I Was a Washington Post Reporter. And a Crack Addict.

Politico ^ | Monday, June 30, 2014 | Ruben Castenada

[kristinn]

As was the case every Halloween, on October 31, 1989, a couple of Washington Post reporters were sent to cover the festivities in Georgetown, where thousands of mostly white and affluent revelers partied through the night. I was dispatched to the other side of town—Potomac Gardens, a rundown public housing project a mile east of the Capitol, where Mayor Marion Barry was scheduled to make nice with the residents. My job was to take notes and contribute a few paragraphs to an innocuous story about how Washingtonians celebrated the holiday.

I had already been to Potomac Gardens a handful of times to cover shootings during my first month at the Post, where I was on the night crime beat. The complex was a collection of boxy concrete buildings between three and six stories high, surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence that reminded me of a penitentiary. At one crime scene near the project, I had overheard a street cop joke that the fence was there not to protect the residents but to keep the rest of the city safe from Gardens inhabitants. A violent drug crew operated in and near the housing complex. At night, it was a forbidding, dangerous place.

arrived early and staked out a spot at the edge of a concrete courtyard inside the complex. A few minutes later, a black Lincoln pulled up. A security man in a dark suit hopped out of the shotgun seat and opened the rear passenger door for the mayor. Barry stepped out and smoothed the lapels of his charcoal-gray suit coat.

Some people in the courtyard saw him and cried, “Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor!” and “We love you, Marion!” Barry smiled. He waved. He sauntered toward the courtyard.

[afraidfortherepublic]

We always suspected this. And now Obama “jokes” that the WH chef puts crack in the pies. Probably true. :(