D.C. haunts reflect his goals, challenges
The Obamas of Chicago are the first true urbanites to move into the White House since the Kennedys of Boston in 1961, and around the neighborhood there are high hopes that Obama becomes a more engaged Washingtonian than his recent predecessors.
"We're going to try to be balancing, not being disruptive to the city, but also saying we want to be part of Washington, D.C.," Obama told ABC News earlier this month.
So far, Obama has had a small footprint in Washington. He entered the Senate in January 2005, and spent most of his time commuting back to Chicago and running for president. Despite his fleeting presence as a senator, Obama nonetheless recognized the symbolic burden of residence in a city he recently described as comprising the "two Washington, D.C.s": the wealthy, overwhelmingly white government "company town" embedded with a poor, largely black metropolis.
"We stand not 10 miles from the seat of power in the most affluent nation on Earth," he said during a July 2007 campaign stop at the Town Hall Education, Arts and Recreation Campus, or THEARC, a new school and community center, in a southeast Washington neighborhood. "And yet here, on the other side of the river, every other child in Anacostia lives below the poverty line."
With their first decision as residents, the Obamas made clear why so few wealthy people are as much a part of Washington as he now hopes to be. The first couple decided to send their daughters to a private day school, Sidwell Friends, and one of them will not even be in the district. While fifth-grader Malia will attend the main campus in northwest D.C., second-grader Sasha will cross the Maryland line each day to Sidwell's lower school in Bethesda.
WHERE HE EATS
As a senator, Obama was a fixture for business dinners at Bistro Bis and Charlie Palmer Steak, both just off Capitol Hill. But he made his first public restaurant visit as president-elect a symbolic one, joining Mayor Adrian Fenty for lunch (each had a classic half-smoke sausage sandwich) at Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street, a historic center of black life that is already being described as the new hub of Obama's Washington.
WHERE HE STAYS
As a commuting senator, Obama had a one-bedroom rental near Stanton Park, blocks from the Capitol. It had such a "vintage college dorm, pizza feel to it," as Obama has described it, that Michelle refused to stay there when she was in town. With his campaign entourage, Obama preferred the Mayflower Hotel; once president-elect, the family bunked at the Hay-Adams, facing the White House.
WHERE HE WORKED
Obama's Senate office was Room 713 of the Hart Building, but his presidential ambitions were incubated a few blocks away. After his election, Obama began his own political action committee, Hopefund, and by law Obama had to trek there to make fund-raising calls. It served as a center for his Washington money machine and the base of a very local political apparatus. The Capitol Hill office became headquarters for Obama's operations in the D.C. primary, where he won three-quarters of the vote as he began to break away from Hillary Clinton.
WHERE HE PLAYS
While a Capitol Hill resident, Obama worked out at his local Washington Sports Club.
Until the White House gets a basketball net, he is likely to shoot hoops with friends, staff, and Cabinet officials on familiar indoor courts: at the nearby YMCA or at the Marie H. Reed Community Learning Center in Adams-Morgan.
SASHA ISSENBERG 