Atlantica - 01.09.2007, Blaðsíða 35

find Japanese, Salvadorian, Chinese, West African,
Peruvian, Ethiopian and Spanish restaurants, an
Irish pub, a hookah bar, a Ghanaian bazaar and a
Hispanic botánica for all your voodoo needs.
Just outside our window a line of suits has
formed at a blues bar under the neon sign, “Sorry
We’re Open”. Madam’s Organ in Adams Morgan
has become a sultry staple of the nightlife in the
area, drawing the likes of Tony Blair, the Bush
girls and, tonight, an odd mix of embassy staff-
ers and rockers. The mystery is solved when I
learn who’s headlining: Hungarian Ambassador
András Simonyi and his band, the Coalition of
the Willing. Simonyi, having grown up behind the
iron curtain listening to Radio Free Europe, has a
soft spot for rock and is wont to wail on his elec-
tric guitar for anyone who will listen: Democrat,
Republican or Stalinist.
While Adams Morgan offers up a walk on the
prettier side of ethnic diversity, there is still a
swarm of trouble rumbling in nearby Columbia
Heights and Mt. Pleasant. Gangs, drugs, rampant
crime and gun control are just the icing on this
tumultuous cake, and no public figure seems
prepared to take a bite. But some brave souls have
taken up the hoi polloi’s cause and are striving to
save DC’s soul. Samantha Spinney believes there
is good in the people of the city and is willing to
stake her career on it as a public school teacher
in the sorely neglected, overburdened DC school
system.
Some of Spinney’s kids call her a racist when
she suggests they play hangman to practice spell-
ing. But one boy, who is especially misbehaved,
speaks out against them, “Nah. She ain’t no racist.
Miss Spinney, you looks like a fighter.” Samantha
Spinney is in her corner, waiting for the bell.
Waking up early before the tourists strike, I reach
the National Mall before the morning haze has
burned off. The only denizens at this hour are the
monarch butterflies and joggers. And like a scene
from a Mel Gibson movie, a swiftly moving pack
of marines from the barracks at 8th and I Street
suddenly burst out of the haze, stampede past me,
and are gone before I even have time to salute. As
the sun rises I reconnoiter the lawn, zigzagging
from one Smithsonian to the next before opening
hours to plan my attack later in the day.
By the time I’ve made it to the Potomac’s edge
my clothes cling to me and I’ve finished two
bottles of water. For a moment of shade I find
my favorite monument, the Jefferson Memorial,
tucked away on the far side of the Tidal Basin
almost under the Rochambeau Memorial Bridge.
There is something pleasant and balanced about
a t l a n t i c a 33
washington, dc a