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Today in D.C. History: Marion Barry, the Super Bowl, and the ‘Blizzard of Indifference’

William F. Zeman — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:01:21 +0000

On Jan. 25, 1987, then-Mayor Marion Barry was relaxing in Southern California as the nation's capital was being pounded by a blizzard.

Snow began falling on Jan. 22, one day after Barry left on a trip to California to watch Super Bowl XXI (Broncos vs. Giants—New York won, 39-20). Barry had been in a semi-permanent celebratory mode since winning his third term. Three weeks before the Super Bowl trip, Barry had quietly gone to Jamaica for a four-day vacation.

After learning of the snowstorm, Barry chose to stay in California. After learning D.C. was about to be hit by a second, even bigger storm, some thought he might finally decide to return early and take the helm. But he instead stayed for the Super Bowl itself, 24 years ago today.

He stayed after the Super Bowl as well, to play tennis and get a manicure, before collapsing and being rushed to the hospital. As Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood recorded in their 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, DC:

The day after the game Barry was in Oak View Park partying and playing poker with friends... that evening, after drinking several bottles of champagne and a quart of cognac, Barry and two women friends disappeared into a bedroom and closed the door. When the two women left the townhouse, Barry slumped to a sofa, head thrown back. His nose ran, and he made low grunting noises. The mayor clutched his chest and said he was having trouble breathing.... At Daniel Freedman Hospital Barry was given oxygen and immediately began to feel better. He told the hospital that blood tests and other exams weren’t necessary, and he was released.

The District ultimately got hit with 26 inches of snow.

D.C. newspapers, including Washington City Paper, roundly criticized Barry, who finally returned to the District six days after the first snowfall. City Paper ran a headline asking “Has Our Mayor-for-Life Gone Snow Blind?”

In a Feb. 6, 1987, Loose Lips column titled “Blizzard of Indifference,” the mayor was pounded:

The disaster in the snow brutally laid bare the grim fact that Barry intends to be a part-time mayor during his third, four-year term, which, unfortunately, is only month gone [sic].... Never has a mayor seemed more unwilling to fulfill the responsibilities of his office than Barry did last week.

City Paper compared Barry to newly-elected Baltimore Mayor Clarence H. Du Burns, who did a much better job. “With Du Burns in command, Baltimore cleared its main streets within hours after the snow had fallen, a period of time when the District’s snow trucks and plows were still as rare as the Tennessee snail darter,” City Paper wrote. (Snail darter? A reference a small fish endangered by the Tellico Dam in Tennessee.)

City Paper also attacked D.C.'s congressional delegate at the time, Walter Fauntroy, for similar negligence. Fauntroy was in D.C. during the 1987 blizzard, but we reported that:

“Fauntroy—who spends much of his time pouting because people won’t call him “Congressman” instead of “non-voting congressional Delegate”—is not about step forward... Fauntroy was more concerned with currying favor with his congressional colleagues by giving them expanded parking privileges in the District than he was in trying to help the city cope with the snow and ice that shut down the federal government and further frayed the already-strained relations between the District Building and Capitol Hill.

City Paper concluded the situation had dashed hopes of D.C. receiving statehood anytime soon:

Barry, and to a lesser extent, Fauntroy, have become liabilities rather than assets to the District’s political future. The attainment of statehood for the District, which Barry and Fauntroy cited as one of their goals for this session of Congress, suffered a serious blow in the chaos created by the city’s inadequate and uncoordinated response to the snow. Congress is not likely to give the city more control over its own affairs after city officials demonstrated they could not even clear the streets or and keep the subways running on time, which the federal government has come to depend on to get its employees to work.

