Rob PegoraroFor D.C.-area types of my age, the obvious advantage of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center over the old Washington Convention Center is that the facility that replaced that grim concrete hulk in 2003 isn’t a beige fortress that deadens multiple city blocks.
But in addition to greeting Mount Vernon Square with a mostly-glass facade and leaving space (not all of it filled) for retail and restaurants along 9th and 7th Streets, my city’s largest events venue has a less obvious benefit for both locals and visitors of my age: lots of nap-compatible couches by the windows upstairs.
I can’t prove that the center’s interior designers wanted to leave room for attendees to enjoy a power nap after lunch. But how else are you supposed to read a six-foot-long leather couch on a quiet passageway positioned to catch sunbeams by a window? Especially if you’re the human of a cat that would immediately curl up for a nap in a spot like that?
So as I’ve done during previous events at the convention center that weren’t mobbed by CES-level crowds (hint: none here are), I took efficient advantage of this option as I spent Monday through Wednesday covering the Satellite 2024 trade show.
It helps that a) I don’t care what it looks like when I fold up a fleece jacket to serve as a pillow and then nod off for the 5 minutes, 10 minutes tops, that usually refresh me, and b) I learned how to power nap effectively in college. Credit for that goes to the newspaper I wrote for almost all four years at Georgetown, the Georgetown Voice.
Starting my junior year, I realized that a 15- or 20-minute break between classes would allow barely enough time for perpetually sleep-deprived me to crash for a few minutes on the couch in a side room of the paper’s offices–a couch that was so disgustingly unclean that you wouldn’t want to spend more than a few minutes having any unexposed skin in contact with it.
The habit stuck even as newsroom life didn’t allow the luxury of napping on the job; instead, I’d waste more time traipsing down to the cafeteria to get a coffee that would never quite do the job. Freelance life, however, has liberated me to enjoy a postprandial snooze both at home and in event venues with the right furniture.
Because D.C.’s convention center isn’t the only one to offer this tiny luxury. The West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center also seems to have benefited from the same thoughtful interior design–and no, I’m not proud that I’ve spent enough hours there to know this detail that well.
Updated 3/22/2024 to add the duration of my usual nap, which I realize may make some of you jealous.
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