The Washington Post ran an article today about people's grievances with the National Mall. People complain that there aren't enough toilets. People complain that there isn't enough food. People complain that it's not being taken care of.
People are whiny bitches.
The Mall is a fucking park. It's a long green (brown) space, that, in my opinion, is best used for public exhibitions and to see the fireworks on the 4th. There's never been any "beauty" per se to the insular components of the Mall running between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument. (It's pretty by the Tidal Basin and by the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, because it's more "Parkey" and less "Boulevardy" there). It's a scraggly piece of earth, with gravel parkways and bums, and the Smithsonian Metro Stop 2/3rds of the way down to the Monument, which, for the last five years, has been attractively ringed by Jersey Walls and orange ski mesh.
That's not to say that the mall isn't impressive and standing in the middle of it, looking up to the Capitol, Down to the Monument, and left and right to the Smithsonian Castle and the Air and Space Museum, and the Hirschorn, and the Museum of American History, and the Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Castle, and the Exhibition Hall... it's impressive, to be sure. And the longer I live away from home, the more I grow to appreciate what a beautiful city D.C. is...
I'm sorry if some fatass from Idaho needs to take a dump and eat fried chicken simultaneously in order to take in the Cherry Blossoms, but that's not the way it works.
D.C. is a functioning city whose primary objective is first to govern the country, and its tourist business is only an ancillary string that runs off its primary concern.
If the Tourists want all the food they can eat that's not sold by Hotdog and Pretzel vendors, they can go to some "Tourist" vacation destination -- like the Bahamas. Furthermore, they should quit grumbling about the lack of public toilets (try going into a FREE MUSEUM, where they can pee and they might LEARN something and be exposed to art that doesn't consist of F.B.I. embroidered on a black baseball hat...) and the lack of culinary options on the six hundred acres that runs through the center. If they veer three blocks in either direction, (although they should probably go West as opposed to East...) they can generate all the doody they feel like, while cramming Capital Grille down their corn-fed throats. Dropping a Wendy's at the foot of the Washington Monument isn't a viable option.
And lastly, yeah, the Mall is scrubby. Most grassy areas that take that much traffic are. But the Mall is the sum of its parts -- got rats and pigeons? Yeah. But it's in the middle of a city. Bums? You betcha. They like to sleep on the steam grates in the winter. Keeps 'em warm. Scrubby grass? Yeah, but it's grass nonetheless, and if your lawn took the beating that the Mall does every day, your lawn would look tired too.
So how about this - Tourists - make a pee before you leave the hotel, bring a backpack with some juice boxes and crackers, and if you're really THAT hungry while you're taking in the Lincoln Memorial, walk the half mile it'll take you to get to Old Ebbitt's Grill. Okay?
