Great Spring The Best Barbecue Joints in Town Dream Bathroom Walks (Plus Others Worth a Drive) Makeovers Jeff Bezos in D.C. He owns our newspaper. He bought our biggest house. He might bring his company here. Inside the surprising local life of the world’s wealthiest man MAY 2018 ★ Washingtonian ★ May 2108May 64 PAGE NUMBER I N N O V A T O R . B I L L I O N A I R E . NEIGHBOR? Amazon founder and PHOTO- Washington Post owner ILLUSTRATION BY Jef Bezos has quietly become a freewheeling DC Burton C.J. socialite—and soon he and his family will be spending more time here, in the mammoth Kalorama home they’re renovating. What brought the tech giant here in the frst place? And what does he do, exactly, while he’s around? The BYWo Ben story of how the world’s richest man is becoming a f Washingtonian. ord ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ MAY 2018 ★ WASHINGTONIAN 65 “Bezos is attracted— like a moth to light— to Washington.” home in DC. In 2016, he bought the former to light—to Washington.” Textile Museum, a 27,000-square-foot man- Conversations with more than 40 peo- sion in Kalorama, and last year he began a ple in or around Bezos’s circle ofer some massive renovation and expansion—the insight into what brings his jet to town plans for which foretell the ambitiousness and what he does when he gets here—a of the life he intends to have here. All of this curiosity that Washingtonians (and Bezos’s prefigures the question of whether Amazon employees and politicians and HQ2 specu- will bring its new headquarters—HQ2, in lators) are all eager to unspool. Given our the parlance of the 20 municipalities vying city’s infamous weakness for celebrity, the to win it—to Washington, too. predictable scramble to receive him will “What he’s going to do is revive the legacy etch itself into the history of this town— of Kay Graham and her great socializing— perhaps as much as the man will himself. bringing smart, interesting people together in a social context,” says Jean Case, referring BEZOS’S JANUARY VISIT TO THE JEFFERSON to the late Washington Post publisher. Case came on the night that the Alfalfa Club, of and her husband, Steve, the cofounder of which he is a member, convened its annual AOL, have been friends with the Bezoses gathering. Formed in 1913, Alfalfa is Wash- since the mid-’90s. Over breakfast in front of ington’s private confab of the economic the fireplace at the Cases’ home earlier this and political elite. (An unofficial motto year, Bezos described his plans. “That’s how I heard while observing the promenade: Bezos was already jetting they see this house that they’re renovating “One long guest list, one-fourth our GDP.”) into DC to network with other in Kalorama,” Case says. “They’ll real ly use At this year’s dinner, Bezos was flanked by CEOs before he bought the it as a magnet of smart, interesting people Patty Stonesifer—who serves on Amazon’s Post in 2013, but the purchase from all walks.” board and directs the DC nonprofit Martha’s accelerated his trips. It makes sense that a billionaire with Table—and billionaire fashion designer numerous interests before the federal gov- Tory Burch. ernment might resurrect Graham’s fabled Bezos might have had his eye on a few LATE ONE DRIZZLY NIGHT THIS PAST JANUARY, the approximation of an Eddie Bauer lobby, would not pirouette as the couple town that, friends say, he views as an every- salons—to some, an artifact of a time when other dignitaries, too: At the foot of the Jef Bezos strode through the front door model, and across his cocked elbow, his sliced through their gaze. Actually, no one thing city—a delta of diplomats and techies, politics was supposedly less blood sport. Capital Hilton’s grand staircase, he ap- of the Jeferson hotel, burnished from an wife, MacKenzie, dangled two palms with ofered so much as a glance. When I alerted military engineers and journalists, power- Yet Bezos also owns homes in Beverly Hills, peared to exchange pleasantries with Chris evening spent consorting with the Wash- practiced ease. His security detail, for the concierge to the whif of celebrity in our brokers and problem solvers, a mélange West Texas, and New York. His infatuation Dodd—former head of the Motion Picture ington power set and smiling in plain view. which Amazon pays $1.6 million a year, midst, the young woman cocked a quizzical perfectly suited to the tinkerer’s heterodox with the nation’s capital provokes its own Association of America, a man who has This year, the Amazon founder, who is was nowhere in sight. The wealthiest man eye across the table: “Who’s