City Paper did note one positive out of the whole affair. In a separate Feb. 6 article titled "Post Finds Its Voice," City Paper wrote:

The one bright spot out rising out of the frustrations and anger over the city’s meltdown method of dealing with ice and snow appeared on the Washington Post editorial page Jan. 28. The Post’s editorial writers have been so hamstrung by criticism from blacks and so ridden by their own white liberal guilt that they have been unable to produce little more than mush when criticizing the Barry administration. But editorial writer Bob Asher’s lashing critique of the failure of "Antarctica on the Potomac" to serve its citizens and daily visitors exudes real passion...

Asher’s editorial had lambasted city officials. In one section, he wrote:

What did the city government use to get rid of snow—spoons and matchbooks? What did it do all night with the plows it does have—park them next to those Metro subway cars that were hibernating in seclusion somewhere while trusting souls were jammed along wind-whipped platforms waiting for no-show trains?

New Mayor Vince Gray has been lucky, thus far, to have escaped a major test of his administration's winter weather response. But winter isn't over yet!

Today in D.C. History: Catching Up on January

Michael E. Grass — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:21:16 +0000

Today, we’re kicking off a new semi-regular City Desk feature, Today in D.C. History, where we’ll examine the big events and obscure happenings that have shaped the District of Columbia we know today. While not every day in local D.C. history is notable, we hope to cover a lot of ground. In February, Washington City Paper will celebrate its 30th anniversary—what better excuse do we need to take readers back through the District's past?

We’ll detail Jan. 24, 1966, later today, but to kick things off, let’s do a quick review of some interesting historical events that have already passed this January, including Marion Barry's big night at the Vista Hotel and the time when Sharon Pratt didn't want the windows of the Wilson Building washed.

On Jan. 3, 1997, a senior minister in Georgia’s embassy in Washington was involved in a drunk-driving accident on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle, killing a 16-year-old girl. Georgy Makharadze, the Georgian official, had his diplomatic immunity waived by his country’s president, Eduard Shevardnadze. Makharadze stood trial and was eventually sentenced to 7 to 21 years behind bars. (He spent the first three in a North Carolina prison, and was then repatriated to Georgia.) Makharadze later said he could only “pray for forgiveness.”Washington City Paper did find a silver lining in the whole affair, however. In our Jan. 10 issue that year, we reported:

Last week’s fatal crash near Dupont Circle... has prompted embassy officials in town to take a closer look at their back yards. When Marie Drissel informed her neighbor, the Embassy of Guinea, that she was going to cite its humongous garbage pile as a flagrant example of diplomatic disregard for the District, embassy officials scrambled....[Drissel] says she has been trying for 17 years to get the embassy to hire a private trash hauler, as required by D.C. law.

This week, in the wake of the Dupont Circle crash and the ensuing uproar, embassy officials finally promised to do just that.

“A 4-foot-high mountain of trash is about to disappear,” a gleeful Drissel said Monday.

On Jan. 18, 1990, then-Mayor Marion Barry was arrested on cocaine charges at the Vista Hotel, as part of an FBI sting operation. As The Washington Post reported the next morning:

D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was arrested on charges of possession of cocaine last night at the downtown Vista International Hotel after a fast-moving undercover investigation by the FBI and D.C. police that began several weeks ago....

Sources said that the mayor, who was arrested shortly after 8 p.m., smoked crack cocaine in the hotel room. The sources said the mayor was with a longtime female friend of the mayor who agreed to work with federal authorities.

The woman, who came to the District recently from California, did not smoke cocaine or engage in sexual activity with mayor before his arrest, the sources said. The encounter took place over about an hour and was video and audio-taped, sources said.

While Barry was smoking crack cocaine with girlfriend Rasheeda Moore, tapes record him exclaiming “Maria, Maria,” after taking a puff. (This is, of course, before he infamously explained he was being arrested because "the bitch set me up.")

That "Maria," Rose "Maria" McCarthy, who now goes by Rose Anding, recently chronicled her relationship with Barry in the book High Heels, Honey Lips & White Powder. Filled with interesting tidbits, like that Barry "had a harem of black women," and that Anding was disgusted with Barry’s arrest because he’d neglected to sweep the hotel room like she always did, the book did answer a crucial question. As Washington City Paper's Alan Suderman wrote last month: "Barry was both guilty and framed. Or put another way, Barry was a womanizing crack user, but the bitch really did set him up."

