Up the down escalator

Nate has an amusing anecdote:

To give you some sense for what we're dealing with, I was on the yellow line on the Metro this morning headed to L'Enfant Plaza, where I had to pick up an inauguration ticket at my friend's place. All of the sudden, as we're just meters away from the station, the conductor announces cheerily: "Sorry, L'Enfant Plaza is now closed. The next stop is Pentagon". So this train full of people, thinking they are heading to L'Efant Plaza so that they can walk over to the Mall, are instead hurtling at 60 MPH toward Virginia, where they very much don't want to be going.

When the train arrives at the Pentagon station, there are huge lines to get up the escalators toward the shuttle buses they have waiting outside. So someone gets the bright idea to begin walking up the down escalator ... and dozens of people start following him. Before long, there are two think columns of people -- black, white, the young, the old, the healthy, the frail -- marching up the down escalator, as couple a police officer looks on haplessly and helplessly. And the people are chanting, quite naturally, "Yes we can!".