Goddamnit, they stole my idea! Those Segway nerds started a Dan Brown Lost Symbol tour in the District, the Washington Business Journal tells me. My tour was going to take area symbologists to the Scottish Rite Temple on 14th 16th Street NW, then, you know, meh, head over to Hank’s Oyster Bar, because it is nearly time for the months without the letter R. And months without the letter R mean oysters.
Dan Brown, on the other hand, means clams: Steven Orr and Scott Brown, the people who stole my idea, are pulling in $10,000 a week from the Dan Brown Segway Code. Both of them are members of the Scottish Right of Freemasonry, so, conceivably they knew the tour before even Dan Brown did. Scott Brown’s tour kicks off in Franklin Square, where tourists take a lesson in Segway nerdery. (Incidentally, Orr is the general manager of Segway Tours. So this whole thing is in fact a Masonic conspiracy. I suppose that lends authenticity to the tour.)
From Franklin Square, the tour takes tourists to Almas Shriners Temple on K Street NW, the Scottish Rite Temple, and sites by notable Masonic architects, like James Hoban’s White House and Robert Mills’s Washington Monument. Now, I’m not about to pay $75 to walk around Washington on a tour that I thought of first. (So much money I could be making! I feel like Hitler in one of those “Downfall” videos!) Nor am I about to read one of Dan Brown’s books. But this sounds like a great tour for seeing great sites by some of the nation’s most influential architects, before eating oysters.
>> In a story with Alanis-level irony, a judge was struck while driving by a drunk driver he had spared a prison sentence. The Washington Post reports that late last year, Montgomery County District judge Edwin Collier and his wife Ellen were hit by one Rene Fernandez, who appeared in court before Collier in 1998. Fernandez had been arrested for drink-driving twice in three months back then. And the rain on Collier’s wedding day? Though the retired judge and his wife were so grievously injured they were forced to move into a retirement community, Fernandez barely suffered a scratch.
>> For the umpteenth time, do not drive downtown today. ABC7 has a roundup of all the reasons why you want to avoid the area if you step behind the wheel. Roads will be closed for the Cherry Blossom Parade along Constitution Avenue as well as around the Tidal Basin for the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile run. Then there is the nuclear security summit at the Washington Convention Center. That doesn’t begin until Sunday night, but a security fence has already been erected along 7th Street NW and businesses are taking notice.