On Jan. 21, 1993, D.C. Council members condemned a move by then-Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly that prevented them from viewing the presidential inauguration parade from the District Building, today known as the John A. Wilson Building. While Kelly had been inserting herself in photo ops with newly-inaugurated President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, she had left the Wilson Building’s windows unwashed, and changed the locks so councilmembers couldn’t use the building to watch the inaugural parade. (The mayor had earlier dragged her feet on allowing the council to use her official reviewing platform.)As Washington City Paper wrote in its Jan. 29 issue:

The council thought it had found a way to get around its exclusion from the mayor’s reviewing stand by having the windows washed on the District Building so council-members and their staff could watch from the offices... but the mayor’s Department of Administrative Services said it did not have the money in its budget to clean the windows.

Then, the Friday before the Inauguration, the mayor had the locks changed on her old offices at the District Building because the council had a key to get into the prime parade-viewing space. By that time, the Apartment and Office Building Association (AOBA) an organization of downtown landlords eager to curry favor with the council, had a found a Virginia firm willing to clean the windows for free. So the council had the locks changed the following Monday to let the window cleaners in. The next day, the mayor had them changed again.

LL [Loose Lips] is not making this stuff up. This is the way your elected officials really behave when their egos are swollen.

With research contributions from William F. Zeman; Photo of Marion Barry by Darrow Montgomery

Harry Thomas Jr. to Enjoy Super Bowl, Not Snow Bowl

Mike DeBonis — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:46:39 +0000

While the rest of us enjoy what the District government has deemed "Super Snow Bowl," at least one city leader will be enjoying the plain ol' Super Bowl.

That would be Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., whom LL reached this afternoon inside a Miami Subs location. That's right—his flight just landed, having left D.C. just before the potentially historic deluge began.

"Got out by the grace of god," Thomas says.

Asked what lured him down from his soon-to-be-snowbound ward to Super Bowl XLIV, Thomas started by talking about how he's looking to partner with the NFL on a punt-pass-and-kick contest in D.C. Then Thomas disclosed that he's in fact having a fundraiser down Florida way. LL asked who's hosting it: "Friends of Tommy," he says. "Just people I know, fraternity brothers, guys I played football with."

And in case you're wondering: "I bought my own ticket" to the game, Thomas says.

Of course, there's a history of D.C. politicos partying at the Big Game while snow slammed the city: In 1987, Marion Barry attended the Broncos-Giants tilt in Southern California; meanwhile the city was slammed with snow as the mayor partied (and was hospitalized for what was later revealed to be the result of drug and alcohol overindulgence).

Thomas says he isn't concerned Ward 5 will suffer in his absence.

"I have able staff," he says. "They've got a pretty good handle on it."

Cheap Seats Daily: No ‘The Kids Are Alright’ During the Super Bowl Halftime?

Dave McKenna — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:07:00 +0000

MMA booster Luke Thomas

The king of ultimate fighting promotions, UFC, makes its local debut tonight at the Patriot Center. UFC boss Dana White says at least 7,000 tickets have already been sold for the show, which will be televised on Spike TV.

Luke Thomas calls the Fairfax card "arguably the most significant combat sports event since Tyson fought at what was once the MCI Center."

Thomas should be proud. The way I see it, nobody's as responsible for making DC an MMA stronghold, or for putting this area on Dana White's radar, as Thomas. But you'd have to get Thomas in a rear naked choke before he'd take proper credit for UFC's setting up shop here.

"I can't in good conscience take credit for the UFC's arrival," Thomas tells me. "They should pat themselves on the back."

