that are happy to see Barack Obama take office, and those that aren't.

Yesterday, during a visit to Gambrills, Md., our car was vandalized by a member of the latter demographic.

Somebody with a lot of free time, duct tape and leftover paraphrenalia from the 2008 presidential campaign taped a "NOBAMA 'O8" placard over the rear license plate of our car, which was parked in front of my in-laws' house.

The offending paperwork also advertised for www.malagent.com, a blowhardy but currently inactive blog written by an apparent far right-winger. (There have been no posts on that site since Nov. 6.)

The car had no bumper or window stickers betraying any political affiliation. Just an American flag decal that was stuck on the back windshield before we bought it. We figured we were tagged because of our DC tags.

But then the vandals came back later and taped more of the same on the door of my brother-in-law's house, while a number of folks stood feet away on the other side of that door.

My brother in law is a loyal Republican. He's peeved.

But, as low-brow and time-consuming as the act was, it doesn't appear to be a prank: Other houses in the neighborhood were also struck yesterday.

I'm generally pro-civil disobedience, but what bugs me most about these actions is: Did the genius have to use duct tape on all four sides?