Architectural critics are all pretty much in agreement that the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue is an eyesore of the highest magnitude. At least prior to September 11, 2001, they allowed the public entry to the building for a tour of museum exhibits on FBI history, and a purportedly interesting peek at their firing range in action, and there was even talk of retrofitting the fortress-like structure with a more pleasing facade and maybe even retail spaces to enliven the ground floor. Since 9/11, the FBI has clamped down on security, and it's having a major negative impact on the surrounding area.

First of all, they ended the public tours, and put up a sign with a date for resumption of the tours that keeps changing. They added additional ugly concrete planters to the perimeter, a dozen or so cameras, scuppered any plans to modify the building to fit into the surrounding area better, and now, they've put up huge lengths of yellow police tape blocking off half the sidewalk along the entire length of the main facade. I first noticed the tape about a month ago, and at first assumed it was to keep people away for window-washing or roof work. Eventually, I realized it was just to keep the public away from the building, and to unilaterally appropriate public sidewalk space. Not only is this latest security "precaution" an affront to the overall beauty of Pennsylvania Avenue, America's Main Street, but it's a visible sign of U.S. paranoia and fear to all the foreign tourists and diplomats within sight. It's bad enough that there are still jersey barriers all over the monumental core of Washington, now they're going to start with the yellow police tape.

When one bureaucrat sees that another bureaucrat's building is supposedly important enough to be ringed by intrusive security measures, s/he thinks "Well, if the DOT is so important, then my agency is getting those barriers, too" in kind of a security arms race. Never mind that there hasn't been an attack on Washington, D.C., and the Pentagon, that was attacked, is technically in Virginia! Jersey barriers and planters are of dubious effectiveness anyway.

My proposals for the FBI site: (1) if you do your jobs well enough, and stop the terrorist plots in the first place, then you have nothing to worry about and can make your headquarters a more attractive and inviting part of the city OR (2) if you feel it's so unsafe that you need to surround your building with police tape, concrete planters, a dozen cameras and two guard booths, then why not move the FBI to a more inherently secure location? How about sharing the secluded Virginia campus of the CIA with that agency? This would also hopefully lead to more cooperation between the two institutions tasked with protecting us from foreign and domestic threats. Then, the federal government could sell the prominent FBI HQ site to a private developer, who can put up condos, retail, restaurants and other uses much better suited to a living, vibrant downtown. Before the FBI built the current building in the 1970s, they condemned and destroyed something like 100 small businesses and obliterated an entire block of D Street (according to Capital Losses). It's time that this mistake was corrected. Fortified FBI bunker - goodbye. People, food, homes, shops - hello!

I've been saying this all along; the risk inherent in our car-based society greatly exceeds the danger from terrorism. This article highlights a recent study indicating that in developed countries like the United States, the risk of being killed in a car accident is 390 times greater than being killed in an act of terrorism. The study covers the years 2000 and 2001, so this includes the thousands killed on September 11th 2001, so excluding that event, the ratio is even higher, maybe 1000 or more to 1? All of the expanded airport security, jersey barriers junking up our monuments, road closures, no-fly zones, the entire Dept. of Homeland Security, etc are a complete waste of time and money. The billions spent on preventing non-existent attacks would be better allocated to designing and building more pedestrian-friendly communities, more/better mass transit, and safer roads and cars. On our way back from Long Island, J and I noticed that huge numbers of streetlamps along I-95 were out, in every state we passed through. Somewhere in Montana there's a deserted highway with brilliant illumination, thanks to misallocated homeland security funds. Aargh!

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The other night, I was pleasantly surprised by a phone call from an old friend and coworker C I last saw 15 years ago in NY. We worked together in the windowless, dusty file room of a small law office, and had a great time together considering the circumstances. She was a hip, urban, African-American woman while I was a geeky white boy from Long Island. On the phone, she reminded me of the little black market scheme I ran in the office back then. I bought large quantities of bulk candy at a dollar store, and sold the individual bars out of my desk drawer at work, turning a small profit with little effort. There weren't any stores nearby that sold candy, so I had a lot of customers. C had a great sense of humor and we cracked each other up all day with obscene stories, hypothetical situations, scatological humor, and so on. Yes, I know, I haven't really moved on much...

