Election Night at RFD and Five Guys, Washington, D.C.

Ian, being the political scholar that he is, and what with his recent affiliation with Obama-supporting politicians on the Hill, seems much more highly invested in the Democratic primaries and elections than am I. He's also from Pennsylvania. Last night I'd just gotten in, but he dragged me out to dine and watch the Pennsylvania returns. It seemed all anticlimactic to me, since we know Obama has always trailed Clinton there, and the most recent polls gave her a five to ten point lead. But, I acquiesced to joining him, only to find him in a frenzy to locate a bar or a restaurant where CNN was showing.

Now, finding CNN turned out to be an unusually difficult task. You see, we agreed to meet in Chinatown. And Chinatown happens to be next to the Verizon Center. And the Verizon Center happens to be where the Washington Capitals do professional hockey games. And the Washington Capitals happened to have been in the last match of a series to determine some really, really important hockey title last night. And every single bar and every single restaurant in the Chinatown area had their televisions tuned to the hockey performance as packed bars and dining rooms watched and cheered.

But as we circumnavigated the area, we happened to look in a window, and, lo and behold! we espied CNN on a television. We had to walk all the way around the block to get into the establishment, but Ian was determined, and so off we went to a place called Regional Food and Drink. It turned out to be a private watch party in a small back room far away from the rabid hockey crowd in the main restaurant.

Yes, indeed, it was a private watch party for a group called "Art for Obama." We paid our $5 cover charge to get into the party (fortunately the door guy spelled my name wrong on the sign-in sheet), and found a rather small and sedate group of people looking at the work of four or five local artists and sitting around eating cheap cheese cubes, broccoli florets, and slices of a still-frozen strawberry cream cake. My martini was rather unceremoniously served to me in a plastic beer cup—whatever happened to Democrats standing around sipping white wine and martinis in proper stemware as they nibble on baked brie en croute? Soon, they had an auction for three donated art works, but I think only three or four people were even bidding, and the highest sale price was only $35 (the minimum for that painting).

After the auction, though, they didn't turn the volume back up on the televisions for quite some time until several people complained to the bartender. Meanwhile, CNN promptly projected the race for Clinton, and Ian the Political Scientist was distressed that he couldn't hear their alleged rationale for their early projection. Then, about nine o'clock, they started wrapping up their watch party! Ian had been looking at the menu, thinking to order dinner, but he didn't want to stay after that.

Then we ended up walking all over Chinatown once again, braving the swarms of ticketless hockey fans out and around the Verizon Center, looking for a dining establishment that struck Ian's fancy and was consistent with his gustatorial eccentricities. Finally, just before the end of the hockey performance and the release of hundreds of hungry and disappointed hockey supporters, we landed at a Five Guys, getting our food and sitting down just seconds before the restaurant was swamped.

And thus was my evening. What did you do last night?