Multiple Exposure by Ellen Crosby

Author:Ellen Crosby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

13

In the dozen years I’d been away from Washington, the city had changed, not all of it for the better. Unlike London, which seemed timeless and eternal, D.C. still felt as though it were searching for its identity, trying to prove itself and fill its own oversized boots as the capital of the leading world power. The most striking change, at least to me, was the number of federal buildings that had become walled-off fortresses and the proliferation of ugly barricades that now were the permanent post-9/11 landscape. My stepfather, Harry, called Washington the place people who didn’t want to live in America went to live.

But the 8th Street corridor, newly rechristened Barracks Row, was a success story, a neighborhood that had reinvented itself by coming back from near extinction. The city’s oldest commercial center, it had been chosen by President Thomas Jefferson as the Marines’ first point of defense for the Capitol and the Navy Yard. Over the years, especially after World War II, it grew seedy and run-down, nearly closing for business after the 1968 riots. On the drive over, Jack told me I wouldn’t recognize it now: a thriving neighborhood of restaurants, bars, and shops, all the old buildings renovated under a program sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

We parked across the street from the Marine barracks and walked one block down 8th Street to Bar Humbug. When Jack opened the front door, heads—mostly male—swiveled to check us out. The place looked comfortable and unpretentious, a long narrow room with a bay window overlooking the street, plenty of dark paneling, high-backed booths, and red pendant lamps that gave off cones of sepia light. The white-haired bartender waved a greeting. The clientele was a mix of easily recognizable buzz-cut Marines and folks who looked like regulars.

Whoever owned Bar Humbug had a sense of humor because the walls were filled with photos and prints of legendary scam artists and charlatans. Charles Ponzi and Frank Abagnale had places of honor. We sat down at the far end of the bar across from a picture of Victor Lustig posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, which he once tried to sell, and Gregor McGregor. Jack ordered two Perriers and I read him the caption under McGregor’s photo. A Scotsman who fought for South American independence in the 1800s, he returned to Britain as the “cazique” of the Central American nation of Poyais, where he recruited investors and colonists to invest their toil and treasure in a patch of water off the coast of Honduras.

The bartender set down our drinks. “Either we’re going to need a bigger place or else we have to start hanging pictures on the ceiling. The owner wants to add Madoff, Ebbers, Kozlowski, the Enron guys, and Alan Stanford to the wall of shame.” He shook his head. “You’d think people would learn that too good to be true is too good to be true. Haven’t seen you guys in here before. Welcome to Bar Humbug.”

Jack

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.