Planners Prepare for 10 Official Inaugural Balls

posted 4:29 pm Tue January 06, 2009 - WASHINGTON
from ABC 7 News - http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0109/583051.html

The presidential inauguration is just two weeks away and after the big event it will be time to party.

This year, there are 10 official inaugural balls, which means the new president and vice president are guaranteed to show up.

Six are scheduled to be held at the Washington Convention Center -- the Obama and Biden home state balls, three regional balls and the new neighborhood ball.

The National Building Museum, D.C. Armory, and Union Station each will host an official ball as well. Who will get tickets and how, is still unknown.

The Gaylord Resort at National Harbor will have three of the dozens of other unofficial inaugural bashes.

Aimee Garrell showed off the huge ballroom where possibly the biggest bash will be held. Headliners include Aretha Franklin, Usher and Maxie Priest. Twelve-thousand people are scheduled to attend the African and International Friends Inaugural Ball.

Top tickets run about $1,000 apiece and include an open bar and a gourmet feast. "We have a sit-down dinner for them -- fillet of beef.... mashed potatoes," said Rigoberto Lemus, the executive chef.

For all three balls, the resort staff will go through 400,000 hors d'oeuvres and literally a ton of pasta and beef tenderloin. The kitchen crew is already hard at work.

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Salons want chance to style Michelle Obama

WASHINGTON — Hair salon owner Barry Fletcher sent Michelle Obama a 17-minute DVD about himself. Hairdresser Keith Harley uploaded his resume to President-elect Barack Obama's Web site. And salon owner Nicole Cober-Blake plans to get her name in by sending a welcome basket with bath gels, hair products and a robe.

There are plenty of unanswered questions buzzing around the Obamas' impending arrival, but one has hairdressers on the edge of their styling chairs: Who will be chosen to do Michelle Obama's hair?

Rather than venture out for hair appointments, the first lady typically invites beauticians to the White House. Some of the region's black salon owners hope their experience with ethnic hair could give them an edge over those who coiffed the likes of Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton.

Fletcher, the 52-year-old owner of The Hair Palace Salon in Mitchellville, Maryland, cites his experience in international hairstyling challenges and working with actress Halle Berry and singer Mya, a Washington native.

"I'm going to be doing her hair!" Fletcher said, if he has anything to say about it. "This would pretty much validate all of my hard work and effort to get to a level where I could handle a powerful queen like the first lady."

Not that it's all glamour for the stylist. Bernard Portelli, who briefly styled Hillary Clinton's bob back in 1993, recalled working in a simple room in the White House with a shampoo basin, two chairs and plenty of outlets for blow dryers and flat irons. He's not necessarily eager to go back.

"You have all kind of last-minute phone calls, which is extremely hard for someone who has a large clientele in a salon to drop everything and go," said 57-year-old Portelli, who owns Georgetown's Okyo Salon.

Still, if Obama's tresses dazzle the public, it would be a public relations coup for any salon. Nuri Yurt of Georgetown's Toka Salon attracted attention after he began styling Laura Bush's hair in 2005. Earlier this year, Vogue magazine called him one of the country's best colorists for brunettes.

"It's permanent advertising, if you will, for the salon," Portelli said.

From the stylists' perspective, Obama doesn't need much help — they describe her hair as classic in style, healthy and free-spirited.

For election night, Michael "Rahni" Flowers of Van Cleef Hair Studio in Chicago — Obama's stylist since she was 18 — did her hair. And for the Democratic National Convention, Obama turned to Chicago-native Johnny Wright of Frederic Fekkai's Los Angeles salon.

If an out-of-towner gets the assignment, it would disappoint locals like Cober-Blake, lawyer-turned-owner of D.C.'s Soul Day Spa and Salon. The 37-year-old said she's excited about the possibility of having Obama experience the services at Soul, where she said they "treat everyone like a Michelle Obama."

Harley, of Keith Harley Hair & Scalp Clinic in Arlington, Virginia, submitted his resume a month ago.

"It would be the highlight of my career," said 39-year-old Harley, who styles such high-profile Washington women as Debra Lee, chief executive officer of Black Entertainment Television. "It would be an honor."

And like her fashion, Obama's hairstyles probably will be scrutinized, as has been the case with other first ladies.