Thomas, a Brookland resident, runs the popular MMA website, bloodyelbow.com, and was hosting an ultimate fighting radio show, MMA Nation, weekends on WJFK-FM long before the station went all-sports. I don't share Thomas's views about the level of artistry or science involved in ultimate fighting — to my lay eyes, it's light years behind boxing in those terms, and I've never gotten beyond the fact that the feature finishing move in MMA is called a "rear naked choke."

(AFTER THE JUMP: A gratuitous "human cockfighting" reference? Does somebody snowboarding for America make your butt water, too? Rink is rigged to keep Ovechkin and the Russkis from winning gold? Gratuitous Pete Townshend kiddie-porn reference? No "Pictures of Lily" at Super Bowl halftime? Reason #1047 why the media despises Dan Snyder? Et tu, Marv Albert?)

But if you listen to Thomas's radio show you know right away he believes everything he says. He'll be on WJFK with live broadcasts from the Patriot Center throughout the day today talking up the UFC card, and will host a post-fight show on the station. "It's the first time MMA has ever been covered by radio like this in the DC media market," Thomas says. "A true and powerful milestone."

Everything ain't rosy for MMA as UFC makes its local bow. The biggest star in the sport, heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar, bowed out with some sort of internal health problems that his camp is playing coy about late last year, just as he was taking UFC and the whole ultimate fighting realm further into the mainstream than it had ever gone. Lesnar will find out how long it'll be before he returns to the octagon, or if he ever will, this week.

Thomas, however, says MMA in general, and specifically around here, will survive with or without Lesnar.

"MMA is here to stay in DC," Thomas says. "And it's only going to get bigger."

John McCain probably won't be showing up in Fairfax. (Media man-law requires that every ultimate fighting piece include at least one reference to McCain's "human cockfighting" description of mixed martial arts from the last century.)

***

Ultimate fighting isn't the only athletic endeavor I'm too old for. Check out this write up on the L.A. Times outdoors blog of the injuries suffered by snowboarder and Olympic hopeful Kevin Pearce:

Pearce had been training in the halfpipe at Park City, Utah, for this week's Olympics qualifier at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, and was knocked unconscious when he caught his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork.

Why, of course he caught his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork! How else would the kid have been hurt other than from catching his toe-side edge while landing a cab double cork!

Good god, do I hate the Winter Olympics, where rich people land cab double corks for you and me and all of America! And now I learn that Olympic hockey, the only reason to put up with the whole nationalist shebang, will be diminished greatly this time around: Smaller, NHL-sized rinks will be used for the first time in Olympic history, the only point being to slow down the play and give the North American players a chance to hear their anthems in Vancouver next month.

On the traditional big rink, Alex Ovechkin and his Russian buddies — fellow Caps Alexander Semin and Semyon Varlamov and the most stocked Olympic squad since USA's Dream Team in basketball — would surely skate to gold.

As Al Michaels would say: DO YOU BELIEVE IN HOME COOKING!?!!?!

***

And what about being bludgeoned by blurbs for the Who throughout Saturday's WRC-4 playoff broadcasts for the band's upcoming Super Bowl halftime gig? I'm surprised by the choice, since there are a whole lot pages in the Who songbook that, because of Pete Townshend's past foibles, and the recent protests those foibles inspired, he and Roger Daltrey won't be touching during their mini-set:

The Kids are Alright
Pictures of Lily
It's a Boy
I'm a Boy
It's Hard
Slip Kid
Little Billy
Young Man Blues
Imagine a Man
Cousin Kevin Model Child
A Legal Matter
When I Was a Boy
Real Good Looking Boy (Yes, the Who put out a song with that title AFTER Pete's wayward Net surfing, and threw it on their latest greatest hits package.)

I can't see how the Who can get offstage, however, without playing "See Me, Feel Me" – "touch me" references and all.

***

The wondrous Norman Chad admits in today's Washington Post that his 2009 "Team of Destiny," the Detroit Lions, let him down: "They won one more game than the Rams," he wrote, "which is akin to having one more girlfriend than Harvey Fierstein.

