December 3, 2008
National Christmas Tree Program to Muck Up Thursday Evening Commute
The National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony and the "Pageant of Peace" are set for tomorrow night at 5 p.m. Over at City Desk yesterday, Jule Banville hit the nail on the head by dubbing the Bush Christmas tree the "National Hairnet." Here's hoping she's right, and the Obamas will choose a Christmas tree decorating scheme that looks a little bit less like a "twinkling condom."
To answer your other questions: No, there aren't any tickets left to the lighting ceremony (they were all given out on November 1), and yes, the event is going to make downtown traffic a nightmare, just like it does every year. The MPD has sent out some road closure announcements:
Beginning at approximately 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 4, the following roads will be closed to traffic in both directions: 15th Street NW between Constitution Avenue and E Street NW, and 17th Street NW between Constitution Avenue and New York Avenue NW.
Additionally, parking restrictions will be in effect from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Thursday on 15th Street NW and 17th Street NW between Pennsylvania and Constitution.
We really don't want to get a lot of expletive-filled emails from you asking why traffic is so screwed up downtown tomorrow night, so please, make plans to avoid the area ahead of time.
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So wait, it would be an exercise in futility to show up to the ceremony tomorrow? No entrance at all without a ticket?
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It looks exactly the same every year.
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it's like hoping for obama to open up E street or pennsylvania ave. between 15th and 17th. i'd love it, but not gonna happen.
not as long as the securicrats and other midlevel morons are still in charge around here.
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"twinkie condom"
"national hairnet"
how about "pickle in a fishing net"?
any others out there?
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I vote "Star Spangled Buttplug."
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I got stuck in this a couple years ago. . . Worst traffic I think I've ever seen in the city in the history of ever. All those people who normally direct traffic are gone, making the entirety of the core streets a giant clusterf**k.
Leave work early, stay at happy hour longer, or don't drive at all.
~EEE~
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LOL.
But, ewww...
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I'm not a securicrat, and I like to think I'm only a low-level moron, and I hope they never re-open Penn. between 15 & 17, IMGoph. That's a beautiful pedestrian boulevard now. Tourists walking, locals jogging, street hockey teams playing with Secret Service and Park Police as spectators, and stray protestors with plenty of space to make their voices heard. It's a far better gateway to the front yard of the White House than four busy lanes of traffic.
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And if the Secret Service were to ever allow greater access around the White House grounds, what would prevent some terrorist or mentally ill person from sabotaging the Nation's Star Spangled Buttplug? I can just hear al Quaida cheering in the valleys of Peshawar, "We have toppled the Great Satan's buttplug! We have toppled the Great Satan's buttplug!" That glowing buttplug is a symbol for everything America stands for: hope, freedom, Roman Saturnalia sex rites, and gaudy displays of phallocentric hegemony.
If this tree falls in the woods, you can bet someone will hear it. Someone who HATES AMERICA.
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ian: all name-calling aside, i can see keeping penn ave. closed. maybe opening it to buses only, because as a transitway, it would be used relatively infrequently.
the one i really would like to see opened is E street. there's no reason to keep that closed other than extreme paranoia. the road is too damn far from the white house ground for a truck bomb to make any difference there (where penn ave. is just a few feet from the building).
plus, the e street freeway stub and penn ave. on the east side of the ground both feed directly into that shut-off part of e street. open that up, and you really help downtown traffic flow more freely again.
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@monkeyerotica
i can't decide if i just got smarter or stupider from reading your comment. but the term "phallocentric hegemony" makes me lean toward toward smarter. good work.
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and people - keep penn avenue open! the sidewalks are huge (not crunched people like wall st. at lunch hour) and the widest crosswalks on earth exist to allow foot traffic to pass.
let's close those little roads that line the mall, around the green. those are obnoxious. people walking in that area are in a general daze and we all know anyone driving there is not from dc and has no idea where they're going...so we have dazed pedestrians and lost drivers. recipe for disaster.
i can't recount how many times people almost hit me on those roads, but i'm a pretty slow walker.
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I made a similar comment over at the City Desk, but I don't really like the City Paper so I'm basically saying the same thing here (but without the snark).
The tree decorated on the Ellipse as the National Christmas Tree is not trucked in, it's a living tree, planted there in 1978. And it's not even close to being 100 feet tall. It's maybe 40 feet.
And apparently placing the lights directly on the tree for that length of time would overstress the tree to the point of damaging it, so they have to use the "hairnet" (an apt description, to be certain!).
That said, certainly they could design something better, or switch to LED lights or something that wouldn't harm the tree.
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Oops, my bad, apparently they do use LED lights.
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The US Capitol Christmas Tree rocks!!
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If you can't make it to the ceremony, CNN Live is scheduled to show a live webcast starting around 5:00 pm tonight at www.cnn.com/live/.
Mary Stevens
co-founder, lyvegyde
www.lyvegyde.com
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As a pedestrian, I'm in favor of closing more streets to traffic and making them promenades. I think Penn Ave is the perfect example of this and it's such a nice street to stroll on, unless Secret Service is driving down the middle of it...
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Interesting... the CityDesk piece has mysteriously vanished.
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The National Christmas Tree always seems like it has a case of LED small pox.