"The thing about being the first lady, you're only as fashionable as your last picture," said Dennis Roche, 58, of Washington's Roche Salon, which has ethnic hair experts that he said could style Obama. "This is kind of risky because of the fact that we all have bad hair days." - AP

AIDS: D.C.'s Silent Stalker of Women

By Courtland Milloy
Wednesday, December 3, 2008; B01

Washington Post

Can we talk frankly about HIV/AIDS and black women?

No? I didn't think so.

After all, who cares to tell sassy little Keisha that if she doesn't stop mistaking sex for love, her next mistake could be her last. Of course, that wouldn't be "age appropriate," now, would it?

What about the Widow Jones? Since her husband passed, she has been dating again. Will somebody please tell her that her new dude is on the down low -- surreptitiously having sex with men -- then bringing it to bed with her?

Can't do that, either. Why meddle in her business? After all, AIDS is only the fourth-leading cause of death for black women ages 45 to 54. Let the good sister have her fun -- while it lasts.

You might have noticed that I'm focusing on women and AIDS. Speaking frankly, that's because it's up to women to save their own lives. When it comes to sexually transmitted diseases, too many men are not trying to protect you. Most of the time, they are just trying to have sex.

Quite frankly, you would have thought more women would have caught on by now.

In the District, the number of women living with AIDS increased by more than 76 percent in six years -- nine out of 10 of them black women. The primary modes of transmission: heterosexual men who turned out to be IV drug users, ex-convicts who'd been having sex with men in prison, bisexual men posing as heterosexuals and outright dogs who make a sport of sexual conquest.

Here's another reason I'm talking to women: The District accounts for 9 percent of all pediatric AIDS cases in the United States. Blame the man all you want, but it's the mother and child who suffer most.

Despite two decades of advancement in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, "we're still struggling with how to teach people not to get infected," Don Blanchon, chief executive of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, said Monday at a candlelight vigil marking the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day.

But how can we teach if we can't talk frankly?

There's certainly no shortage of public service announcements aimed at reducing infection rates among African Americans. But most consist of preachy platitudes, politically correct and "culturally sensitive" pablum: "Stay healthy." "AIDS is preventable."

The results should not be surprising.

"People know how to espouse what they heard, but for some reason it does not stick with them," Barbara Chinn, director of Whitman Walker Clinic's Max Robinson Center in Southeast Washington, told me recently. "They still look at prospective sex partners and say, 'They don't look infected.' "

Failure to tell it like it is -- that's what's really killing us.

"When assessing the HIV risk factors associated with African Americans, one particularly difficult area of debate is that of sexual behavior," said a recent report by Avert, an international AIDS charity. "For example, could the epidemic among African Americans be because, on average, they have more sex partners than Caucasians? Or because they have different, more risky, types of sex? Such questions may seem obvious, but trying to establish answers can be hard, especially when there is a danger that they could be interpreted as racist, or used in racist propaganda."

So let's just forget about the 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that black teenagers were more likely to have had four or more sex partners than whites and Hispanics by the time they graduated from high school (or should have graduated), and that African American girls were more likely to have had partners who were significantly older than them. African Americans are also more likely to have concurrent partners -- that is, more than one partner at a time, which can make HIV transmission more likely to be passed on to more than one person, the study found.

If ever there was a case for unvarnished sex education in public schools, the ongoing AIDS epidemic in black America ought to be it. Instead of education, what we get more often than not is homophobic nonsense from the pulpits of our black churches.

The District has the highest rate of new reports of AIDS in the country, and the highest mortality rates to go along with it. But the horror of it all barely seeps into our collective conscience.

"While Africa is the global epicenter of HIV/AIDS infection," Chinn told me, "the District is the epicenter in this country, with infection rates in some neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River rivaling those in sub-Saharan Africa."

During a World AIDS Day interview with ABC News, President Bush called his international program to combat AIDS "one of the most important initiatives of my administration" and praised it as a success. More than 2 million people worldwide have received life-saving antiretroviral treatments since the initiative began in 2003, he said.

He made no mention of the AIDS epidemic raging in his own back yard.

Once again, mum's the word. Perhaps in the absence of frank talk, we could at least help young girls such as Keisha by getting them to serve a few weeks at an AIDS hospice. Careless sex would likely lose its sheen once they realize that their lovers could be the Grim Reaper in disguise.