After I moved to DC, she got married and moved to Arizona, and in those pre-email days, we didn't keep in touch. She recently moved to the Washington area, I think Charles County, so we're planning to meet sometime and get caught up. Should be fun!

Apologies, I'm a day late in acknowledging the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I thought I'd post here what I remembered about that day, before the details become fuzzy. I took some notes at the time, so here goes.

Several months before 9/11, I was in NYC visiting my brother, who lives in Manhattan. We decided to do something touristy, went down to the World Trade Center, and took the express elevator up to the observation deck. It was a beautiful day, similar to that on Sept. 11, so they opened up the outdoor observation deck on the top of the south tower. I remember walking up from the interior space in a dark, narrow stairwell to the actual roof deck (more of a catwalk, actually). We had been there as kids, but as adults it was still pretty awe-inspiring. I remember looking over at the north tower and taking in the details of the roof structure: the giant TV/radio mast, other spiky antennae, window-washing apparatus, guy wires, etc. Of course, at the time we cast a critical eye, as architecture buffs, on the poor layout of the site, the vast concrete plaza, the ugly low buildings at the periphery (WTC 3-6), and the lack of pedestrian-level retail. But, we dug the twin towers themselves as they were honking big wonders of engineering. Little did we know it would all be gone in a few months. I hope the memorial and Freedom Tower do the site justice.

On Sept. 11, 2001, I went to work downtown as usual. At the office, I began working, but then heard someone saying something about a plane crash in NYC. We gathered around one of the TVs mounted in our library and I couldn't believe my eyes. When we realized planes had crashed into the WTC, I immediately thought back to the incident during World War II when a fully laden B-25 bomber crashed into the upper stories of the Empire State Building in the fog.
http://www.esbnyc.com/tourism/tourism_facts_esbnews_mar1996.cfm?CFID=13103463&CFTOKEN=53461013
Based on that incident, I figured the buildings would stand, but didn't remember how different & less vulnerable the steel framework was for the ESB. When the south tower collapsed, I remember thinking (1) where the fuck is my brother, (2) this means war, probably w/Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan and (3) the north tower is also doomed, and all the poor people inside.

We started hearing rumors of attacks on Washington, too. A bomb supposedly went off on that Mall, there was a car bomb in front of the State Department, the Old Executive Office Building was on fire... so a coworker and I decided to (foolishly?) go up to the roof terrace and see what was going on using the "Mark 1 eyeball" and report back to the others. We could see the huge plume of smoke from the Pentagon, and from that perspective we could tell that people were mistaking the smoke as coming from the Mall. Also, we could clearly see that the OEOB was fine, and no smoke coming from Foggy Bottom either. Then, word started going around that a 4th hijacked plane was heading for DC, so our firm and others downtown began to evacuate. Unfortunately, it was also rumored that the Metrorail system was either closed, or under some kind of attack, and none of us wanted to, uhm, take our last breaths in a dark tunnel underground, so we set off on foot.

I walked over to my then-girlfriend J's office which was over by the White House, and we walked all the way up Connecticut Avenue to my apartment in Woodley Park, which took an hour. It was surreal, watching the soldiers and Humvees deploy, not knowing if there were other planes headed to DC. I remember thinking, "oh, great, a plane will be headed to the WH, they'll shoot it down, and it'll wipe out an entire residential neighborhood." When we got home, I alternated between trying to call family members in NY, friends in DC, watching CNN, and running up to the roof deck and trying to see what was going on.

Once I heard my brother and his friends were OK, and J. was on a bus to her place in Silver Spring, I was tired of watching CNN, so I got on my bike and headed back downtown. The deserted streets were eerily quiet, and with no vehicular and very little pedestrian traffic, it didn't take very long to get down to the river's edge. I didn't want to get in anyone's way, so stayed on the DC side of the Potomac, and made for East Potomac Park, directly opposite the Pentagon. I remember seeing one of Humvees w/roof-mounted 20mm cannon over there, but they let me ride on by. The Pentagon was still burning, or smoldering, and the smoke was drifting right over me. I could smell the distinct jet fuel/melting plastic odor. I could also see the runways at National Airport, crowded with the hastily-landed commercial jets of several airlines, all lined up. Later, I rode home, still kindof in shock and disbelief, and spent the rest of the day watching the news and trying to get a grip on the dimensions of the unfolding tragedy.