Chad has, for years, averaged more laughs per column inch than anybody in newspapering. Why his genius isn't more celebrated by the Post and the rest of the world escapes me.

***

Dan Snyder hates the media. The vicey versey's also true. From the New York Post's Phil Mushnick:

Marv Albert didn't call Westwood Radio's Giants at Redskins, Monday night, Dec. 21, because his deal allows him to miss some broadcasts, and he chooses to skip Skins' home games because club owner Dan Snyder put the visiting radio booths near the end zone, making accurate calls impossible. Snyder made luxury box seats out of the former radio booths.

Before games in D.C., Giants' radio man Bob Papa has apologized to his audience for uncertain calls that are coming. "Our position is now low, end zone," Papa said, Friday. "It went from bad, to worse, to ridiculous."

***

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com

Bruce Springsteen Doesn’t Do Sports Real Well, But Nils Lofgren Does

Dave McKenna — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:34:17 +0000

I'm awed by the apathy toward this weekend's Steelers–Cardinals matchup. What's its Roman numeral, Super Bowl ZZZ?

Nobody around here cares. I got invited to two parties on Sunday. Neither gathering has anything to do with the game.

The halftime attraction, Bruce Springsteen, has gotten a lot more attention than any game-related story line.

At his press conference yesterday in Tampa, Springsteen admitted he knows nothing about football.

He's never written a great sports tune—"Glory Days" is Springsteen's jockiest song, about an aging baseball player who once had a good "speedball"; before the tune's 1984 release, "speedball" was what killed John Belushi, not a synonym for fastball.

But Springsteen's bandmate, Nils Lofgren, wrote the greatest sports tune in the history of sports tunes: "Bullets Fever," which soundtracked the Washington Bullets glorious run to an NBA championship in 1978. You couldn't turn on a radio around here during the playoffs that year without hearing it. And singing along.

No set list for the halftime show has yet been announced. Alas, we know "Bullets Fever" won't be on it.

So listen to Lofgren's final version. And, if you're of a certain age and from these parts, sing along.

If I'm watching during intermission of Super Bowl ZZZ, it'll only be to find out if Springsteen brought that foreign guitar to America's Big Game.

Porn Embraces 3D Technology; Patrons Delightedly Ducking Errant Wangs, Virtual Teabagging

Tricia Olszewski — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:57:06 +0000

Well, not quite yet. But PRNewswire reports that the first 3D adult film will be released this March, its technology compatible with the same glasses that will be required to enjoy the effects of the 3D commercials to be broadcast during the Super Bowl.

The name of the movie is Tommy Gunn's Cummin' at You!, and you can sample its "hot adult action" at cummingatyou.com.

I tried watching the teaser trailer using the RealD glasses I kept from Coraline and My Bloody Valentine, but alas, I never felt as if I were about to get a nipple in the eye.

Regardless, I imagine the novelty lasting about as long as most people actually spend watching a porno. Isn't the genre usually pretty, um, interactive as it is?

Me and Governor Sportstalk

Dave McKenna — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:02:45 +0000

I wore my $14 suit to an inaugural ball tonight.

When Joe Biden came by, he gave a shout-out from the stage to the governor of Pennsylvania, and the guy standing beside me started waving his arms and yelling nice things at the new Vice President.

I was next to Ed Rendell!

Rendell's my favorite governor, even though the only things I know about him are that he's a huge Philly sports fan and that he's appeared on the Eagles post-game shows for years.

So I took the opportunity to tell him sorry about what happened in Arizona. I figured the Eagles' NFC Championship loss would still be on his mind no matter how great a day this was for Rendell's political party.

I figured right.

"That last play was pass interference," Rendell said in that dog-bark of a voice he uses when he's excited.

Then, as any good Philly sports fan would, after starting out blaming the refs for the loss, Rendell recounted the Eagles miscues that he also felt cost them a trip to the Super Bowl.

