Return to Sender: What's the Deal with Washington, D.C.?

One of the things we'd most been looking forward to for our weekend in D.C. was the 2007 National Capital Barbecue Festival. It was the only thing we actually had scheduled into the weekend – everything else was to happen around that. As a native Texan, I'll drop everything for a good barbecue cook-off.

The festivities for the day were to start at 11AM. Nobody, we assumed, wanted barbecue that early in the morning, so we made a date with our friends to head down at around 1PM – early enough, we figured, that there would still be some smoked meat to be had. We arrived, paid our entry fee, and headed to the tent where the free food was to be had, because God forbid that we should pay an entry fee in order to pay for food. The line appeared short, but after standing in it for a few minutes, we realized we were hardly moving. One of my friends and I went to check, only to realize that, after stretching for three city blocks, the line snaked around, Disneyland-style, before food was even in sight. We reported back to our boyfriends, and voted to cut our losses and just buy some cooked dead animal. The lines were insane, but we spotted one that appeared shorter than most. Slowly, we worked our way to the front, the smell of barbecued brisket teasing our nostrils. At the front, we were greeted, not with piles of meat, but with a message from the woman at the stand: "Brisket and chicken in an hour; pulled pork and ribs at 5PM." Which left her with nothing to sell but corn.

We trudged down the block in the hot sun (street fairs really should happen in April, not June) until we found another short-looking line. We waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. Barbecue fans kept strolling past with plates piled high with barbecue and coleslaw and potato salad. The friend with whom I had gone to investigate the free food line disappeared and appeared with four cobs of corn, purchased from the woman who had run out of meat. We needed something to tide us over, but all I wanted was a pulled pork sandwich. Slowly, slowly we crept up in the line. "We're out of pulled pork," shouted the girl at the register, "but we still have ribs, rib tips, brisket, and chicken." I sighed, but decided that I could settle on brisket in a pinch. We'd been standing in line for over twenty minutes.

Moments later, the girl at the register called out: "We're out of ribs and brisket, too!" Our friends, who only wanted brisket and chicken, were visibly disheartened: after standing in line this long, could they bear to move to another, or would they just eat something else? Unwilling to admit defeat, they decided they would at least get the chicken. The boy and I decided we'd try the rib tips. And the baked beans. Because, goddammit, at this point, we wanted baked beans.

Finally, it was our turn. "Sorry," said the man behind the counter. "We're out of food. We don't have anything to sell you."

"But," yelled a man behind us, "I still see food!"

"Yes, but we're out of plates to put it on."

The dejected crowd began to disperse, but we were simply not going to give up that easily. We at least wanted the beans. Which they gave us without any silverware ("we're out of that, too"). My boyfriend and I procured a single fork from the neighboring souvlaki stand (who the hell orders souvlaki at a barbecue festival?); my friends drank their beans like they were some very thick kind of coffee. People all around us were milling about: apparently, several stands were running out of food. What lines did exist were so long that we knew we didn't have a chance. And so we decided to cut our losses and leave.

But we still wanted barbecue. And margaritas. Our friends knew of a Texas-themed barbecue restaurant in Chinatown called Capital Q. Its food wasn't authentic, but at least they had margaritas. And so, tired and sweaty, we trekked over. Only to find—wait for it—that Capital Q was out of margaritas. At least they weren't out of meat.

Feeling refreshed and significantly less cranky once we had some food in our stomachs, the boy and I met up with another friend, while the two friends we had previously been with left to go study for the bar (shhh – that's what my boyfriend should have been doing, too!). The three of us decided that we'd like nothing better than to spend the rest of the day in an air conditioned museum, before meeting up with some other friends for dinner, and so off we headed to the National Gallery of Art, even though we were literally across the street from the National Portrait Gallery. The sun was still blazing, so it never occurred to us that it was, in fact, 4:30 in the afternoon when we arrived at the National Gallery. Which closes at 5PM. We made a quick trip through the special Jasper Johns exhibition and made a hasty visit to the room full of the works of your native son, Alexander Calder, before being asked, oh-so-politely, to leave the premises.

Never fear! A sign outside informed us that the Museum of Natural History remained open until 7:30 during the summer. My last time at the MNH, I had only stayed long enough to fight my way to the front of the crowd oohing and aahing at the Hope Diamond, so I was excited to get to investigate the rest of the museum. "No more IMAX movies today," the security guard informed me as she inspected my purse. "Closed for a private party." No worries: I didn't have any desire to see an IMAX movie when there were so many taxidermied animals to check out. Time check: 5:05PM. I could see every damned animal at the museum in that time.

Wrong. Because at 5:30, we were informed that the museum was closing for a benefit, and that we needed to leave immediately. And so back to the Portrait Gallery we went, seeing a sign that informed us that it stayed open until 7PM during the summer. Fortunately, that sign didn't lie, and we spent the next hour and a half or so exploring the photography of Harry Benson. When we were asked to leave, it was a very reasonable 6:55.

(I'd just like to take a moment, Philly, to say that this wouldn't have happened here. Not that you don't sometimes do weird things like this, just that we couldn't have afforded to see three museums in an afternoon here. Oh, how we wish your museums were free!)

After closing three museums and taking a break for those long-desired margaritas, we met up with still more friends and headed to a Chinese restaurant where, in the most direct Seinfeld-like scenario, we were told that we'd have to wait for a table. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but fortunately, our wait didn't end up being too long, and the meal passed deliciously and uneventfully. Until someone decided we should get ice cream after. And then we wandered around for half an hour, all the while, one of our friends insisting that "I know there's an ice cream place right nearby!" The ice cream shop was finally discovered, with the help of a passing couple whom we noticed were drinking milkshakes. My boyfriend was given not only the wrong size ice cream, but the wrong flavor. Sigh. At this point, it just figured.

The ice cream shop was only a few blocks off the mall, so we decided to wander down in that direction and put our friends on the Metro at the Smithsonian stop. We arrived at 10:02. No surprise when we discovered that the entrance to the stop closed at 10PM on the dot.

At long last, we found another entrance, said goodbye to our friends, and, with no shortage of effort, found a taxi. Upon arriving back at the apartment where we were staying, we collapsed into bed, dreaming only of you, Philadelphia, and how pleasantly predictable and un-Seinfeld-like you tend to be.

Photo of Jerry Seinfeld in D.C. (on the campus of GWU), via GWU.