Joe Flood

In these last days of the pandemic, I have a certain wistfulness about what we will lose with the return of “normal” life.

“It’s the first time we’ve been out in a year,” a couple told me excitedly as we waited to get into happy hour at the Heurich House Garden.

I’ve been going to the garden since they opened in February. It’s a nice outdoor space within walking distance of my home. During the winter months, they served mulled wine (something I never thought I’d like) with enough alcohol content to keep me warm for a while. I’d meet friends there and we’d talk, until our extremities began to freeze.

The pandemic is coming to an end in Washington, DC. Vaccines are freely available and incentives (such as free beer) are now being offered to get them.

Hard to believe that just two months ago, I was talking with my friends in the garden about the difficulty of obtaining a vaccine. Now, we’ve all been vaccinated.

I am deeply thankful for this amazing development that was only possible due to big government and American ingenuity.

In 2020, DC was so empty that I could run in the street. Now, the drivers are back and running in the street would be a death sentence. Literally – traffic deaths have risen dramatically, despite Mayor Bowser mouthing Vision Zero platitudes.

We learned how to eat outside in any weather. 14th St is lined with outdoor tables on the street, protected from traffic and sheltered from the weather. Some are quite elaborate, like the cozy little rooms at Le Diplomate.

Outdoor drinking in DC has become ubiquitous, even infamous. Logan Circle Park is known locally as Club Logan. On the weekends, the grass is packed with picnickers sipping to-go drinks from the bars on 14th St.

While the neighborhoods are rocking, not much is going on downtown. With the federal government teleworking, south of K Street is deserted. Most of the coffee shops and restaurants are closed. The city is trying to lure  people back with things like the outdoor office in Farragut Square.

The General Services Administration, where I work, was already teleworking a majority of the time, pre-pandemic. No one had assigned desks; everyone had laptops. Hoteling, they called it. Nothing really changed for us when the pandemic hit.

GSA is not alone. Many organizations have discovered that they can work successfully online. Office space will be shed – what’s the point of leasing square footage downtown for people who aren’t there? Maybe you need a DC address or place for meetings but you don’t require a whole floor on K Street.

For many businesses, the question will be not when everyone goes back to the office but who actually needs to be there.

I thought that the last days of the pandemic would end with a bang. A celebration as people discarded their masks and resumed life.

Instead, everyone is cautiously exploring the world once again, like the couple I met in the garden. They will discover an America that has changed utterly.

A friend asked me if I’m writing anything.

During the pandemic, I wrote LIKES, a book of short stories about social media.

But now I’m writing nothing.

My books have always been very topical. I write about the times. LIKES is about about social media obsession, THE SWAMP concerns DC during the Obama years and MURDER ON U STREET is a story about gentrification.

Yet, I cannot write about the coronavirus or the other traumas of the past year, like the January 6th assault on the Capitol. My fiction reworks reality, reframing it and pouring it into the mold of dark comedy. But 2020 was too deadly and chaotic to turn into anything coherent.

With vaccines and seasonality, coronavirus in America is ebbing. DC is springing back to life, full of people once again, the empty streets of last year now just a memory.

During the pandemic, every choice you made had meaning. Even the simplest ones. I felt accomplished just biking to 350 Bakery for a scone. Riding a bike kept me healthy while spending my money locally kept people employed.

Now that era is over and the American consumption machine is roaring back to life. Storefronts are no longer dark and brunchgoers fill 14th Street again.

On Saturday, I was at the Lincoln Memorial. The steps were crowded with people, a yoga class was going on, joggers were going by. It was beautiful to see.

And yet, seeing normal life resume made me feel: too soon.

Two weeks after I got vaccinated, I went to a bar. Something I had been looking forward to for months. With antibodies in my veins, I could drink beer and eat wings again. I could sit at a table and talk to other humans.

Yet, it was not as satisfying as those early-morning bike trips to 350 Bakery. I’d take bikeshare, buy a scone and then walk home.

Life during the pandemic gave me purpose, imbuing even the simplest of actions with meaning.

Normal life is returning. In America, that means a frenzy of buying and selling. Our nation is gearing up to spend once again.

I’m not writing because I can’t answer the question: what matters now?