"We shoulda had their guy at the 50 on that 4th down," he huffed. "But...."

Rendell told me he's going to the Super Bowl anyway, to root for his state's other team.

Now I wanna move to Pennsylvania just so I can have a governor like that.

The Redskins Anti-Curse™ Holding Strong

Dave McKenna — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:29:35 +0000

As predicted in this space last week, the Cardinals and Eagles benefitted from the Anti-Curse of the Redskins.

Turns out that since Dan Snyder started calling the shots around here, letting the Redskins beat you has become a surer way to get your hands on a Lombardi Trophy than having Tom Brady as your quarterback.

Snyder took control of the team in the summer of 1999, too late to have any influence until the millennium.

The Redskins have had only two winning seasons in this century.

Yet five times since 2000, a team the Skins beat went on to win the Big Game® that season. (Brady, who came into the league the same year, only has brought Bill Belichick three Lombardis.)

Before winning Super Bowl XXXV in 2000, for example, the Baltimore Ravens were shamed by the Skins, 10-3.

The Redskins then beat future Super Bowl XVII champs Tampa Bay, 40-10, in the 2002 preseason. A year later, Brady and the New England Patriots fell to the Redskins, 20-17, at FedEx before going on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII. The Redskins topped the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10, in a 2005 preseason game at home; Pittsburgh used the humiliation to whup the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL. And a year ago, the Skins beat the Giants, 22-10, late in the season at the Meadowlands. The Giants used their self-disgust to shock the world by beating the undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Over the weekend, the Anti-Curse™ proved itself scary strong.

The Philadelphia Eagles, embarrassed twice by the Redskins this year, beat the favored and rested Giants, who had whupped the Skins twice in the 2008 regular season. And, the Arizona Cardinals, beaten by the Skins early in the season in Raljon, crushed the NFC's #2 seed, the Carolina Panthers, a team that beat Washington, 47-3, in the preseason.

The Philly and Cards wins guarantee a huge test for the Anti-Curse™ in the Big Game® : Both Baltimore and Pittsburgh destroyed the Redskins in regular season contests.

So the Big Game® is now sure to feature a matchup of Skins Vanquishers vs. Vanquished.

Anybody who followed last week's tout to put a paycheck on Florida and lay the points, and then followed City Desk's orders to put the mortgage on the Eagles and Cardinals straight up, now has two paychecks and four mortgages (parlay implied!) to play with.

This week's giveaway: No sense bothering with a bet on the Cards/Eagles matchup, since they both have Redskins defeats going for them. No, instead let it all ride on a futures bet on the NFC in the Big Game®.

You can't afford not to.

The Giants Should’ve Let the Redskins Win One

Dave McKenna — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:16:08 +0000

Bet the mortgage on the Eagles and/or Cardinals this weekend.

Both these squads got beat by the Redskins this year — the Cardinals in Week 3 and the Eagles in Weeks 5 & 16.

In recent seasons, there aren't many harbingers of Super Bowl success as trusty as taking a whupping from the lowly Skins.

You can look it up.

In 2000, the Redskins beat the Baltimore Ravens, 10-3 during the regular season. The Ravens went on to beat the Giants in Super Bowl XXXV.

In 2002, the beginning of the Spurrier Era, the Redskins beat Tampa Bay, 40-10, in preseason. The Bucs went on to crush the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XVII.

In 2003, the Skins whupped the New England Patriots, 20-17, at FedEx. The Pats went on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII.

In 2005, the Redskins beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-10, in preseason at home. The Steelers crushed the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL.

And last season, the Skins beat the Giants, 22-10, on the road in Week 15. The Giants upset the undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Luckily for Eagles fans, the Giants whupped the Skins in both regular season encounters this year.

And, Phoenix could be on Easy Street, since the Carolina Panthers absolutely destroyed Washington, 47-3, in August in a preseason game.

Vegas, are you listening?