Rundown of Monday night

The chronicle of Heater, Justin, Victor and I on Inauguration Eve:

-- Ate at an Ethipiopian restaurant near U St. (Thanks for the recommendation, Harry) at 9 p.m. The restaurant was so packed, our four-top barely fit into a corner near the bar. We left two hours later.

-- On U St., we listened to two rappers hold a makeshift concert in the street outside a stand selling all sorts of Obama paraphenalia, T-shirts, flashing buttons of the first family, you name it

              

-- Got on the Subway at U-Street/African-American Civil War Memorial and took it to Archives/Navy Memorial

-- I, along with a crowd of others preparing for tomorrow, bought handwarmer packs from a guy in the Metro station for $2. He said he had sold 500 packs that day alone.

                                    

-- We stopped outside the Newseum to pay homage to the day's newspaper front pages from each of the 50 states displayed outside. The Huffington Post party was hopping inside, and we watched will.i.am sing through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Apparently, Arianna Huffington, Tom Hanks and our former colleague Marin were inside at the black tie affair.

-- Walked to the Capitol and spoke to the men setting up the barricades for the parade tomorrow. All streets around the mall were closed, and they had taken down many of the stop lights and loaded them for temporary storage onto trucks. For miles, the streets were lined with crowd barriers. 

-- Met a few people staking out their spots for tomorrow: two groups of girls, a 16-year-old and her mother from Chicago and three college students from Virginia, shared Pringles and a blanket. They had been there since 7 p.m. and were hoping their zealous camp-out in the cold would win them a right to sit in the ticketed area. They said they weren't that cold, and that they were having fun making friends. I wonder if they'll be saying the same thing after waiting around for another 8 hours.

-- Talked to the men setting up barricades at the blue gate entrance area (where my ticket will grant me access for tomorrow). They said they weren't cold either, but they were worried about having everything set up by 5 a.m.

-- Grabbed a cab on Independence Avenue to go home. Traffic heading east was at a stand still (it was about 12:30 and the parties/balls were letting out), and a cabbie picked us up going the opposite direction. He took us to the Smithsonian Metro stopped near the Washington Monument, threw his hands up in disgust and advised us to get out and take the subway. The roads throughout the Mall were all closed, and it could have taken us hours to get back into NorthWest D.C.

                                                                    

-- Road the Metro, which was packed with young bums like us as well as middle agers in tuxedos and ball gowns, to Dupont Circle. Along the way we met three gentlemen from Atlanta who had attended the Georgia Ball. One, who had a brother from Pittsburgh, said he wouldn't even attempt to come into D.C. tomorrow, he'd rather watch it on TV. Another, a former TV news anchor at Fox 5, seemed happy to speak to a student journalists and took our picture a few times.

-- Grabbed a cab and made it back to Glover Park. We've readied our clothes (in layers, of course, like multiple pairs of socks and gloves) and will be up again in two hours to trek to the Capitol.

-Katelyn Polantz

Photos by Michael Heater