WASHINGTON, D.C. It’s a hot, Indian summer Friday afternoon in this city where government is the leading industry. Rush hour for federal employees begins at 3 p.m., and the few white-collar workers in the private sector who didn’t take the day off are heading for the exits as well.
K Street office building: Bo-ring.
By five o’clock the streets are nearly empty, and a nocturnal demimonde begins to replace the hordes of bureaucrats and lawyers who people the streets of “The District” during the day; “wonkstas”, unpaid or poorly-compensated interns from think tanks and public policy groups. Carrying cans of Red Bull, the young men and women who copy and collate documents during work hours begin to mix hip-hop beats with the grim, grey statistics that are their stock-in-trade.
“Ladies, if you’re not wearing a pantsuit, please cross your legs.”
“It’s like a jungle sometimes,” says Todd Blinderman, who makes photocopies and fetches Starbucks espresso drinks for his “policy wonk” superiors at EarthWatch. “If a guy cuts in line in front of me at Kinko’s, I check to make sure he isn’t from The Heritage Foundation,” a conservative think tank, “before I call him on it.”
“I’ve got a staple remover–and I’m not afraid to use it!”
Life comes cheap in the velo-binding and copy shops that line these mean streets, a fact that gives added urgency to the music that the young men and women listen to and in some cases create themselves. “There’s a distinct school of D.C. rap that has come to be known as ‘K Street Style’,” after the high-rent boulevard where the wages for back-office workers are highest, according to James “J-Money” Phillips, a columnist for The Source. “Instead of cognac, bitches and ‘hos, you’ll hear boasts of how some playah copped a 23-ounce can of Arizona Diet Green Tea with Ginseng for only 99 cents, stuff like that.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”
The long, hot summer just passed has seen a sharp upsurge in violence among young staffers, however, as this year’s presidential campaign has brought policy differences to the surface, where in off-years they lay buried. “The Obama people stuffed throw pillows in their droopy-drawer pants to make fun of Hillary Clinton’s physique,” before she conceded the Democratic nomination, says D.C. Gang Squad officer Lowell Folsom. “Once Obama won, his followers took eyebrow pencil to their cheeks to mock McCain’s facial mole.”
Prius: Silent but deadly.
The silent but deadly Toyota Prius is the vehicle of choice among liberal policy workers, and conservative think-tankers say their enemies’ favorite “ride” should be outlawed. “Those things will roll up behind you and you’ll never even hear them,” says Paul St. George, who campaigned for Ron Paul. “Then the liberal weenies honk the horn and some god-awful Eagles’ song comes out. It can scare the bejesus out of you.”
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty: “Six copies, collated, spiral binding–now!”
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, under fire for neglecting the problem until it got out of hand, says he will use every tool at his disposal to curb the growing threat posed by wonkstas. “I’m going to walk K Street myself to keep the peace if I have to,” he says, tugging at his trademark bow tie. “Nothing is going to change until you confront these punks with the business end of a yellow highlighter pen.”
