I took a little walk around today, past the White House, and thought I'd share a few photos of the area. Maybe it will give a different perspective than the usual perfect images you see... :)

This is one of the seemingly millions of guys who sell hot dogs in D.C. He sells them right outside my building though, so I buy them often. I usually get a half-smoke with saurkraut, relish, onions, mustard, and chili for $1.50. Pretty good deal.

One day I talked to him a bit and found out that he was actually from Afghanistan. I think a lot of people fail to realize what an insanely diverse place D.C. is. All these government people are coming out at lunch and buying their food from a guy from Afghanistan, and not thinking a thing of it.

I decided to walk around the back of the White House, and make a big circle to come back to my building... Here you can see the first guard post I passed, checking cars that drive through the big park behind the White House. Some cars can park in here, so they've clamped down now. I used to use this as a shortcut sometimes to avoid traffic on Constitution Ave...

I saw an interesting bunch of guys coming out by the back of the White House, all in imposing suits. Pretty obviously Secret Service or something, all heading out to lunch. I thought of doing a number of funny things at this point, and didn't do any of them. I even took their picture from behind. ;)

From this point, I continued walking around the fence to look at the White House from the back. It's a nice view on this side, and you can see the Washington Monument right behind you.

Here's where you can see it from the back. The grass is really green now because it's been raining non-stop here for at least a couple of weeks. It's extremely nice to see the sun again, but it must have been over 90 degrees again today, so it's a mixed blessing.

There is a little park on the side of the White House that you used to be able to walk through. No more — Here's a picture of the chain around the gate. I have never actually gone through here before...

So now we arrive at Pennsylvania Ave. This street used to carry regular traffic, but now is entirely blocked off. The change was made a few years ago, before 9/11, actually. I think it was done when some schmuck started spraying bullets at the White House during Clinton's days. The guard posts are still somewhat impermanent-looking. This is actually the back of the barricade. I wonder whether they'll at least make these look nice someday. The barricades in Japan are so nicely designed...

This group was somewhat amusing. ;) They were just such stereotypical political groupies. I'm sure they do something in politics.

I took a couple of shots of the White House here as well. I think the most interesting thing is to see how it looks with the street empty now... Most people probably have no idea what it's like, but it's actually quite strange. It feels wrong, probably because it's clear that this street was designed to be used, and now it's not. They should probably make this a pedestrian street with stone or brick if it's going to be permanently blocked off.

Since this is starting to get long, I'll just leave you with a picture of the White House press area. You can easily see this from the sidewalk — it's where almost all the reporters give their little blurbs about white house events. I actually saw a reporter from an Arabic channel the other day, but she was taking it from across the street. It was funny to see her speaking Arabic all seriously, and then all of a sudden say "Thanks a lot Borris, I think that's it."...