New York, you have finally convinced us yokels in DC that we are not in your league. The indictment of your mayor describes acts we know we could never pull off in our cowtown.
Sure, it smarts a little when you come down here and declare which of our restaurants are worth eating in or tell us how to spend time in our own town. And deep down we know our rivalry is one-sided—why would anyone in the nation’s capital of finance and culture care about what happens in the nation’s actual capital?
I know, some of you civic boosters are thinking, Wait! We have allegations of corruption here, too! You know how much DC Councilmember Trayon White is accused of taking in bribes? Around $35,000. Marion Barry—a rich vein, to be sure—once got in hot water for taking nearly $7,000 from construction companies. Jack Evans was fun, but was he big city fun? We’re kidding ourselves if we say otherwise. Here’s the real uncut stuff, people:
Even before Adams’s indictment was unsealed today, he was hurtling toward the top of my imaginary list of Incredibly Strange People in Politics. Remember the time he freaked out New Yorkers by implying a nuclear attack had occurred? His rat bucket? Which apparently doesn’t work? The police robot? The fake photo? How he claimed to know how to skateboard? And then did this? This…lightly produced video where he demonstrated how to search for guns in your children’s jewelry boxes and throw pillows? The vegan-mayor-who-eats-fish thing? The sneaking suspicion that he didn’t actually live in New York when he ran for mayor? This paragraph could go on for 1,000 more words and not even get close to describing how weird a political figure Eric Adams has been.
But you don’t need me to try, because even though I don’t live in New York, I keep up with Eric Adams. How could I not? The man once said “all my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success,” prompting the name of this excellent and frequently updated attempt to chart the fumes of intrigue wafting around people in his circle. (Did we lose Brock Pierce to New York, thanks to Adams? Dammit, New York, you strike again!)
So. Today we will be smug. “Sucks to be New York,” we will say to ourselves as our bakeries set no trends and we pay for our own tickets to Istanbul and Ghana and our media outlets don’t publish investigations of this caliber often enough. And tomorrow? Tomorrow we will buy our Acela tickets.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
