September 24, 2008
And So it Begins...
Flickr user erin_m noticed the new fencing and signs up around the U.S. Capitol, 118 days before the 2009 inauguration. Indeed, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) is scheduled to ceremoniously hammer the first stake into the inaugural platform today, the first step in a four-month construction project. Feinstein heads the Senate's inaugural panel.
Every four years, the District gets turned upside down by plans for the presidential inauguration. Construction has already begun to repair sidewalks and repave Pennsylvania Ave. Hotel rooms were already booked back in January of this year. The start of construction on the inaugural platform at the Capitol today is just one more reminder of the flurry of activity that awaits our city between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20.
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
[ report this ]
DC started preparing for inauguration the first time someone posted one of these, http://www.maxbass.com/images/1-20-09--700.jpg at least two years ago.
[ report this ]
There's some construction starting on the lawn on Mass Ave & 2nd just east of Union Station, too: looks like a big wooden stage is being built.
[ report this ]
I will fully support spending tons of money on improving the transportation route to get Bush from the Capital to Andrews to Air Force One.....(errr AF28000) to Texas as fast as possible.
[ report this ]
So hotels are already booked, eh?
I've got a couch to rent for the low, low price of $100 a night! Comes with a complimentary bowl of cheerios every morning!
[ report this ]
will half the hotel rooms be canceled when we have a winner?
[ report this ]
remember, we overthrew a monarch so we could be ruled by a man of the people.
if the founding fathers were alive today to see that we've elevated the presidency to something so king-like, such a cult of personality, they'd start plotting to overthrow this government too.
[ report this ]
Well said IMGoph.
This has really gotten out of hand.
[ report this ]
If the Founding Fathers were around today, they'd be dust-farting zombie Freemasons and they'd still be preferrable to what we have now.
[ report this ]
... if the founding fathers were alive today we'd already be packing heat here in the nation's capital.
[ report this ]
Hey - don't knock it. Just think, with MLK day on the 19th and the Inauguration on the 20th - four day weekend for those of us that live in DC!!
[ report this ]
They repaved PA avenue by the National Gallery, and then some utility, as usual, decided that immediately after was the perfect time to dig a hole and then put in a crappy patch job.
[ report this ]
I will fully support spending tons of money on improving the transportation route to get Bush from the Capital to Andrews to Air Force One.....(errr AF28000) to Texas as fast as possible.
It's usually a chopper ride. In any event 43 would have to really outdo himself to make the farewell ceremonies any tackier than Billy J's in 2001. The Longest Goodbye in American history been going on now for nearly 8 years, if you count Hillary's campaign.
[ report this ]
Any chance we could get the inauguration parade to come down 12th St.? Talk about a stretch of road in serious need of repaving...
If the prez won't come, maybe we can talk the Pope into coming back and driving around a bit. That seemed to bring the DDOT paving vehicles out.
[ report this ]
The quadrennial Potemkin-job on Pennsylvania Ave is nothing new. The American public can only take only so much reality on TV it seems. Supposedly the PA Ave Redevelopment Corp got its start back in the 60s because JFK and his young staffer / future senator Pat Moynihan thought the Avenue and its dilapidated buildings looked bad on TV.
[ report this ]
14thandyou: check out 12th from mass to p street. they've repaved it and added a bike lane. SOOOOOOO much better than that pothole-ridden mess was before.