21 November 2007

Big Labor


Photo courtesy of the HeraldTriblog all rights reserved.

It is not as much work as you would think to transform solid brick into air and rubble.

I got a flash update on the computer around two o'clock from Steve, the Buckingham Beat Reporter. The prep work had been complete, and, one by one, the low brown buildings of Buckingham III are being transformed to were being gobbled up by a single

In the digital age there is no high drama involved in “stopping the presses.” We are thoroughly post-industrial and no highly paid tradesmen are required to operate big machinery or load huge rolls of newsprint. No linotype operators, or rotogravure master craftsmen required.

We can do it all by ourselves, just like Steve can. The destruction itself was accomplished by just a few guys in orange vests. Only two of them are what you might call “skilled labor.” The guy working the big excavator had to know what he was doing, swing the big claw from side to side, cutting down with the clawed bucket through the rafters and brick skin of the building.

The guy running the cement crusher probably needed some experience, too, since you could hurt someone with that. But as to the guy with the hose, watering down the debris, or the supervisor standing by with a clipboard, well, those skills you could hire a dime a dozen at the day labor site by the Hispanic market at Glebe and Pershing.

When the crew knocked off work, they had leveled an “L”-shaped section of the building at the 4300 block of Pershing.

You can see it at his site, http://buckinghamheraldtrib.blogspot.com/ if you want a taste of it. And there actually was a taste of it, molecules of the structure still hanging in the air

I could not arrive on the scene until night was beginning to fall. I took some pictures with my cell phone, holding it up over the chain link fence for an unrestricted view. There was a smell of old wallboard and plaster, the interior of the old buildings still wafting around as dust.

There will be a new vista in the next few weeks, a clean building site with a few dozen carefully-marked historic trees that they want to incorporate into the new complex. It will all be done with just a handful of workers, not like the ant-like army or workers who erected the complex after the war.

Many of them were skilled craftsmen, Electricians and Plumbers and brothers of the Steam Fitting Guild. There was a good living for men who had those skills, and clout in the ability of the Unions to deliver the right skills to the jobsite in a highly competitive labor market.

It is just the luck of the draw that what is coming down is the newest of the garden apartments. The developers are the holders-in-due-course of that slice of Buckingham that was not converted to private ownership, and suffered the worst of the skid, which began with Stagflation and Dick Nixon, and continued right through Ronald Reagan's Morning in America.

That marked the generational transition of Big Pink, which was the first to go private. The original renters were the upscale government executives that Frances Freed aspired to capture in her elegant rose walls. Speaker Carl Albert was one of them. As the empire began to unravel, the new owners wanted to get out from under the requirement to maintain the infrastructure, and the concept of selling the units to people that lived in them became popular.

With the conversion, the population abruptly stabilized, and the residents who bought stayed on for years. The Building grayed; the men died, the numbers of widows increased and turn-over was slight, driven not by the economy but by the Grim Reaper.

Big Pink was an exceptional value. The market and the declining Buckingham neighborhood kept prices down, even as the Building itself retained a certain Freed-inspired elegance.

Owners found it easier to rent their places, and people with seasonal interests in the capital began to appear. A rental unit at Big Pink was perfect for the lobbyist, who could fly away the instant the Congress did. No yard to maintain; no muss, no fuss.

That is how the Ornamental Concrete Workers International came to the building, first occupying a one-bedroom by the pool, shared by several members of the leadership.

Multiple occupancy is a tradition in Washington, dating back to the earliest days of the national legislature. Housing has never kept pace with the demand of a growing bureaucracy, and the explosion of workers required to manage the War Effort. Even today, freshman legislators short of seniority and means will pool the rent money and share digs in the row-houses on the Hill.

That is what the International did at poolside. First there was one, then two, then half a dozen big labor executives rented places, and eventually bought them. At the high-point, the union had six or seven units. Two of them were in prime locations around the pool, and the parties were legendary.

There were many nights that entries had to be made in the Red Book at the front desk about the antics of members from the Locals in town for conventions, coming home after the bars closed down and banging on closed doors, sometimes the right ones.

The decade of the 1990s was the high-water mark of good times. That is when Big Al and Joey and Uncle Bill and Biggs arrived, and they are still here. Others have come and gone, like the elegant Thadeus and Dan.

I moved into the middle of it all when I escaped the Fifth Floor and rejoined the ranks of property owners, gaining a franchise stake in Big Pink.

There was a world of work that needed to be done on my little efficiency. The blinds needed replacing to provide some privacy, since I noticed that Mardy Two, the elegant investment broker on the second floor could look down from the second floor balcony and see just about anything she wanted.

It made me blush when I realized it, but she was housebound at the time, and it gave her something to do.

I was short on cash, but not ideas. Plantation shutters would fit the bill, not that I really minded anyone watching. And maybe a bed that folded down, one of those old ideas whose time has come around again.

It would be expensive, but I could shave costs by doing the work myself. The Union guys sitting out on the patio around me seemed to be entertained by the activity, and commented on the relative quality of it over their glasses of white wine as I toiled.

Not a problem, I thought. I was working for myself now, no Big Labor required.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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