An easy walk away from home is a very good Mexican restaurant that we frequent. When friends were visiting one Friday evening a few weeks ago, we went down there and found ourselves waiting for a table for roughly 20 minutes. During the wait, Marion Barry walked right by us and got a table immediately (to be fair, there were only two in his party and a small table was available). For those not familiar with Barry, he was dubbed "Mayor for Life" because nothing, not even a drug conviction while in office (the sting operation yielded the memorable quote from the Mayor, "bitch set me up"), stopped him from winning election as D.C. mayor. He finally stopped running after a fourth term in office, but recently returned to politics and is presently a city council member (and continues to have drug problems). I'd never seen him in person before, but it was apparent by the interactions with the people he greeted and was greeted by that even now he's quite charismatic.
This past Saturday night, a 20-something friend of mine from RateBeer was over for a music exchange and tasting, and we took a break to get dinner at the same restaurant. When I mentioned that we'd seen Mayor Barry there last time, I was rather surprised when the friend said he had no idea who Barry is. Then again, the friend was a teenager in Vermont at the end of Barry's last term as mayor, and was only about 10 when the cocaine trial took place in 1990.
