Mr. Obama's (Giddy) Neighborhood

The President-Elect and His New Home Town Get to Know Each Other

The story about the Hoopster-in-Chief ricocheted around the Marie Reed Recreation Center in Adams Morgan, the idea of it so seemingly fantastic that it had become legend by the next day.

Barack Obama? Here? On our court?

Yes, he was. When the rec center was closed last Sunday, as the story went, the custodian had let the next leader of the free world into the neighborhood's basketball Taj Mahal, with its holes in the tiled ceiling, green rubber floor, pale cinder block walls and grimy wooden backboards.

Obama and his pals played ball for 45 minutes or so, and no one from the neighborhood had a clue. Three days later, they were still basking in the president-elect's jet stream, talking about the prospect of shaking his hand and taking him to the hoop.

"It would be the icing on the cake," said Tre Dre, 37, shooting a few the other night. "I wish I could've been up here to see him. Oh, man."

As the nation's capital for a mere two centuries, Washington is accustomed to serving as a picture-perfect backdrop for new presidents, who invariably offer up a hearty wave before pretty much vanishing for the next four years behind the gated fortress known as the White House.

Obama might follow the same model, but the president-elect has said he hopes to connect federal and local Washington, worlds that largely exist separately, by visiting public schools and dining out with his wife, Michelle. Over the past two weeks, he has demonstrated an eagerness to get around town, visiting the Lincoln Memorial, wolfing down a half-smoke at Ben's Chili Bowl and beating a path to George Will's house in Chevy Chase for dinner.

From the young and earnest to their seen-it-all elders, the response among many Washingtonians has been a spasm of unabashed giddiness. "It certainly has been a pep pill," said Pat Baptiste, a Chevy Chase activist, who watched from her window as Obama arrived at Will's house. "We have changed from jaded to excited in Washington, of all places."

Obama's allure is driven in part by being a new face in a city that has lived with a Clinton or a Bush as its No. 1 resident for 21 years. Yet the excitement is also fueled by the historic nature of Obama's rise. He is the first black president in a town that became known as "Chocolate City" because of its sizable black population.

At Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street, the historical heart of black Washington, the staff replayed Obama's visit a full five days after he walked in and asked, "What's a chili half-smoke?"

Bernice Abner, an otherwise mild-mannered denizen of Silver Spring, realized that she was sitting in Obama's seat, now marked by a presidential-like decal, and began hollering. "Oh I'm proud," she gushed. "This is my seat!"

Behind the counter, Jermaine Jefferson recalled Obama's lines as if they were the stuff of Shakespeare: "Then he came back to the counter, and said: 'Hey man! I ordered the food, where's my food?' "