Our condo was on TV! (Plus some Watergate history and georgraphy)

So as most people who are reading this know, David and I live in the Watergate. What many people don't know is that the Watergate is an enormous complex comprised of three apartment buildings, two office buildings, a hotel, and an outside shopping center. Almost everyone in DC gets them confused at some point. We have food delivery people who call us from the wrong Watergate apartment complex asking why we aren't answering our front door. I've had taxis cab drivers try to drop me off at the wrong building. And tourists looking for the site of the break-in often wander around the complex trying to figure out which is the right building.

So last night, David and I saw our Watergate apartment building on TV. As I mentioned before, we're trying to watch the complete X-Files series on DVD before the movie comes out this summer. We had just started Season 2 with the Episode "Little Green Men." Mulder and Scully have to meet covertly and they choose the parking garage of the Watergate Hotel. They flash a stock picture on the screen labeled "Watergate Hotel," but it's actually a photo of the Watergate South aparment building where we live. David and I immediately call it out, press rewind, and watch it over again. So our condo was on TV, but inappropriately labeled. Here's a close approximation of what the picture looked like:


The left side of the C-shape is our apartment building, and the right side is an office building.

Adding even more confusion is the fact that the X-Files writers probably chose the Watergate Hotel parking garage as a nod to Mulder's government informant from Season 1 who was humorously called Deep Throat. However, the Watergate break-in occurred at one of the office buildings in the complex. So why not the parking garage at the office building for their clandestine meeting? Either the writers' figured the hotel parking garage would be more easily accessible for our heroes, or I'm analyzing this waaaayyyy to much and it was just a gaff.

For those of you confused by Watergate complex geography, here's a cheat sheet:



Building A is the same as the building in the first photo I posted. It's half our apartment building (Watergate South) and half an office building. Building B is the Watergate Hotel. Building C is the office building that was the site of the infamous break-in. The building to the right of C is the Watergate West apartment building, and to the left of C is the Watergate East apartment building. For you Watergate scandal junkies out there, the building across the street from C used to be a Howard Johnson's. In room 723, Watergate conspirators monitored the phones they had bugged at the DNC, and acted as look-outs for the burglars who were captured on June 17th, 1972. It's now a graduate dorm for George Washington University. I snuck inside with some friends one night last year to take a look at the room. There is, in fact, a plaque in front of a room on the 7th floor, with some vague message about something important that took place in the room. (I'll get a photo of it one day and post it).

So the geek in me is happy now in two ways. First, I got to see my apartment building on one of my favorite shows. Second, the geeky nit-picker in me feels satisfied after writing this blog post. And the X-files Watergate gaff was no where near as frustration as other DC misrepresentations in film and TV. Remember the West Wing episode with the Georgetown metro stop?