DC Mayor Anthony Williams, who held office from 1999 to 2007, is among the Washingtonians featured in the new WETA documentary "Washington in the 2000s," which premieres Tuesday. (Photo by Darrow Montgomery courtesy of WETA)

WETA documentary ‘Washington in the 2000s’ proves it’s not too soon to look back

By Pat Padua On May 9, 2019 Last updated May 15, 2019

It’s been nearly 15 years since baseball returned to Washington, and even if you’ve never set foot inside Nationals Park, you’ve probably seen the ubiquitous red W caps all over Metro on a warm spring night. That sartorial development is just one of the changes in local flavor that emerged in the century’s first decade. Narrated by radio personality Donnie Simpson, Washington in the 2000s, the latest installment in WETA’s decade-by-decade series documenting the city’s history, reminds viewers of the origins of some things we take for granted today.

With near-vintage footage from the time and recollections from notable Washingtonians, the program manages to sum up all the major stories — from food to arts to sports and, yes, politics — that captured the city’s imagination from 2000 to 2009.

WETA producer Seth Tillman, a DC native, tells The DC Line that time marches on in strange ways.

“It’s hard to go back in time to 2005 and remember the fact that the nation’s capital didn’t have a baseball team for 33 years,” he said. “The Nationals have become so much a part of the fabric of life here.”

Part of that fabric of life was witnessed by newscaster Andrea Roane, one of the familiar media faces featured in Washington in the 2000s. Born in New Orleans, Roane moved to DC in 1979 to host WETA’s Metro Week in Review before joining WDVM (now WUSA) two years later as a Sunday evening and weekday morning anchor. She notes that the city ushered in the new millennium with much anticipation, although the party didn’t last long.

“The excitement of ringing in the turn of the century was quickly followed by all these terrible things happening in the world,” Roane told The DC Line.

Police near the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 11, 2001 (Photo by Darrow Montgomery courtesy of WETA)

The terror attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax scare became part of what interview subject Roxanne Roberts, a Washington Post reporter, calls “the new normal” — and anyone who was here during that time remembers the growing sense of dread that was then fresh but became habitual.

Mention a white van to longtime residents, and they’ll remember another anxious sign of the times: With 17-year-old accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, John Allen Muhammad terrorized the region for three weeks in fall 2002, killing 10 people in a series of random attacks in DC, Maryland and Virginia.

The news was not all bleak, and as usual, sports was a local distraction and frustration. A number of high-profile hires seemed poised to return local teams to the national spotlight. Unfortunately, neither the return of Joe Gibbs to the Redskins nor Michael Jordan’s surprise stint as a Washington Wizard turned out well.

When the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005, the city celebrated. “It was just a joy,” Roane says, “because at that point we were looking at [baseball] again as America’s favorite pastime. And even with a losing season, you had a team.”

Of course, it’s not Washington without politics, but the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009 wasn’t the only memorable news here. Two very different mayors led the city in the 2000s, and the program contrasts Anthony Williams — whom Tillman describes as “famously bookish” but also “sardonic, with a dry wit” — with Adrian Fenty, who became the city’s youngest mayor ever in 2007, at age 35.

“Fenty is such an interesting story,” Tillman says. “Most politicians crave public approval. He governed in a way that seemingly disregarded that.”

Roane remembers the difference between Fenty the candidate (”walking through the city and shaking every hand”) and Fenty the elected official (“someone who would not engage with the electorate”).

Other featured interviewees include former mayor WIlliams, chef José Andrés, and sports journalists Clinton Yates and Lindsay Czarniak. Appearances from PoPville’s Dan Silverman and then-DCist editor Amanda Mattos point to the rise of the blogosphere, suggesting that in the future, historians must take into account not just traditional news sources but also what Roane calls “citizen journalists.”

Tillman points out that PoPville began as Prince of Petworth, covering just a few neighborhoods, before Silverman expanded his reach across the city. “It kind of helped collapse community boundaries,” Tillman says. “You can have a community that didn’t adhere to physical borders, but people who could gather in an online space. It was a new kind of community that hadn’t existed before that.”

It may be appropriate that Silverman gets the last word in the documentary: “What’s next?”

Washington in the 2000s premieres Tuesday, May 14, at 8 p.m. on WETA TV 26.