Around Town: A Post-Midnight Taxi Rush

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IF YOU'VE EVER arrived at Union Station after midnight on a weekday via Amtrak, you're pretty much stuck with D.C. taxicabs to reach your final destination. Metrorail shuts down operations around midnight, leaving you at the mercy of the station's taxi cab line and the attendants charged with figuring out which riders can share what cab. With post-midnight cabs sometimes a rare commodity, regular Amtrak veterans who travel the Northeast Corridor know that you must hustle ahead of your fellow passengers to avoid interminable waits in the queue.

Earlier this morning, this writer was returning from a New Year's visit to New York City when train 167 pulled in a few minutes late to Union Station. When we rushed through the station concourse and main hall to the taxi queue out front, we happened up on a dead pigeon, which was missing its head and most of its body. The queue attendant, somewhat perplexed by the cut-up bird, kicked it to the side. In a city with architecture inspired by ancient Rome, we must wonder what a knowledgeable augur would have interpreted from the avian remains. Bad omens for 2007?

» WILSON BUILDING: Former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams — yes we can now officially call him that — "has a very nice smile, but he doesn't use it as much as he could have," according to Lateef Mangum, Williams' official photographer pictured at right, who like the mayor, is ending his service to the city. The Post's Ellissa Silverman profiles the photog who has been the District's official photographer for the past 12 years. [WaPo]
Photo by Carol Guzy/The Washington Post

» ANNAPOLIS: Woe is Martin O'Malley, Maryland's incoming governor. With budget deficits looming, the governor-elect has "limited wiggle room to find money for programs such as school construction and Chesapeake Bay cleanup," the AP reports. [AP via WT]