Today we're revisiting one of our earliest DCist Monument features: Sonny
Bono Memorial Park, which we first wrote about last December. The park has long been a curiosity even to District residents, and the mystery behind it (which turned out not so mysterious) was one of the inspirations for this ongoing series.

In the months since, big changes have dramatically altered the look and feel of the place -- viz., the gryoscopic tilting of the Earth on its orbital plane which is responsible for the passing of seasons. In the dead of winter, only the grass and shrubs at the perimeter showed any color. When DCist headed over to the park recently, the first thing we found was...

A realtor sign?! Who thinks they can actually building something on 800 square feet of triangular park space? Ah, well... nobody. Just a realtor sign. Now, as for the rest of the park:

There it is! Quite a bit different than when the Earth wass reclining a few months back. As we wrote at the time, the park's creator is a real estate developer named Geary Simon, who was a close friend of the late Rep. Bono. Simon has flowers planted in the spring and summer, as the Earth moves under our feet. We don't remember what kind of flowers these were. Horticulturalists are invited to weigh in.

The rest of the park is about the same as before, including the pink square benches, scattered about the park at the city's request, to deter homeless sleepovers. The one below still bears a quotation from Charles Baudelaire's "Le Fleurs du Mal":

pour us your poison, let us be comforted
The association Sonny Bono escapes us, as it probabl did the furtive scribe him or herself. If only all vandalism could somehow reference French poetry. Borf, for one, could learn a thing or two.

And if you think poison is only meant to be figurative, think again:

During our research on the park, Mr. Simon was generous enough to share with us photos of the park from before it opened in 1998. The lead photo in this post is, you might guess, the plaque at the park's entrance before it was laid into the concrete. The rest were all taken during the construction outdoors:


To visit Sonny Bono Memorial Park, take the Red line to the Dupont Circle station and exit via the south escalators to 19th Street. From the circle, walk one block southwest along New Hampshire Ave to the next intersection, where the triangle park sits.