Jef Bezos?” taste. Confidants report that Bezos spends riddle even among those who know him. no small insight into Amazon’s fortunes worth more than $110 billion, became the on earth appeared simply to have walked Soon we’ll all know him. You may even more time in Washington than in any other “It’s a bit of a mystery to me—whether he in movie streaming. Elsewhere mingled richest person alive. Here at the Jeferson, up 16th Street, untroubled by courtiers bump into the man. Just as Bezos has bus- city outside of Seattle—ten trips a year, give has political ambitions or thinks he needs Defense Secretary James Mattis, who, the around 11:30 pm on a Saturday, a flicker of and well-wishers (or the occasional pro- ied himself pushing his Seattle company to or take—and for good reason. Not content to be on the right side of Washington, for Pentagon has acknowledged, receives indi- his unstudied private life appeared. tester). A brood of ruddy-faced tourists, new feats, the inventor of the “everything merely to own the local newspaper, the re- Amazon,” one friend of the Bezos family vidual advice from Bezos from time to time. Bezos wore blue jeans and a teal vest, who collected and dispersed in the hotel store” has been quietly moonlighting in a IMAGES SOMODEVILLA/GETTY CHIP BY PHOTOGRAPH tail guru has become the owner of the largest admits. Yet “Bezos is attracted—like a moth Mattis’s regulatory sway over Bezos’s rocket L66 WASHINGTONIAN ★ MAY 2018 MAY 2018 ★ WASHINGTONIAN 67 The Bezoses’ Kalorama mansion will have At Cafe Milano with At the opening of the Post’s new At the White House for a . by which point Trump was fond a massive ballroom for entertaining, two MacKenzie Bezos building with John Kerry and meeting of tech leaders of attacking Bezos’s “Amazon elevators, a whiskey cellar, and many, many for an Alfalfa Club Post journalist Jason Rezaian, in June 2017. Washington Post” on Twitter. more rooms. after-party. who had been in prison in Iran. company, Blue Origin—which plans to pur- Leonsis, “no Bernie Madof, no Amazon.” particularly seemed to enjoy the repartee with our previous ownerships.” Graham sue national-security launch contracts—was Leonsis wasn’t the only large persona with the smorgasbord of speakers—execu- was famous for remembering reporters’ important enough for Bezos to host him from Washington who met with Bezos tives, philosophers, Supreme Court justices. names and personal details. When the Post’s in Seattle last year. A few tables away sat early on. Around 1995, David Rubenstein, “He’d say things that you wish you would legendary former editor, Ben Bradlee, died attorney general Jeff Sessions, who thus cofounder of the Carlyle Group, one of have thought of,” Colucci recalls. “He was in 2014, Bezos hadn’t initially planned to far has demonstrated a mercurial attitude the country’s largest private-equity firms, always seeing something others don’t see.” attend the funeral at Washington Nation- toward antitrust policy, a verboten notion read about Amazon in the newspaper and By then, Bezos had also forged a relation- al Cathedral. It took an e-mail from Bob at Amazon these days. booked a flight to Seattle. When he arrived, ship with Don Graham, whose family owned Woodward to change his mind, an oversight Currying favor, though, seems not to Rubenstein was struck by the rundown the Post. As early as 1999, the men would see viewed by some as a minor faux pas. (After have animated Bezos’s outings to date. To The blueprints reveal an headquarters, where doors were repur- each other at the annual Allen & Co. Confer- the service, Bezos approached Bradlee’s the surprise of most who work there, Bezos posed as work desks—and more startled ence in Sun Valley, Idaho, another exclusive widow, Sally Quinn, at a reception. “Now I hardly sets foot in Amazon’s Washington undertaking of pharaonic by Bezos himself, who greeted his guests convening of moguls from the worlds of get it,” he told her.) ofce. Instead, insiders say it’s the Post and proportions and the monumental just as he was preparing to drive a boxful tech, media, and finance. On a Monday in Other diferences between Bezos and Blue Origin that exert the most pull, as well of orders to the local FedEx. July of 2013, two days before that year’s his predecessor were evident in the early as a smattering of awards and public events. scope of Bezos’s DC ambitions. Still, a Carlyle-owned firm acquired retreat, Graham opened his e-mail to find a days of the transition. Bezos immediately Trips, generally by way of his G650 Gulf- Amazon stock worth about $4 million.