On Monday morning I discovered I’d developed a weird new way to be jaded. As I walked around downtown, I looked at the office buildings and businesses that were putting boards over their windows and thought, This isn’t that bad compared to 2020. It was the day before a presidential election that has polled tighter than a wet boot for what feels like forever, though it’s really been a couple of months. You have to grant some grace to everyone who ticks you off today: There just aren’t a lot of good vibes on offer around here. Part of that is the outsize impact a change in administration will have on people in DC. The other part is lingering unease from the last time boards and fences were a common sight downtown.
While walking my dog in my overwhelmingly blue neighborhood over the past few days, I’ve run into neighbors who sported a haunted look I find familiar. Some told me they’d spent the last week steeling themselves for a Trump victory. Others wondered whether it would be foolhardy to hit a watch party. If you want to avoid the election news, advice abounds. The MGM Grand offers a “full-body ‘election reset’” for $437, Axios reports. The New York Times reported on boarded-up windows downtown and added that “at least one owner of a liquor store described sales as appearing to be up.” The Georgetown Barnes & Noble plans to open, finally, on Wednesday. You might be in the mood for a new book.
Lafayette Square park was open Monday morning, though it was ringed by anti-climb fences and gates that will presumably swing shut any moment now. The fountains inside the park were dry. “Here’s the national anthem of Nicaragua,” announced a man who sat below a sign that read “STOP HATING EACH OTHER BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE.” He hit the button and “Salve a ti, Nicaragua” blasted out of his speaker at a tour group led by a man holding an American flag. Foreign correspondents set up live shoots on Black Lives Matter Plaza. There were piles of more fencing on carts, ready to go up.
Unlike in 2020, most of the windows on the east side of the White House were uncovered. A small forest’s worth of boards awaited on the west side, however—closer to the Times‘s DC bureau, for what it’s worth. I watched a news crew from another country interview people coming out of the boarded-up McDonald’s on 17th Street, Northwest. A small fence ringed the new People’s House: A White House Experience, which allows visitors to take photos behind a re-creation of the Resolute Desk in a replica Oval Office. A couple of influencers passed by, as ever talking to the “you guys” who presumably watch their livestreams. Signs on the businesses reminded people that they were, in fact, still open.
What’s going to happen Tuesday? Will the election get called that night? Are we looking at weeks of uncertainty and ever-scarier demonstrations, as we saw in late 2020 and early 2021? Are Election Day specials even legal? Why did the National Zoo choose this past weekend to euthanize an elephant named Kamala? And why are so many sandwich places boarding up? What does Panera know that we don’t?
The White House has gradually cut itself off from the rest of DC over the past two centuries, and on Monday morning its stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue was once again behind fencing, apparently due to the construction of a viewing stand for the next inauguration. The fences, the boards—these days, they just appear when big national moments approach. The future is fuzzy but the message to Americans is clear: We’re our own biggest fear now.
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.
