Anticipation spices up Washington

Washington: Anticipation spices the Washington air in the final days before Barack Obama assumes the US presidency.

It is especially heady at Ben's Chili Bowl, a flourishing black-owned eatery, where Obama's name was added recently to a sign behind the counter.

It specifies him and hugely popular black comedian Bill Cosby, as the only two people in the world entitled to free lunch at the sausage joint.

Ben's has been there 50 years, from back when the stretch of pavement was known as the Black Broadway.

Obama and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, who also is black, dropped by a few days back for a lunch that likely gave cardiolgists pause.

The visit was emblematic, too, of the civic schizophrenia of Washington.

It is a city as well where a majority of residents are black, dealing with persistent inequality in every way that compares the lives of American blacks with those of American whites.