Babe-alonia on the Potomac: My City, Washington, D.C

Depending on their perspective, most Americans probably think of D.C. Babes in terms of Plain Wrap Vanilla, Plain Wrap Chocolate or fallen victims of Congressional or Presidential debauchery. This is because most Americans haven’t been to D.C. and their knowledge is defined by what sells advertizing on the 6 o’clock news, news print in the national rags, or otherwise empty airtime on cable TV. Truth is, “but for” a whipping boy called “D.C.”, there would be fewer fully employed big breasted, pouty lipped, cleavage blessed broadcast journalists on CNN and fewer over-employed closet fascists and miscellaneous haters on that other cable news channel.

Those of us who live and work in this town know the truth fair and unbalanced.

My normal workweek is spent in and around the evildoer end of Pennsylvania Avenue where all of the afore referenced, evildoers-Congresspersons and their factotums-loiter for lack of something more lascivious to do or busily create hate and discontent. I don’t get to spend much time at the noble end but sometimes I walk west along Pennsylvania Avenue towards God’s America and it is true that the “Babe Count” increases dramatically with every block.

Farragut Square, fittingly named after a patriotic American sailor, is the epicenter of this gourmet Babe-alonia on the Potomac. While D.C. in general is an internationally spiced cornucopia of female beauty, this area is the phenomena locus. Man or woman, if you enjoy watching babes, this is the place.

I have uploaded several photos that were taken with my cell phone and they look like they were taken with a cell phone, too. One of these, shot through a showcase window of the lower half of a female manikin tastefully clothed in curve hugging jeans, is emblematic of the common physical shape of the babes most commonly found in this area.

Many readers, male and female babe watchers alike, will be disappointed at the general absence of babe shots in this story. This perhaps cannot be avoided in a simple, impromptu self-assigned story such as this. All of the resident babes are fully employed-receptionists, researchers, accountants, attorneys, consultants, and so on. So, while they dress and groom themselves quite well, and work up profuse sweats maintaining those near perfect shapes on their morning runs around the Mall and up down the Potomac, if they wanted to be center fold outs they probably wouldn’t have spent all those years studying their well formed posteriors off in college. That being the case, it would be truly invasive to disrupt their day sticking a camera in their face. Moreover, it is not easy to lug a big camera around the metro or in and out of a crowded elevator going to and from class and much less painful if one of them shoves my cell phone somewhere sensitive.

So, while there are no centerpiece photos of the Babes of Babe-alonia in this story, D.C. is also home to many other international attractions, and photos of a few of them are included. One is lunch bars and the other is homeless folk and street musicians. I have substituted some of those photographs for the babe shots that I didn’t take.

Like most cities in the world, a day in the D.C. typically begins with the sun rising over some portion of the eastern horizon. The only city known to be different is Hollywood where the sun is widely known to rise and set on Hollywood. This week was no different. Blood red and dreary like the red veined orbs of a booze drenched Congressperson’s eyes, struggling like the ghost of Republican debaucheries past to rise from the sheets of the nameless fallen male or female lying next to him/her, the sun struggled up each day like the interest of a too old man overdosed on Viagra. Filtered by the air pollution of Republican climate change denial, its rays painted the chrome and nickel exteriors of Reston, Virginia on the Potomac a vaguely unhealthy ruptured pink.

Having said that, each day, the city comes to life with commuters and residents hustling to and from work. Morning-watch street cops go off duty and the day-watch men and women in blue hit the streets. Day Watch Meter Maids, AKA Code Enforcement Officers, venture into the dangerous concrete and steel, Baltimore red brick and brownstone canyons filled with privileged double parkers and other very important people who block commerce, carrying fresh ticket books to keep the life blood of the city flowing. An old retired police call box, ancient and rusty, standing stone firm against the ravages of time and society, helplessly disgraced by pretty even if protective, brightly colored paint, holds forth, a monument to past, present and future defenders of American streets.

Graveyard shift street corner whores hustle home for the day, replaced by attorneys and Consultants bound for the hill.

Homeless men and women who make D.C. home, head for a favorite bench, bus stop, wall or corner, to challenge physical endurance records by standing in one place for hours holding forth empty cups-cups that miraculously, tragically remain empty no matter how many passersby drop dollar bills into them. Some sleep late, on the sidewalks and ventilation grills that are their beds, ever tolerant of the trespassing tourists in their bedroom.

Street musicians from Bolivia, Peru and east Washington, fill the claxon-befouled air with exotic music, poets find comfortable niches to poeticize.

Snack shops push morning caffeine fixes, redundant offerings of pastries, micro waved scrambled eggs and reheated sausage in diatomaceous biscuits or cardboard flavored English muffins. Their doors open, they quickly fill with the tongues of a thousand towers of Babel. People come, motioning with their fingers, pointing at pictures, speaking languages unknown days before. They leave with Cuban sandwiches, Masitas de Puerco Frito (Cuban-fried pork, black beans and rice), fried yucca, Ropa Vieja, lamb shish kabobs, Pho, barbecued pork ribs, Greek Gyros, pizza pie, shrimp fried rice, dim sum, Korean Rice bowls, matzo balls, gefilte fish, tambour chicken, chili, freshly baked French baguettes, grilled cheese sandwiches and even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches -all faithfully prepared to the specifics of ancient recipes.

Not all is beautiful in this thriving throbbing Metropolis on the Potomac, though. Rumor has it that in the dark dank bowels of a new chrome, concrete and steel building there lurks a McDonalds.

No city is perfect.

This is MY town, Washington, D.C. A few bad cell phone photos of some of these things have been uploaded for your enjoyment.


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