When people quip that public libraries and fire departments would never be able to exist today if they had to be created from scratch, this is exhibit A for why:

Watched two groups of people literally carry their friend/family member in a wheelchair up and down the stairs at the Lincoln Memorial tonight. In case you were curious about the state of DC tourism in the year of America's 250th.

For this year's Kite Fest they closed 15th and 17th. No soundtrack of honking. No violent road rage. Just thousands of people enjoying a nice day. We can, in fact, have nice things.

Amazon has had a massive counterfeit products problem for years. Wirecutter makes $$$ from Amazon affiliate sales. So good that they're calling this out but man what a huge conflict of interest.

I booked a flight for June a few weeks ago and never deleted the Google Flight alerts and can confirm airfares are currently going haywire. Perfect timing for spring / summer tourism season.

"No human who has been alive during cherry blossom season ever thinks, ‘What we need is more room for cars to get around.’ It is cyclists and pedestrians that take over, and this is going to make the chaos infinitely worse." —Elizabeth Kiker, executive director of @waba.org

It’s a nice spring day, but hardly peak cherry blossom crowds down by the National Mall and Tidal Basin. But the 15th Street protected lane that the Trump administration will start tearing out next week was still busy with people on bikes and scooters; locals and tourists alike.

We already know exactly what happens when you do nothing to discourage people from driving to the cherry blossoms. It happened in 2023. I'm sure the drivers had a fun time. washingtonian.com/2023/03/27/p...

NPS still has this inaccurate news release about the WWII Memorial up. It hasn't been updated since Jan 8, 2026. Release says the Memorial is closed. It's not. There is no construction equipment on site. No work is happening. www.nps.gov/nama/learn/n...

I am curious how many locals have been to the National Mall lately because it is a mess of poorly timed construction and looks terrible. To the point I now have to pre-apologize to everyone coming on my tours.

Sure the bitcoin bar and polymarket bar are silly concepts, but don't forget that a defunct crypto that collapsed in 2022 somehow still maintains naming rights at Nats Park. www.mlb.com/nationals/ti...

A new bar is opening with basically zero notice, nobody has noticed construction of a new bar anywhere in the city, and nobody can find any applications filed with ABRA. Oh yeah, seems legit.

My lukewarm take on the WBC is that the game of baseball is fun! And also that MLB generally has the least likable players of any major league.

Big day for people using gambling sites as sources of data to tell how a race is going

20ish years ago my roommates would put on Jim Cramer's goofy new Mad Money show in the afternoon and he would end each episode saying the USA is "of, by, and for the corporation." It's probably more true today than it was back then. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/o...

Reducing car dependency is an anti-poverty initiative and the republicans (and occasional democrats) who insist we can’t afford investments in transit don’t realize how much it hurts to run Americans into the ground with car payments, gas, insurance, maintenance. America’s biggest ponzi scheme imo

It's the summer of 2028. What's the plan to lure artists back to the Kennedy Center? There is none? OK then 🤷

But, even though I think having to own, operate, insure, and maintain a very expensive machine just to participate in society is dumb, you can also make very dumb decisions within that framework. Like insisting on a *new* car right when you get out of college rather than a decent used one. (7/10)

Event ticketing is a solved problem. Almost every other developed country has figured this out. The one critical thing you need is a government that's not completely captured by corporations to do actual regulation.

My tour guide opinion here is that they waited too long and now the monuments are going to look terrible for peak spring break (WWII covered in yellow police tape, for example). Also - tourists are still big mad about losing Circulator and $120M could have funded it for half a decade.

There is an extremely high probability this turns out just like the birthday parade last June: 1. Huge costs 2. Low crowds 3. Crowding out general tourism

Wait, so Capitol Riverfront BID rebranded to Navy Yard BID? Did they finally resolve their beef with the SW BID over disputed territory at Buzzard Point?

