Every day on my way to work I pass a red brick building. It's been empty, which sort of seemed odd for such a prime location. But I'd noticed other empty buildings around the neighborhood so I didn't think much about it.
On Wednesday morning, though, I noticed a camera crew setting up in front of it, with their microwave truck in the street. More interestingly, there was a FOX News truck around the corner. But other than that everything looked just as it had every day for the past month and a half.
While at work, my friend IM'd me that Tears for Fears, his favorite band (he nicely ranks Huey Lewis and the News as number 2), would be having a free lunchtime show at a nearby club. Apparently Tears for Fears had broken up for a while, but they now have reformed and have an album coming out in September, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. Since my friend has let me share HLN concerts with him, I decided to come along to check out his favorites.
It was a good show. They played a lot of the new songs, and closed with some of their famous hits from the 1980s like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."
For me it was interesting being at a concert where OTHER people were the big fans. At HLN shows I'm always the one who knows all the words, all the history, who all the people are. I'm so involved with it that I have no idea what it's like to be at a HLN show for someone new to them. So it was a nice change to be at this Tears for Fears concert where all the other people were the hardcore fans and I got to experience them for the first time.
And there I was, right in the front row at a show by people who've filled stadiums. All one day at lunchtime in DC.
On the way back to work I walked past the red brick buiding, which now had crowds of people in front of it (and several more microwave trucks) and by now it was clear what was going on. It was the Iraqi Embassy that had now been reopened. The flag had gone up just minutes before.
It was a moment of historical significance at an otherwise nondescript building in a nondescript neighborhood. A couple of city busses passed by, dropping off their commuters while hemming in the diplomats' vehicles on the narrow city block. The ordinary juxtaposed with the extraordinary.
All in all, just a typical day in DC.