« busboys and poets | Main | more on Peter Bis (NPR story) »
May 25, 2009
i just met a legend on capitol hill
It's late in the evening and I am trying to find this place so I can drop off my key and complete my checkout from the Capitol Hill area. I walk by an ExxonMobil gas station and a guy sitting on a curb starts talking to me. "Hi there, how are you doing," he says. "Happy Memorial Day!" The streets are totally empty. It's like everyone just vanished after dark, as though the entire city was to take part in some Memorial Day ritual that I knew nothing of. We chat a bit. "Happy Memorial Day," he says again. "Enjoy your evening." "Thank you, you too."
I walk down a block and realize that I am walking in the wrong direction. So I go back and pass by the gas station again, and this friendly man, must be in his 60s, likely homeless, is still sitting there. "Are you finding everything all right?" he asks me. "Where you tryin' to go?" I tell him 307; he says 307 should just be a block up, right next to Cafe Berlin, across from the White Tiger...oh, and there should also be a restaurant named Two Quail. "Okay, great, thanks a lot," I respond. Once I locate the place I have some difficulty shoving the envelope through the door slot; supposedly it doesn't drop down, you just have to wedge it between that door and another door behind it. A sign reads: LEAVE CHECK-OUT DOCUMENTS WITHIN DOOR. It must be at least 85 degrees, very humid, pouring sweat by now.
I walk back, this time on the other side of the street. Not intentionally, not to avoid the guy at the gas station or anything. It just so happens that the place is on the opposite side of the street. Actually, after that door slot ordeal, I almost forget about the guy in front of the gas station. I'm about to cross a red in the other direction - no cars, of course, it's dead out here - but the light leading to the gas station - right, the one on the corner - is blinking green. So I decide to take it. There is the guy again. He seems to gesture at me, so I shout out at him. "How are you doing?"
"Did you find the place OK?" he responds. It doesn't take long before we start talking politics.
He speaks of his days as a spy, showing me two passports with different ID's. His name on one of them shows up as "Peter Bis." His dialect is like a cross between JFK and a drunken Brit. As for content, he spits out perfectly worded sentences, no umms likes or uhhhhs, 3/4 of the words ID's - people, places, organizations (mostly the American Mafia), events, dates - the other 1/4 a mix of economics jargon, racial slurs and expletives. Generally, he speaks a tasteful mix of personal experience and juicy FYI's. "Just look at that name - Bis," he tells me. "You know what that means?" "No, what does it mean?" "British Intelligence Society. Who would've thought?!" he chuckles. And then one of his favorite lines: "Most people don't know about that."
We're talking right next to a big heap of tarps on the curb, right in front of the gas station. Pete seems comfortable with it. He rests his elbow on the stuff, which sprawls practically the entire length of the Exxon station. Little do I know, all his belongings lie under those tarps.
"You see that place over there?" he tells me. "That's the Heritage Foundation. They keep the interns there. A bunch of neo-Nazi fascist bastards." Among other things, he goes on to tell me about the license plate number of a woman who works with them. Her license plate allegedly begins with "BJ." (Long story short, she's the Heritage Foundation prostitute.)
Now that Bis got out of his spy work - almost getting killed several times in the process - he is out to expose the American Mafia. Supposedly, he has leaked a number of confidential documents, some of which are on his blog, some of which are underneath his tarps. His blog runs about 300 pages, and was written up for him "by my typist." Take a look for yourself; it's actually a really entertaining blog: http://peterbis.blogspot.com/
I lost the sheet that he gave me and was really disappointed, but after a simple google search his blog popped up. It seems that he is quite the influential figure on Capitol Hill, holding public policy workshops from 8 am to 10 pm; the rest of the time he camps out nearby and keeps an eye on his stuff. The city has repeatedly tried to evict him from his spot on the curb - and repeatedly without success. In fact, the city posted two metal signs (one in English, one in Spanish) above his tarps; black marker writing fills in the blanks, declaring May 22nd the day when THIS LOCATION WILL BE SANITIZED. But the date already passed. "Some people like me, some people hate me," he said. It seems that his proponents hold the upper hand. "I can pull strings when I need to. Been doin' it all my life."
On December 14, 2005, his typist wrote:
Bis is getting busted for stuff on the sidewalk at the Exxon Station, Mass Ave and 2nd NE; city signs went up on May 12th threatening to take it all on May 22nd. Neatly covered, the stuff is just down the sidewalk from the Heritage Center dorm, and in fact a lot of it [if not the bulk of Pete's stuff] comes from young people moving through their various programs. Obviously this town revolves around people knowing people; all efforts to get this worked out are appreciated, and the immediate problem could be resolved with storage capacity about the size of a parking spot in the immediate proximity. Can Capitol Police find something nearby?
Posted by dmbenn at May 25, 2009 01:30 AM