Yes We Have No Bananas, Part Deux

I’m just back from Washington, D.C., the town I grew up in, and near. It’s my hometown essentially. I was disappointed. Washington used to be a good place to live. Now I’m not so sure. It certainly is an expensive place to live.

I liked the new (to me) subway system. It was clean and efficient. It was also extremely low on security. There’s a problem waiting to happen.

In one of my excursions on foot I passed a quaint little Irish pub. The draught beers included some that I had not only never tasted, but never even heard of. I stopped in and was ready to order one of the beers when the barkeep told me that there was a problem with the “cooling chest” and that none of the beers on tap was actually available at the moment. I told her I’d be back.

I returned to the hotel. The hotel is now called the Marriott Wardman, although it’s been many other things since it was built in the late 1920s. It was once home to Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Barry Goldwater, and lies a little north of Dupont Circle. It boasts its own pub, Harry’s Pub. I walked into the pub and ordered a Guinness. The barkeep told me that all the taps were being cleaned, no draught beers were currently available, and if I wanted a Guinness, it’d have to be out of a bottle. “OK, so give me a bottle of Guinness” I said. “We don’t have any” he replied.