The street is empty, the light is red, the middle-aged man in the gray suit, carrying a large paper cup of coffee, puts the tiniest of pauses in the rhythm of his steps. A pause just long enough to make sure that the car down the street is not going to get here anytime soon, and pushes off the curb, his raincoat brushing by the front bumper of the police car as he walks unhurriedly across the street.
It's been raining in Washington, the streets are wet, and the sky is a soft gray, and everyone is jaywalking. But it really doesn't matter whether it's raining or not, every one jaywalks anyway.
My first day walking from the subway exit to work, I would stand there patiently for the light to change, and meanwhile one at a time, six or seven people would walk up to the corner, pause briefly and the speed on by me. The first few people who breezed by me surprised me, but after a bunch of people do it, it becomes this irresistible pull. You feel like an idiot, just standing there....You are the only pedestrian in Washington obeying the Walk/Don't Walk signs.
The really eerie thing is that since September 11th every street corner has a police officer on it, sometimes two. Usually they are in their car, especially when it's raining. But people just jaywalk right by them as though they were post office boxes or something. I recognize that both the police and the jaywalkers both realize that the cops are there for a totally different purpose, but still it seems somehow disrespectful.
I blame it on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, not the President precisely, but the fact that since June 1995 the block of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House has been blocked off. Now, back in the day, Pennsylvania Avenue was a major thoroughfare. It has two lanes each way, not counting the dedicated left turn lanes, or the short term parking (which I think may have also been a driving lanes during certain times of the day). And it cuts diagonally through the city, going directly in front of the White House and continuing on. The intersection of 17th and Pennsylvania used to be a major intersection, the kind that took a couple of rounds of the lights to clear. Now the only people who cross 17th on Pennsylvania have at a minimum eight police vehicles with full lights and sirens going. (Yes, I get to watch this parade regularly on the way to work.) Everyone else (this is usually about two or three cars) turns left or right onto 17th street, when the light turns green. Occasionally you see an additional delivery truck meandering slowly, in search of a 15 minute parking space, or a car looking trying to decide if a parking lot is already full. All the while the light is still green for traffic.
See, they blocked off the street, but the City never changed the timing of the light.
The light is still waiting for the 50 cars in tightly packed traffic formation to be able to clear the intersection. So I, and, I swear everyone else, jaywalks across this street. Otherwise, you stand for long enough that a person could jaywalk at a leisurely pace, get to the other side of five lanes plus parking spaces, change his mind and walk back, between the time that the last of the three cars has cleared the intersection and the time that the light changes to green. Meanwhile the street is so empty, I almost can make out the opening theme of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
And once a person has broken down their resistance to jaywalking in general, it spreads to the other nearby intersections, and then outward.