“It was a line in the sand. It was citizens standing up and saying, ‘No more,’” Hill Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6C Commissioner Bill Sisolak reflected this week on the small but portentous victory in a battle over security barricades.

Sisolak and a tiny knot of A Street N.E. neighbors overturned plans by the U.S. Supreme Court to erect a pop-up barricade on a public street last week, and the decision by a D.C. Department of Transportation panel to forbid the construction is being hailed as a rare victory against the slow takeover of Capitol Hill by security barricades, street closures, cameras and other devices.

The neighbors, led by Kevin Shewbridge, divorced father, 200 block of A Street homeowner and former Air Force anti-terrorism expert, argued that their houses would be used as sacrificial shields to keep a possible bomb blast at a good distance from the courthouse if the barrier were to be erected. “It would occur right under my daughter’s bedroom window,” he noted.

Some involved in the fight, which has a four-year history, noted that the court’s next move might be to shut 2nd Street N.E. down from East Capitol Street north to Constitution Avenue N.E., a plan court officials have already suggested. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) persuaded the court to drop the plan.

The rejection by a city agency of a federal security plan marks a first in the steady fortification of Hill federal enclaves against terrorist attack. And it was the first time that the government admitted that the lives and homes of local citizens were less important than the workplace of federal employees. Court officials had argued that the barrier would force terrorists either to drop their plans or to explode their bombs where they would do damage to the Hill neighborhood but not to the courthouse.

Neighbors argued the barricade would kill mature trees, reduce parking, lower home values and trap them in their block if and when it is in operation.

The ruling also brought into sharp focus the question of the effectiveness of the pop-up barricades. As one 2nd Street N.E. witness, John Moyers, son of the author and commentator, noted, “This is fake security. Unless the barrier is up all the time it does nothing to prevent an attack.” Others testifying included Dee Atwell of the Stanton Park Neighborhood Association and Dick Wolf of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society. Norton joined in opposition with a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts.

The D.C. transportation panel advised the court to consider other options. Shewbridge voiced relief.

“This will give me time to sell my house and get out of Dodge,” he said.

Many of the Hill’s political cognoscenti who sensed that the coming primary race for the City Council seat of longtime (and retiring) Democrat Sharon Ambrose would be a walkover for her endorsee, Tommy Wells, are still complacent.

A forum held last week, pitting the five Ward 6 candidates against a panel of local journalists, proved that Wells has several worthy challengers and that the field attracted to the council post is probably of a higher caliber than many of the present incumbents. Wells still owns the field, however.

Whether it is the changing nature of the ward, which has seen a remarkable immigration of new citizens, many of them high achievers, or mere luck, the lesser-known names making life difficult for Wells (who is by far the best known, as an Advisory Neighborhood Commission and school board member) are well-armed with ideas, youth and energy.

Surprise of the night under the spotlight at Hine Junior High School was former Republican (indeed he has switched parties a bewildering number of times) Keith Jarrell, a portly, white, gay, good-humored retail consultant who casts himself as a champion of the poor. His candidacy would seem a joke under the usual circumstances of sacred-cow and name-recognition politics beloved here, but Jarrell refused to patronize the voters or to mouth careful euphemisms when closely questioned, unlike some others.  

He espouses, for example, to call a halt to all new development until the facts of displacement of the poor are known, and instead of going along with the superintendent of schools’ 3- and 4-year-old preschool plan he declared that he thought some 3- and 4-year-olds too immature to be taken out of the home.

On most issues raised by the press panel, all candidates agreed. On the issue of the National Capital Medical Center however, all except Curtis Etherly were against.

Here are snapshots of the performers on this political stage:

• Wells, 48. The front-runner is red-faced with earnestness, almost defensiveness; he is a verbose, bureaucratized speaker used to answering questions inoffensively. But answer them he does.

• Etherly, 37. Heaps of cautious words, the longest possible, decorate answers that wow the ignorant, attempt to impress the rest. A first in the family to become wealthy, displays his Yale and Georgetown Law background. He won’t give up his six-figure job with Coca-Cola.

