Baller-in-Chief

(From the Washington Post Online)

The President-Elect and His New Home Town Get to Know Each Other

The story about the Hoopster-in-Chief ricocheted around the Marie Reed Recreation Center in Adams Morgan, the idea of it so seemingly fantastic that it had become legend by the next day.

Barack Obama? Here? On our court?

Yes, he was. When the rec center was closed last Sunday, as the story went, the custodian had let the next leader of the free world into the neighborhood’s basketball Taj Mahal, with its holes in the tiled ceiling, green rubber floor, pale cinder block walls and grimy wooden backboards.

Dominic Jones, 15, plays basketball at the Marie Reed at the Marie Reed rec center in Adams Morgan, where President-elect Barack Obama shot hoops with friends recently. (By Dominic Bracco II For The Washington Post)

Almost a week later, workers are still talking about Obama’s visit to Ben’s Chili Bowl. He has said he hopes to connect federal and local Washington. (By Linda Davidson — The Washington Post)

Obama and his pals played ball for 45 minutes or so, and no one from the neighborhood had a clue. Three days later, they were still basking in the president-elect’s jet stream, talking about the prospect of shaking his hand and taking him to the hoop.

“It would be the icing on the cake,” said Tre Dre, 37, shooting a few the other night. “I wish I could’ve been up here to see him. Oh, man.”

As the nation’s capital for a mere two centuries, Washington is accustomed to serving as a picture-perfect backdrop for new presidents, who invariably offer up a hearty wave before pretty much vanishing for the next four years behind the gated fortress known as the White House.

Obama might follow the same model, but the president-elect has said he hopes to connect federal and local Washington, worlds that largely exist separately, by visiting public schools and dining out with his wife, Michelle. Over the past two weeks, he has demonstrated an eagerness to get around town, visiting the Lincoln Memorial, wolfing down a half-smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl and beating a path to George Will’s house in Chevy Chase for dinner.

From the young and earnest to their seen-it-all elders, the response among many Washingtonians has been a spasm of unabashed giddiness. “It certainly has been a pep pill,” said Pat Baptiste, a Chevy Chase activist, who watched from her window as Obama arrived at Will’s house. “We have changed from jaded to excited in Washington, of all places.”

Obama’s allure is driven in part by being a new face in a city that has lived with a Clinton or a Bush as its No. 1 resident for 21 years. Yet the excitement is also fueled by the historic nature of Obama’s rise. He is the first black president in a town that became known as “Chocolate City” because of its sizable black population.

At Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street, the historical heart of black Washington, the staff replayed Obama’s visit a full five days after he walked in and asked, “What’s a chili half-smoke?”

Bernice Abner, an otherwise mild-mannered denizen of Silver Spring, realized that she was sitting in Obama’s seat, now marked by a presidential-like decal, and began hollering. “Oh I’m proud,” she gushed. “This is my seat!”

Behind the counter, Jermaine Jefferson recalled Obama’s lines as if they were the stuff of Shakespeare: “Then he came back to the counter, and said: ‘Hey man! I ordered the food, where’s my food?’ “

Jefferson, a Chili Bowl employee for 12 years, said he took extra care to cook Obama’s half-smoke, slathering on the mustard, onions and cheese just so.

After Obama handed over a $20 bill and told him to keep the change, Jefferson said he took the bill home and tucked it in his Bible, on the page of his mother’s favorite verse, John 3:16. “It’s presidential money,” he said. “I’m going to frame it, but right now God is watching over it.”

Back in the day, presidents were known to flutter about town. On hot summer weekends, Abraham Lincoln retreated to the Old Soldiers’ Home in Petworth. Teddy Roosevelt took his horse for a gallop through Rock Creek Park. Harry S. Truman played poker with his pals at the Shoreham Hotel in Woodley Park.

The security-heavy trappings of the modern presidency have made such mobility a logistical nightmare. But President Richard M. Nixon, after he took office in 1969, inspected the singed remnants along Seventh Street after the riots from the year before. Two decades later, President-elect Bill Clinton shouted “Yo, my man” as he greeted a passerby during a Georgia Avenue stroll. Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush traveled to the Will abode for a soiree and a meal.

“The difference between the word ‘President’ and ‘Resident’ is only one letter,” Reagan once said, trumpeting his affinity for his new home town.

As a senator, Obama was not bashful about voicing his dislike of official Washington, a city he derided as overly consumed with itself. “There’s a sort of fishbowl, kind of ingrown quality to Washington,” Obama said in 2005, “and I think everybody’s very status conscious about, you know, who’s a senator and who’s in power and who’s not.”

He rarely toured the city, except to dine with colleagues and advisers. On Fridays, he made a beeline to catch a flight home to his wife and daughters in Chicago. “Barack felt he needed to spend as much time with his kids as possible, which ultimately meant he needed to get out of D.C. as fast as he could,” said Dan Shomon, a former aide.

But now Obama’s family has joined him, so there’s no need to flee. Michelle Obama’s forays into the city in recent days have included a screening of “Bedtime Stories” with her girls at Gallery Place. The president-elect popped into a party at Bobby Van’s restaurant, as well as The Washington Post’s newsroom, where hard-bitten journalists fumbled for their cellphone cameras and reached for his hand.

In all his jaunts, Obama’s security entourage is formidable, a cone of silence sometimes enveloping his movements even after he was gone. At the Marie Reed rec center, Eric Bethel said he learned of Obama’s visit from the building’s custodian, Larry Coles.

“I walked in on Monday, and Coles said, ‘Guess who was here last night?’ ” Bethel recalled. “I couldn’t believe it.” Another custodian, Victor Burton, said Coles was “bragging about” letting Obama in.

But when asked by a reporter, Coles hit the mute button and referred the questions to a Marie Reed official, who deferred to Dena Iverson, schools chancellor Michelle Rhee’s spokeswoman, who did not respond. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) referred questions to his spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, who offered not a peep.

Obama’s visit Thursday night to Equinox, a chichi downtown restaurant, was not nearly so stealth-like. Then again, it’s difficult to conceal an entourage that included his wife, mother-in-law, Secret Service agents, sport-utility vehicles and an ambulance. As the president-elect walked in, patrons and the restaurant’s workers applauded.

Mohammed Maniruzzman, a food server, shook Obama’s hand and vowed never to wash it. In the moment, his sentiment seemed to make perfect sense.