John Hammond, the famous impresario of popular music who died last July, once remarked that, unlike the other Manhattan socialites who bopped up to Harlem in the 1920s, he was never interested in “slumming.” Rather he went out of “passion”—a passion that persisted throughout his long career of discovering, producing, and otherwise encouraging performers ranging from Bessie Smith to Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman to Count Basie, Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen.
The distinction between slumming and passion came to mind last Memorial Day weekend, when the weather in Washington turned muggy and twenty-two thousand people converged on the Convention Center for the largest-ever Convention and Trade Exhibit of the American Booksellers Association. Like the high-rolling patrons of the Cotton Club, the elite of this gathering put on a respectable show during the day, schmoozing through the crowded aisles in their tailored silk dresses and three-piece suits, dutifully husbanding their rich inheritance of literate culture. But at sunset, how swiftly they donned their proletarian denim, their perforated black leather, their Banana Republic gear! How eagerly they piled into the first uptown cab that cruised along!
Not that they cruised all that far. A few hardy souls were spotted in the nightclubs of Adams Morgan, the one Washington neighborhood where the Third World meets the Nerd World. Others appeared at such youth-culture temples as the 9:30 and the Bayou. But none were reported in the true outposts of black D.C.: places like the Ibex, the Odyssey, or the