I have a photo of Rahul Dubey in the Swann Street Report from the ACLU, which covers the mass arrest of protesters in DC. Here’s the story behind it.

June 1, 2020, was a very dark day in Washington’s history. The night before, protests against the death of George Floyd had grown violent. Windows were smashed downtown and drug stores hit by gangs of pill thieves.

Trump decided he had to do something. That something was a PR stunt.

Protesters were violently cleared from Lafayette Park so that Trump could have a photo-op with a Bible. The Park Police and other agencies beat and tear-gassed people protesting police violence, just in time for the national news.

But that was just the start of the rampage. In addition to the police, armed troops were let loose upon the city. From my apartment a mile from the White House, I watched Black Hawk helicopters thunder at rooftop height. From the seventh floor, I was at eye-level with the pilots.

With a curfew in place, most of the protesters went home. Some carried on and were joined by others outraged by what had happened in Lafayette Park. I slipped out of my apartment and filmed as they marched up 14th St.

The Metropolitan Police Department got ahead of them, blocked off streets and redirected the protesters until they were trapped on the 1400 block of Swann St NW.

I know the street well, having lived at 15th and Swann for years. My short story, Apartment 101, which won the Washington City Paper contest, was set there. Swann Street is a narrow, one-way street lined with gingko trees that turn gold in the fall.

On the night of June 1, I read alarming tweets from the block as kids were “kettled” by the MPD. The city had been sued for using this tactic and had to pay out millions in settlements. But now they were kettling people again.

As the young protesters were squeezed together, sprayed with pepper spray and arrested, a hero emerged: Rahul Dubuy, who opened his home to protesters, giving them shelter.

I still live in the neighborhood and was outraged that such violence could happen here. The next morning, I hopped on Capital Bikeshare to see for myself. On Swann Street, there was little sign of the chaos from the night before. Rahul was standing out front with a few of the teens that he had sheltered from the police.

I introduced myself and said what had happened was terrible. I then asked if I could get a picture, wanting to memorialize this hero. It’s an iPhone shot and shows how comfortable Rahul is with the people that he had just had met hours earlier. He not only opened his home to them, he kept them safe with the police pounding on his door.

That’s a remarkable act of courage, demonstrating a faith in humanity that was rare in 2020, which is why he is a hero.

 

While I enjoy drinking outdoors at places like the Heurich House Museum, I am glad that the bars will soon reopen in DC.

With strict covid rules in place, many of DC’s bars closed for the winter. The fear was that they would be gone for good. Now they’re planning to return.

This bit of news cheered me for I am getting very, very tired of drinking outside. During this covid time, I’ve had old-fashioneds while being frozen solid on a street corner. Sipped bourbon on a snow day in the park. And met friends for beers on a cold afternoon at a golf course.

Did you know that there was a golf course in DC? Several of them in fact. Hains Point is near the Lincoln Memorial. It’s on a peninsula that people like to bike around. There’s also a pro shop where you can get a beer and sit outside. Despite extra layers, after two beers, I was freezing. On my way home, I pedaled as hard as I could just to generate some warmth.

Last night, I was better prepared. The Heurich House Museum, a historic Dupont Circle mansion, has a lovely outdoor garden where they do happy hour on Thursday nights with beer, mulled wine and other treats. Wearing a sweater and a jacket, I was too warm. An hour later, when the wind picked up, I was very glad to have overdressed.

With my friends, we talked the usual subjects: covid and politics.

Everyone wants the vaccine but it’s like getting concert tickets for the hottest band in the world. The DC web site failed again (thanks Microsoft). All the vaccine appointments were gone within ten minutes. Vaccines are coming but they are in short supply.

In politics, Trump is like a bad addiction. A friend confessed to watching Trump’s speech on Sunday because he had to get a dose of the crazy.

I will be forever thankful to Twitter for banning Trump from the platform. Out of the Presidency and without a social media platform, he can no longer troll us. My mood has improved 100%.

But the consequences of his disastrous time in office remain. Q cultists believed that yesterday, March 4th, would be when Trump would return to power and hang traitors like myself. Fortunately, this did not happen, though security was strengthened around the Capitol, which is already guarded by troops and surrounded by a three-mile-long fence topped with razor wire.

