Photo by Maryland Route 5While Occupy D.C. 1.0 may be winding down, at least their message has sunk in. Or something.
Overheard of the Week
A couple walking down 15th Street NW between P and Massachusetts last Friday night:
Girl: “I think I want to get my nails done tomorrow.”
Guy: “Oh yeah?”
Girl: “It’s been a long time since I’ve done it, and I kind-of feel like pampering myself.”
Guy: “Well then you should do it.”
Girl: “It’s just …”
[short pause]
Guy: “What’s wrong?”
Girl: “It’s just so … one-percent.”
After the jump, the confusing Metro system, hot dudes, and a very special extra-long spy caper at a cupcake shop.
——
Budding transportation planners
On the Red line this morning:
Four girls, clearly from out of town, are talking.
Girl 1 (confidently): “The Metro goes in a circle. All metros do.”
Girl 2: “No it doesn’t. It goes back and forth. The trains just take turns.”
Girl 1: “No, when we got on the signs said all the trains were going towards Dupont Circle, so they can’t go back and forth. It has to go in a circle.”
Girl 2 (pulling out a map): “No, look! It doesn’t go in a circle. See? It goes from there to there.” (pointing)
Girl 3: “But if all the trains are going the same way, how will we get back!?”
Girl 4: “Guys, I’m sure metro will figure it out…”
——
The Taco Bell dog would not be pleased
On the McPherson Square Metro station platform during evening rush hour:
Thirty-something, professionally-dressed man speaking on a cell phone: “Just tell them straight up. One enchilada and two nachos, bitch.”
——
And it doesn’t even have a cord!
On a Metro platform:
A 20-something woman, talking on her cellphone: “I find it SO miraculous that my cell phone works all the way down here, don’t you?”
——
Then: Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Now: Stephen Colbert
In the National Press Building:
Two twenty-something women get in the elevator, continuing a conversation:
Woman 1: “…he teaches Sunday school. And he loves his mother.”
Woman 2: “Oh, Colbert.”
Woman 1: “And your kids would have lots of aunts and uncles…”
——
Probably not talking about how much he loves his fireplace
North of Dupont Circle on Connecticut, around 8 p.m.:
Man in suit on cell phone: “I just want to kiss without it burning.”
——
The movie Idiocracy is slowly coming true
On the Metro:
One twenty-something woman to another: “He said ‘happy Valentines’, I said ‘smh’, he said ‘question mark’, I said ‘like I said, smh’, he said ‘whatever.'”
——
And your second week in a row with a Tebow reference.
Friday night, 6 p.m., in a residential area of Friendship Heights:
Two small boys, around 8 years old, are throwing a football around. One catches the ball, goes down on one knee, and puts his forehead on his fist. He gets back up, looks at his friend, shrugs and says: “Tebowing.”
——
And finally, your extra-long cupcake spy caper, posted mostly unedited from the submitter. Too good to cut down.
Wednesday just after noon, in front of Baked & Wired, on Thomas Jefferson Street, NW:
A late 30s woman, in mismatched jacket and pantsuit, with too many elbow-handle sacks hanging off her arms, walks across the street to the cupcake shop with her eyes facing north and focused beyond the bridge over the C&O Canal. She’s wears a rectangular ear-clip phone.
“He’s on his way up–half the way to [man’s first name].”
A common Georgetown woman who works in a nice office. She’s got too many arm bags and what looks like a cupcake habit that would lead her to tell hypothetical dinner party guests that she wishes she could get back on the New Year’s resolution to go to the gym. Into the cupcake shop’s door she goes.
Another woman passes behind her, crossing almost upon her heels. She’s a skinny, vigorous young grandmother in appearance, with straight grey hair, granny glasses, and a vest over a knit shirt. She’s watching north on the other side of the C&O Canal like the cupcake woman, and in all the Georgetown busybodies, she’s got a cell phone too, but hers is more than a cell phone–two cigarette packs thick with a round-dial on top of it. She talks into it holding it at hip level.
“[Woman’s first name] has visual.”
Previously she’d been pacing at the canal bridge and towpath using the cell phone intermittently in a hypothetical portrait of worrying when she’d be picking her granddaughter up after ballet lesson.
There are half a dozen people up the street, to which both had turned attention–including a dog walking man in a brown striped sweater/sweatshirt and sunglasses staring down and turning east on the canal towpath. Who is who, who is with whom? Who is the what? Every body on the sidewalk could have meaning.
Each of the women in turn locked eyes with an observer but only for a tenth of a second. A gesture neither repeats. The young granny marches spryly to the towpath and turns west on it, and once she’s out of view the cupcake/office/elbow bag woman lumbers after her, making the turn west too.