We're also coming up on the 6 year anniversary of the date when a barrel of oil cost negative dollars. That was fun.

As an elder millennial I remember the rush to hybrids and fuel efficient vehicles around 2008 when a similar spike happened. Now American car companies don't even make sedans anymore. Just gas guzzler trucks and SUVs.

Looking forward to the take havers finally coming to realize the destruction of the federal workforce a year ago just created a ton of unemployment and flooded the limited job market with highly educated and trained candidates.

Ah, yes, the invaluable wisdom of the markets.

Years into this and the general failure of economic reporting to differentiate in layman terms the difference between inflation, deflation, and price levels is driving me up a wall.

360k more people unemployed.

If corporate income tax collection had kept up with 1960s levels, companies would be paying $620 billion more a year in taxes. In my latest, I ask: what did we get in return? Not wages, not benefits, but record profits and a growing public disgust with companies. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

I continue to scream into the void that inbound international tourism contributes to the ~trade surplus~. A thing people told me is extremely important to the health of the nation.

I continue to scream into the void that inbound international tourism contributes to the trade surplus - a thing we allegedly are supposed to care a lot about. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/t...

There's a video that got fed to me on YouTube about why Minnesota now produces more NHL players than Michigan and the conclusion is more or less the same.

My all-time favorite Smithsonian exhibit was about the rise of smoking and how doctors, dentists and nurses used to get paid to recommend certain cigarette brands. Absurd in hindsight. Totally normal in the moment. There will be the same exhibit at some point about gambling/prediction companies.

American car makers straight up stopped making sedans, claimed Americans only want SUVs and trucks, and now it's a mystery why no one can afford a vehicle. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Coming out of Covid the US had less severe inflation than the rest of the world. Guess who got blamed anyway? Now the stock market is up but lagging behind the rest of the world. Guess who gets credit anyway?

LOL it would be WILD if Bondi called the top. 🤡 @barrons.com www.barrons.com/articles/dow...

I continue to scream into the void that inbound international tourism is a trade surplus - a thing I've heard is very important and we should care very much about. www.ft.com/content/8f6d...

Cannot emphasize that there is zero long-term plan here. You could put up the swankiest physical building in the world but if the same people are running the place none of the artists you lost are coming back. www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/0...

The hypocrisy argument doesn't work. These guys have stated implicitly and explicitly for years that they want to make Washington DC a worse city. Over the past year they have taken every opportunity to do so.

The irony here is troops remain in DC and my guess is will be a major part of the 4th of July, because he thinks it looks tough a macho, when in reality just draws attention to exactly what the Declaration of Independence is all about. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

When I cancelled this week they didn't even give me a text box to tell them why. Whatever "data" they have is not a qualitative understanding of their readers.

When you cancel your Washington Post subscription there is no ability to type anything along with "Other" for reason for cancelling. There is zero reason to believe B*zos or anyone else over there cares about the needs of their subscribers or readers.

Guys like Bezos think that because they made a lot of money doing one specific thing, that makes them brilliant at everything. And then when it turns out they don't know the first thing about, say, newspaper publishing, they get bored and task an underling with stripping the place for parts.

The greatest con of the modern era is that a bunch of super rich men who got ridiculously lucky once and then convinced people that they are "good at business" despite a mountain of evidence showing otherwise.

One year ago I was planning on getting tickets to see Hamilton for the 250th. Now the whole place is shuttering. One year.

Beyond the obvious rage inducing reaction to this, did a whole lot of people just learn they are losing their jobs? Yet another mass layoff event in DC? Ugh.

We had to eliminate the Circulator bus because it cost $30M per year and we can't afford nice things.

And like clockwork the S&P500 just hit another all-time high at the exact same time.

This video is long but completely on-point. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LilN...

Every day there are a dozen new flashing red sirens about the state of the economy but the stock market refuses to do anything other than hit record highs (with a one percent dip here and there). Feels like I am taking crazy pills.