From the Washington City Paper, an almost-moving account of the former D.C. mayor and current council-member, Marion Barry. He has some interesting habits:
"'Sometimes I see him in the afternoon just walking back and forth to his car,' Fullard says. 'He’d walk to his car and then walk down the street.' Fullard says she'd see him walk to where Douglass Place dead-ends, a spot overlooking Suitland Parkway and marked by Jersey barriers sprayed with a tag memorializing another neighborhood. There, Barry would turn left and disappear into the Sayles Place town homes' parking lot.
Sometimes Barry, 69, would reappear five to 10 minutes later, Fullard says. Only this time he seemed like a different man. She describes the transformed Barry this way: 'Like he could barely stand up. His eyes were half-closed.'
He needed help a long time ago. His supporters merely enabled him some more.