• Leo Pinson, 40. Youthful-looking appointive pol made good, he is careful and wise in the ways of D.C. bureaucracy. Though he looks young, he talks old, perhaps because of his years as Ward 6 neighborhood services coordinator under Ms. Ambrose.

• Will Cobb, 34. Raw, unpolished political ambition, plus refreshing energy. He’s a marathon runner, a star at college (UNC) and at the Coast Guard before becoming a security consultant.

• Jarrell, 50. Is he running to amuse himself, or us?

This cast makes for an interesting race. The reality factor: the more attractive candidates, the better for Wells, who has a baseline constituency and is winning the “signs on lawn” war, as well as endorsements by local bigs like Advisory Neighborhood Commission honcho Ken Jarboe and Democratic pol John Capozzi.

The straw poll (registered Democrats only) gave 119 to Wells, 30 to Etherly, 23 to Pinson, seven to Cobb and two to Jarrell.

To avoid the split-vote phenomenon that so favors Wells, several will have to swallow pride and side with a single challenger.

An amazing facet of our dutifully commercial republic is the way it can turn a profit from the most desolate calamity.

Wandering through the cavernous D.C. Convention Center, viewing the thousands of defensive, intrusive and just plain wacky gadgets at last week’s GovSec (for government security) Exposition, one was struck by the thought that thousands of salaries, hundreds of prosperous firms and many careers would not exist were it not for the atrocious attacks of Sept. 11.

It’s as if an entirely new arms war had begun — not like the old race to provide armies with tanks and rockets for a Cold War that never turned hot, but a new race to guard an infinite number of targets against attacks by a tiny cadre of terrorists.

Both wars share that truism about arms: Every penny spent is completely nonproductive and wasted unless the attack they are designed to prevent occurs.

The industry has moved into a “model year” mode in which improvements quickly outpace what has been done. Exhibitors openly sneer at Washington’s sticks-and-stones approach to security. The city has become a series of fortresses; barriers and bollards much like World War I fortifications now surround the Capitol. Experts at GovSec opined that most of what has been done to protect the Capitol is utterly useless.

And a show like GovSec makes one point clear: If you try to make a fortress impenetrable, the work never ends.

•Unquenchable thirst — for coffee. The research firm Mintel has added them up. There are 21,400 specialty coffee shops in the United States — one for every 14,000 residents. Most of them are in D.C., it sometimes seems. Jacob’s, 401 8th St. N.E., is one of the newest, and the city just approved its outdoor-seating plan. ...

• Don’t give your kids a card, mom. An Allstate Foundation poll shows nearly 20 percent of teens 18 and older have credit cards, and a large chunk of that number (15.7 percent) only pay the minimum; the fastest-growing segment of bankruptcy filers is those 25 and under. ...

• While everyone’s whooping about the closing of the baseball deal, Nationals attendance numbers are stealthily slipping down to the 20,000 level per game and even below. It was a given that the team had to draw 30,000 fans per game to make the financial numbers work for the new stadium. ...

• The hot blog button on the Hill is now church parking. As one Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B member snarled in an aside, “The churches don’t pay taxes, the parishioners don’t live here, why are we giving them the street?” Hill neighborhoods are asking for consistent parking enforcement. If baseball fans can’t park, why can sermon fans? ...

• Picking up passengers daily, the attractive, simple D.C. Circulator line from Union Station to Georgetown and its north-south adjunct is the city’s biggest travel bargain at $1, and ridership numbers are beginning to increase. ...

• Earth Justice, the environmental law firm, last month won an important but nearly unnoticed lawsuit to force Anacostia cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency as a result must actually measure daily pollution levels in the river, not average them out; enforcers of the Clean Water Act of 1972 will no longer ignore D.C.’s notorious storm sewage overflow. ...

• Dr. Peter Shin, the podiatrist who bought Capitol Hill Hospital, may sell his remaining property, which he’d hoped to turn into a 130-unit condo tower at Massachusetts Avenue and 8th N.E., in the face of stern neighborhood opposition from residents who want far fewer (47) units there. Prognosis: more delay and uncertainty.