It was a masochistic move on a day with record-setting triple digit heat, but The Brew journeyed down to Washington D.C. on Friday, July 3, to see what our nation’s capital looked and sounded like on the day before its 250th birthday.

It was chaotic and, at the same time, empty.

Visitors, many clad in red, white and blue, were channeled onto certain parts of the streets along the National Mall by chain link fences, bike racks and jersey barriers.

Airport-type security at the entrances to the Great American State Fair, held in the cordoned-off Mall, created huge bottlenecks.

But people were willing to wait in long lines under the blistering sun in order to enter what looked like, when viewed through the barriers, a big empty lawn. Lacking the fortitude to stand with them, The Brew kept going.

(This area was soon shut down due to the heat that reached a record-setting high of 102°F. We saw several struggling, red-faced people being handed water by members of the National Guard.)

By all accounts, we didn’t miss much by skipping this display of small pavilions representing the 50 states, a format that the Trump-aligned Freedom250 group commandeered from the group created by Congress that had been working on a celebration plan for years.

It was going to be “the most unforgettable birthday party any country has ever seen,” Trump had said on the event’s opening night.

“A total disappointment,” declared a man who described himself as “a friggin’ patriot” to a reporter from The Guardian, explaining that he had driven there all the way from Washington State.

Most of The Brew’s conversations with DC visitors involved explaining, when asked, about how to use the dockless rental bikes we were riding (“You mean you can just leave them anywhere!?”), a godsend when you want to cover a lot of ground on a hot day and generate a little breeze.

Pedaling toward the Lincoln Memorial, we tried to get a peek at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool – another empty fenced-off expanse – to see if the water was truly green.

It was.

Crowd Looks Up

We didn’t try to engage with visitors about the peeling paint and algae blooms that have plagued President Trump’s pool renovation project – originally estimated to cost around $2 million, but eventually ballooning to $14.7 million thanks to a no-bid contract.

Too hot for that!

Besides, the people we stood with at that end of the pool were agog at the Stealth bombers, F-35 fighter jets and other military aircraft slicing the sky, flying in formation and performing heart-stopping high-altitude stalls and rolls.

Everyone’s eyes, cellphones and cameras were pointed upward to watch the “Wings of Freedom” air show.  There were oohs, ahhs and wows.

Who could think in that heat, much less converse about the multi-million-dollar cost of the show or any of the other off-script thoughts or feelings evoked by the ear-splitting sound in the dystopian setting of a heavily fortified city filled with images of the president’s face on hats, tee shirts and buildings.

There was so much to reflect on under the gaze of the “Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln, including whether anyone will “emancipate” the Maryland man who faces 10 years in prison on a federal destruction of property charge for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool.

All that Olympic canoeist David Hearn said he was doing was reaching into the water to see what a partially-detached piece of the paint felt like. (It was cringy to contemplate for The Brew, which has amassed a small collection of lead paint flakes gathered from Baltimore structures like the television tower on TV Hill and various overpasses and bridges.)

Time to hop back on the bike.

Feeling like a fish out of water in this crowd and seeing all this greenness brought to mind the duet (above) on Bein’ Green performed by Kermit the Frog and the late great Ray Charles, an anthem of inclusion.

With those thoughts percolating, The Brew pedaled over to the National Gallery of Art. There the spaces were cool and quiet, and exhibitions like “Dear America: What does it mean to be an American?” tackled that urgent question with ferocity, poignancy and depth.

There was a 1907 photo by Alfred Stieglitz of people in “steerage” on a boat heading back to Europe likely because they’d been denied entry. There was an eerie portrait of her father by Japanese artist Ruth Asawa who, with her family, had been sent by the U.S. government to an internment camp during World War II.

The words “Land where our fathers died,” from the patriotic song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” were placed below a photo of members of the Ho-Chunk Native American tribe.

Below a formal portrait of abolitionist Soujourner Truth were the words “Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance.”

Christian Rolfs’ 1910 “White Birches in Fall” was gorgeous. “It’s So Hard to be Green” 2000 – a crazy tangle of cut-up tires by Chakaia Booker – was an exhilarating challenge to residents of our troubled planet. (She’d been thinking of that song too.) Georgia O’Keefe’s “Black Bird with Snow-Covered Red Hills” was also powerful, a different kind of flyover.

It’s all too much to reproduce here, so we’ll just let Edward Hopper close us out with his moody, anxious “Cape Cod Evening” from 1939.

That dog is bracing for something.