It’s around midnight when I leave the office.
I enter the lobby to wait for my Uber and realize that the street in front of the office is completely blocked off by police. The blockade extends down the block, which is pretty odd for a random weekday. Did someone get run over?
Turns out that the street closures are because the local hockey team is in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
We went to some hockey games in Dallas, but I obviously don’t follow the sport. I can’t even properly feign interest — this weekend, I politely asked someone if they were at a Stanley Cup watch party and Michael whispered in my ear, “He’s wearing a BASEBALL t-shirt!”
The blockade of 6th Street continued all week, and Chinatown has been crawling with Capitals fans at all hours. When I left the office today, both 6th and 7th Streets were even shut down because Fall Out Boy was randomly scheduled to give a free performance in front of the National Portrait Gallery.
Chinatown shut down for the Stanley Cup.
The event crowd didn’t really bother me.
It may be harder to take an Uber home from work, but the train station was practically deserted this evening. It was a strange contrast to the crowds above ground — sort of like a bunker in a zombie movie. We’ll see what kind of state Chinatown is in tomorrow morning. It’s either going to be spotless because D.C. has a good street cleaning program or completely trashed.
One thing that does worry me a little bit is how frequent these types of events will be — we signed a lease for an apartment building right by the office, so we’ll probably be able to hear the sporting craziness every weekend. It’ll be like living by Mears Park all over again, except this time much closer to work.
I’ve been told that the Capitals don’t frequently make it to the finals, hopefully this may be an odd one-off situation. Either way, I’m not going to try and make sports small talk again.
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