Washington Photo Walk

Washington D.C. is a popular tourist destination in my area, you might have heard of it. Dozens of monuments, 80+ museums, there’s a lotta scenery and a lotta history. I had some time off for Labor Day weekend, and in the absence of my labor I thought I would indulge in some leisure during a weekend dedicated to labor.

I’ve not spent a great deal of time in D.C. since moving to the region. I think the traffic put me off, the place is notorious for its traffic. Sure, there is a train that leaves from my neighborhood, I can jump on that almost any time of the day and leave driving for the suckers, but we decided it would be a good idea to drive there in order to get used to the action of it. I’ve opted out of a few concerts and other outings because I would rather avoid the trouble of getting there and back. This is stupid. I really should have just gone to that Devo concert this summer, dang it!

I love Devo.

I got a room in Southwest DC, and drove up early on Saturday morning. Most traffic that morning was heading south from DC – everyone is heading to the beaches in Virginia and North Carolina. Traffic IN the city itself was practically nonexistent. Did EVERYONE go to the beach? It was no trouble at all to get in and around. We parked the car and opted to walk most of the weekend, because we were close to most things that we came to do and didn’t want to deal with parking.

While waiting to connect with some people, who were presently across town, we walked down to the wharf (where the Devo concert was, incidentally) to get lunch and some bottles of wine. The wharf is a thriving mixed-use neighborhood on DC’s southwest waterfront along the Potomac. It opened in 2017 and is home to 3.2 million square feet of retail, residential and entertainment space. It’s a pretty area, plenty of boats and people and architecture to point my lens at. I’ve spent so little time pointing my lens at things this summer, I was positively dying to shoot photography of whatever gets in my way!

This was an interesting summer in the DC area. Our current national administrator (you might have read about him in the news once or twice) has seen fit to deploy more than 2,000 military troops to police a city that he believed to be outside the abilities of the DC police department to decriminalize. I have no idea how true this may be, but I can tell you I saw plenty of groups of armed soldiers patrolling. Patrolling the National Mall, patrolling the Wharf, patrolling Capitol Hill, they were everywhere. Mostly they were walking, but occasionally were seen having ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s, standing in line to get Panda Express take-out, or gardening. Yeah, gardening! In full uniform with all the extra gear, raking and clearing brush and trimming hedges, beautifying the tourist areas. I suspect maybe they have a profound lack of landscapers in the DC area so the Army was called in to care for our green spaces instead? Seems a little overkill, but what do I know? I talked to a few, got selfies with them, they didn’t seem miserable, but they were definitely overdressed for the job at hand.

No matter what you think about our current administration or his ideas about law enforcement, these soldiers are not the enemy. They are people like you and I. Many of them don’t even like being deployed against their own countrymen. We don’t need to make them feel like the enemy.

Speaking of jobs, there’s a lot fewer of those in the city. Nearly 10,000 federal jobs in DC (22,000+ in the greater metro area) have been liquidated over the first half of 2025. Even though all of these massive office buildings are vacated for the holiday weekend, I wonder what the traffic would be like during the NON holiday work week when there are 10,000 fewer jobs to be commuted to. Perhaps we’ll call in the National Guard to make spreadsheets and pie charts?

Suffice it to say, things are weird in D.C. right now. “Do you think now would be the ideal time for a DC weekend?” I was asked, to which I responded “Right now is the PERFECT time for a DC weekend!!” Why would I want to shoot photos of normal city life when I can shoot photos of historically abnormal city life? Streets patrolled by armed soldiers, scowling images of our President on 30-foot banners draped over half-empty office buildings, police barricades and razor wire just about everywhere you look. Photographs capture a moment in time and preserve it for future speculation, when circumstances are less-than-ordinary, that’s the best time for capturing them on film.

Honestly, however, I was a little disappointed. I think I expected MORE of a visual state of supreme disarray. I don’t know what, tanks in the streets? Security checkpoints? I don’t know what I was hoping to see. Maybe if I wasn’t sticking mostly to the touristy areas of museums and restaurants I’d see more chaos and irregularity, what I was witnessing was a militarized version of an otherwise normal city full of regular city things. Lawns and parks and food trucks and people selling tchotchkes and rental bicycles and ads for exhibits, it just seemed completely normal, aside for those things that were, shall I say “Extra.” As such, most of the things I took photos of were pictures of buildings and trees and of myself and my partner and museum exhibits and sunsets and just completely ordinary stuff.

That ordinary stuff, though? Really quite cool. The museums are a big draw for me, because I am a nerd. The National Gallery of Art was more museum than I could see in one day, though their gift shop, disappointingly, doesn’t have much to offer. Want a print of a painting you saw here? Use this kiosk… it connects you to a website where you can buy one on the internet and have it shipped to your house. So probably pass on the gift shop and use that time to look at 20 more paintings and sculptures instead. The Air and Space Museum was another fun spot, as was the Natural History Museum, the Spy Museum and the Planet Word museum. The Library of Congress was closed, sadly, because it was Sunday and we didn’t think of that, so we sat on the steps of the Capitol for a bit, before walking back down the hill.

This brings me to another thought. Walking up and down hills, walking down street after street and standing in lines and realizing it’s not as easy to DO all this as we get older. I’ve spent so many days just walking for miles in one city or another earlier in life, but by the end of each day here I was just plain exhausted. I hate that part of aging. I’ve gotten used to needing glasses to read the captions next to items on exhibit or at items on a menu but this lack of physical stamina at this middle point of a fairly active life that I’ve led is quite humbling, and a slap of reality. You’ll get this same reality slap one day, too, and it’s gonna suck. Things will only be getting more difficult going forward. I used to be able to put 300 miles under my motorcycle wheels in a day, and 20,000 steps under my feet, but these are becoming memories now. I get sore and I get tired, sooner than I’d prefer, Even though everyone told me that would be the case, somehow you just don’t believe it until it happens.

So what do we do when that happens? Do we do LESS stuff? My gods NO! If anything, this realization makes me want to do MORE stuff! It reminds me that time is running out, and my checklist of life is still severely unchecked. Take some shortcuts! There’s 160,000 works of art in the National Gallery, why do I feel like I have to look at every one? Skip some rooms, it will be fine. Rent one of those dorky electric scooters to get from points A to B. Yeah, they’re dorky, but one of the best things about being over 50 is that no one expects you to be cool anymore – you no longer matter on that spectrum, so go ahead and be a dork. I’m still a dork with a good job, a fast car and a pretty girlfriend – so I’m doing okay! If the situation in DC seems weird and a little scary, go and see it for yourself! Life is 90% predictable and ordinary, we really need to be okay with embracing the bizarre and extraordinary. You could easily drop dead tomorrow, and in another 40 years be mostly forgotten, who cares if today you’re going to have trouble finding parking? The street vendor is selling hot dogs that look a little weird, but you still kinda want the hot dog? Just get it. You’ll be fine. If it tastes yucky throw it away, that five bucks you spent on it isn’t a major life investment, it’s just five bucks.

Finally, if Devo is coming to town? Just go to the show. Those guys aren’t getting any younger either (and not one are afraid to rent the electric scooter on the sidewalk).