I was amused to hear the complaints of the surprisingly mild QAnon Shaman and the Arkansas insurrectionist who thinks being locked up is unfair. Republicans love watching Cops but when the police come for them, what they gonna do? They cry.

It’s also funny that Senator Josh Hawley is awfully concerned about the FBI sweeping up cellphone metadata from the totally non-surprising January 6 attack on the Capitol. I watched as he kept asking the FBI head about phone records. It’s rare that a defendant gets to ask questions of an investigator.

Now we wait for the cherry blossoms. They’re predicted to reach peak bloom April 2-5. Around the Tidal Basin, you can see the first buds on the trees.

In the name of covid, the National Park Service may restrict access to them, like they did last year. No matter. There are plenty of cherry blossoms around Washington, DC, to see.

In the words of Pablo Neruda:

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.

The bars will reopen soon. The cherry blossoms are coming. Trump is gone. That’s enough for me.

The insurrection at the Capitol was not a surprise.

Everyone in DC knew that something bad was coming on January 6, 2021. If you lived in DC, you had seen Trump supporters escalate their violence over the previous months.

Escalating Threats

In November, Trump supporters brawled with counterprotestors in the streets of downtown DC and in front of the Supreme Court. The Proud Boys took over Harry’s, a dive bar downtown, and used it as a base of operations to drunkenly menace the city, cheered on by President Trump.

December saw the return of Trump supporters who again brawled with police and bystanders, in addition to vandalizing a church by burning a Black Lives Matter banner. Thousands of police officers were mobilized and a huge chunk of the city was shut down to contain the violence.

I had seen how violent the Proud Boys could be. On the day of the December rally, I ran into some of them downtown. I didn’t think they would be out at 8 AM but there they were, looking for people to fight. After yelling at some black kids on Black Lives Matter Plaza, one of them got up in my face. The Proud Boys advance in their organization by fighting “Antifa” even if it’s just a guy going out for coffee.

After the two previous rallies, Trump supporters felt emboldened, feeling that they could attack people without consequence.

How Should DC Respond?

Prior to the Stop the Steal rally, there was a debate in DC on whether progressive groups should organize a counterprotest or not. The city discouraged this and Mayor Muriel Browser urged residents to stay away from downtown to avoid confrontations.

I typically photograph large protests but I stayed away from this one. Photographer friends of mine, the fearless ones who document everything in DC, stayed home too. A friend of mine shared a video showing a Trump supporter following him and threatening to kick his ass.

The day before the insurrection, DC boarded up. Nearly everything downtown, from restaurants to office buildings, closed for the day. It was so obvious that an insurrection was coming that I even Instragrammed about it:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Joe Flood (@joeflood)

I was alarmed by the numbers of Trump supporters I saw everywhere in DC, even in Logan Circle, where I live. They wore red MAGA hats but, more ominously, were also outfitted in military-style tactical gear, including helmets, vests, bear spray and poles wrapped in Trump flags that could be used as weapons. In their trucks, they drove around the city, Trump flags flying.

One Last Chance

January 6 was the last chance they had to “stop the steal.” Take control of Congress and they could prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified.

Online, there was lots of chatter about doing that:

On January 6, armed Trumpist militias will be rallying in DC, at Trump’s orders. It’s highly likely that they’ll try to storm the Capitol after it certifies Joe Biden’s win. I don’t think this has sunk in yet.

— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) December 21, 2020

I don’t have the Capitol Police’s $460 million budget. Yet, it was obvious to me and everyone else in DC that something terrible was going to happen on January 6.

So, it was quite extraordinary to hear the claims by former Capitol Police officials that the insurrection was an intelligence failure.

The Insurrection Was Not a Surprise

You didn’t need an FBI report to know that something incredibly violent was coming on January 6; all you had to do was look out the window! Every hotel in the city and nearby suburbs was filled with Trump supporters, people who had escalated their violence over the previous months. They had weapons with them and were motivated to “stop the steal.” January 6 was the last chance to keep their cult leader in office.

I didn’t know that they were going to attack the Capitol but I knew that they were going to do something incredibly violent.

I assumed that every police agency in this city (and there are many) would be 100% prepared for every possible eventuality.

Watching a violent mob push aside “bike rack” barriers and rush the Capitol, I was shocked at how unprepared the Capitol Police were.

The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of leadership.