Posts Tagged ‘Joe Temp’
Joe Temp: Jim McClory
Nearly two million people coursed through the District of Columbia yesterday. Many of them didn't know where to go or how to get from one place to another. So they asked the folks who were manning security checkpoints and other crowd-control stations.
Professional crowd controller Jim McClory got a lot of those questions. Too bad he came in from Philadelphia for the event. “There’s just an unbelievable amount of people," says McClory. "And when they’re all asking for directions, you’re trying to give them the best ones possible, even if you’re not from the area.” Most of McClory's time was consumed by directing---he didn't have to get out the pepper spray.
Joe Temp: Abby Blanchard and Julie Harris
T-shirts are as common a sight as cops. Hats, too.
But two women from Brooklyn are claiming a corner on the Obama commemorative water supply. "I haven’t seen anyone with water like this,” says 23-year-old Julie Harris, one of the Brooklynites. “It’s not really for public use. You supposed to keep it, not drink it. But if you do drink it, it tastes like a Harvard Law degree. Yum. I’ll take that. It makes you smart.”
Harris's partner, Abby Blanchard, also 23, takes credit for scoring what the women refer to in on-street promotions as "H2Obama." “My dad got this Obama water and my friend made some Obama pins, so we thought, yeah, let’s go to D.C,” says Blanchard, a music promoter.
Joe Temp: Josh Sachs
Traffic deadlocks. Detoured buses. Jammed Metro. The city’s roads and railways are completely inundated and it’s gridlock-inducing. But if there’s one traffic channel that hasn’t experienced unendurable congestion (unless you're trying to go from the swearing-in to the parade route), it’s the bike lanes. D.C. Pedicab recognized the inauguration for its unique chance to drum up business. And it needed more drivers.
Josh Sachs, part-time mechanic at Silver Bikes in Silver Spring, heard D.C. Pedicab was looking for people for inaugural week. As a bike enthusiast who is desperate for work, Sachs jumped on the opportunity to get paid for spinning. And he's prepared for the forecast: “I got my leather motorcycle boots and this thick layered jacket that I bought just for this job. Yeah, it gets really cold.”
Joe Temp: Ismail Jones and Jamar Muhammad
A City Desk series chronicling the inaugural working class
Woe betide the D.C. street vendor who sets up shop on the sidewalk without a license. Competitors narc, and cops swarm. Pretty soon, the scofflaw vendor is packing his wares.
But this is the inauguration, and the authorities have real menaces to worry about.
So Ismail Jones and Jamar Muhammad are doing their business unimpeded by officialdom at 14th and V Streets NW, outside of Busboys and Poets. “We didn’t have a permit to set up. We just came down nine in the morning and got our spot. The Washington police haven’t harassed us, either. They actually came up and started talking to us. They support us,” Jones said.
Joe Temp: Chris Lowery
A City Desk series chronicling the inaugural working class
The intersection at 18th Street and Florida Avenue NW is a classic L'Enfantian gaffe, a place that was not designed for a world of fast-moving automobiles. This is a modern infrastructural clusterfuck, and "18th and Florida" doesn't adequately convey the confusion of the crossroads. U Street and Vernon Street also feed into the intersection, making it a tough place to navigate---even when millions of people aren't flooding into town.
Good thing someone thought to call in Chris Lowery, a private contractor who lives in Northern Virginia. He has a pretty stable clientele, but capitalizes on side gigs whenever he can. His job this week is just that, a temp position he landed through a friend. “I did a job for a buddy of mine a few months ago. It was directing traffic for an event at the WWII memorial. When inaugural week rolled around, he asked me if I’d be interested in directing traffic again. I said sure.”
