The Washington Oculus

HOUSEKEEPING: The Oculus' Hiatus

2011-06-07T13:38:00.004-04:00

Greetings. As you can see, I don't regularly update this blog, which I first launched in 2003. (But I will always use it as an online sketchpad for side projects.) If you're looking for my work, follow me on Twitter at @mgrass or check me out at Washington City Paper, where I'm currently the assistant managing editor.

ROUTE 29: Errant Signs Still Up at Dupont, But Can They Be Reused at Key Bridge?

2010-04-06T16:38:00.010-04:00

IT’S NOW BEEN MORE THAN THREE WEEKS since I started a test of the D.C. government’s social media responsiveness regarding what should be a relatively easy task: Removing incorrect signage from Dupont Circle that suggests Route 29 heads through the District via New Hampshire Avenue.

The signs were still posted as of this morning. (But I did see a DDOT truck full of signs parked on Wisconsin Avenue in Tenleytown earlier today, so maybe it was en route to deal with my request?)

As I detailed recently on this blog (and in a January 2005 blog post when I was editing DCist), Route 29 was rerouted years ago, via 11th Street NW and Rhode Island and Georgia avenues. The incorrect signage has been at Dupont Circle for years, so I realize that it’s not the most pressing problem for the District Department of Transportation, which has had a busy winter dealing with blizzards and a subsequent pothole-filling blitz, aided by Twitter. (DDOT was also busy at Nationals Park on Monday with Opening Day.)

I’ll tweet @DDOTDC to check in on my request to remove the incorrect signs and update. (Another quick response, via direct message: @DDOTDC hasn't forgotten about my request, it's just there hasn't been time yet to get them taken down. C'est la vie.) Since the initial tweet request on March 14, the agency acknowledged my request, responded to a second tweet inquiry and confirmed via subsequent direct messages that Route 29 doesn’t run through Dupont Circle. Additionally, @DDOTDC asked me where the signs were located. I responded that there are at least four Route 29 signs if you walk around the circle. (Hey DDOT: I recently spotted a fifth, on New Hampshire Avenue, south of the circle, on the sidewalk adjacent to the northbound lanes and the Heurich House.)

So, What About the Key Bridge/Whitehurst Signs?

It would a shame to just trash the old Dupont signs. Here’s a suggestion: Reuse them for the Route 29 connection between the Key Bridge and Whitehurst Freeway.

Just like I noted in January 2005, northbound Route 29 today lacks any sort of signage on the Key Bridge to alert drivers to the connecting ramp to the Whitehurst Freeway, where Route 29 continues en route to K Street NW and downtown. (At the photo above, note the small hard-to-see sign that says “To Downtown,” which lacks any sort of arrow indicating which way you’re supposed to go.)

Similarly, wayfinding signage for southbound Route 29 is problematic. There are no Route 29 signs if you’re going from the Whitehurst onto the Key Bridge, via the bridge’s congested intersection with Canal Road and M Street NW. In the traffic island, there’s a big empty signpost just sitting there (see photo below left), suggesting the city once had plans to place wayfinding signage there for Canal Road/MacArthur Boulevard/Foxhall Road and another for Key Bridge and M Street NW (and southbound Route 29, of course).

Are U.S. Highway Route Signage Important?

Drivers in the District don’t find much use for U.S. highway routes, which predate the Interstate Highway System. The routes, designated with black lettering on a white shield, are more identified with roadways in Maryland and Virginia. Long-distance drivers generally stick to the Interstate highways and don’t need to rely on Routes 1, 29 and 50 to get move through the D.C. metro area. But they might take one of those routes through the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, though they’re often known better by local names, like Lee Highway (Route 29) or Arlington Boulevard (Route 50) in Virginia and Colesville Road (Route 29) in Maryland.

In recent years, the city replaced aging and ineffective route wayfinding signage on the inbound 14th Street Bridge. The bridge technically carries Interstate 395 and Route 1 between the District and Virginia. As drivers approached the 14th Street SW/Southwest Freeway split adjacent to the Jefferson Memorial, the overhead sign simply gave you two highway shields to choose from: Route 1 and Interstate 395. When the sign was rehabbed a few years ago, additional information was added to note that Route 1 runs into downtown via 14th Street, which is more useful designation for local drivers.

Now, will the District clear up the Route 29 confusion? (I just tweeted @DDOTDC about possibly reusing the signs.)

URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY: Holy Rood Cemetery's Sad State of Disrepair

2010-04-03T15:30:00.017-04:00

ONE OF THE DISTRICT'S BEST VIEWS unfortunately sits in one of the most depressing of places: Holy Rood Cemetery off Wisconsin Avenue at the edge of Glover Park. Some cemeteries are beautiful places, like Brooklyn's parrot-filled Green-Wood, literary Sleepy Hollow near Concord, Mass., and Hollywood in Richmond, Va., just to name a few.

But while Holy Rood has its charms, it is a pretty sad place. Years of neglect have left it in awful shape. Graves are damaged, vandalized and largely forgotten. Unlike Capitol Hill's Congressional Cemetery, there are no known famous politicians buried there (at least according to the authoritative Political Graveyard database). But it is the oldest Irish Catholic cemetery in operation in the District, according to The Washington Post, which documented Holy Rood's sorry state in 2008.

And that's not all, so says The Post:

As many as 1,000 free Catholic blacks and slaves are believed to be buried there, although many are in unmarked graves or were buried with wooden markers that rotted away.

Other graves hold Catholic hoteliers, butchers, laborers, maids, war veterans, mothers who died in childbirth, victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic and many others.

When I was up at Holy Rood this week, I had lost track of the ongoing conflict over the terrible condition of the cemetery.

To sum up the situation, Holy Rood was established as a cemetery by Holy Trinity Church, which was founded by Jesuits affiliated with Georgetown University. During World War II, oversight of Holy Trinity was transferred to the Archdiocese of Washington, but Holy Rood was left under the university's care.

As The Post reported:

It has not been a happy combination, according to research by local historian Carlton Fletcher.

Over the years, the university has appeared at times to be a reluctant cemetery owner, skimping on maintenance, fighting with owners of burial plots and, at one point, seeking to remove the graves so that the land could be developed.

The university repaired Holy Rood's Wisconsin Avenue retaining wall and keeps the grass mowed.

When I was up at Holy Rood this week, it's pretty clear that not much has changed. Graves are deteriorating. Many grave inscriptions are illegible. (Fortunately, there is a partial directory online.)

As time passes, Holy Rood's condition will only worsen.

Perhaps the neighborhood's dog lovers could come to the rescue and establish a satellite branch of CemeteryDogs.org for Holy Rood?

» More background on Holy Rood at Georgetown Metropolitan

CAPITOL SOUTH: Train Tunnel Would Complicate 'Pelosi House Office Building'

2010-03-25T15:19:00.014-04:00

MATT YGLESIAS IS RIGHT: The surface parking lot to the south of the Cannon House Office Building and adjacent to the Capitol South Metrorail station escalators is pretty ugly, a space that could be used for more productive purposes. The ThinkProgress blogger wrote earlier this week that the space is perfect as "the future location of the Pelosi House Office Building."

But the construction of congressional office buildings has been a political hot potato for generations — for more background on the evolution of the congressional campus, see my article "The Keystone of Washington" from Roll Call's 50th Anniversary edition in 2005 and my piece about the construction of the Hart Senate Office Building from 2004.

For any future Pelosi House Office Building, the security challenges posted by First Street's train tunnel would complicate construction.

The tunnel that links Union Station's lower level train platforms — for Virginia Rail Express and Amtrak service serving points south of Washington — with L'Enfant Plaza and the Long Bridge over the Potomac River beyond curves directly under the parking lot where Yglesias would like to see an office building honoring the House speaker. You can see the tunnel portal here near New Jersey Avenue; at First and C streets SE, the tunnel curves north on its route to Union Station. Another Capitol Hill-area tunnel, under Virginia Avenue, sits nearby and provides a bypass of the First Street tunnel and Union Station for trains traveling between Virginia and Maryland.

Following the toxic Howard Street train tunnel fire in Baltimore in 2001 and general terrorism fears that unfolded in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the D.C. Council pushed legislation to ban hazardous shipments via rail within 2.2. miles of the U.S. Capitol.

As then-Ward 3 D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson wrote at the time:

Studies have shown that such an attack could create a deadly toxic cloud extending 14 miles, killing or injuring up to 100,000 people within 30 minutes and resulting in billions of dollars of economic damage. As noted by the District’s congressional representative, the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton, this is the “single greatest unaddressed security threat to the City. ... The Federal Government has not acted to prevent the terrorist threat resulting from the transportation of dangerous volumes of ultrahazardous materials through the Capitol Exclusion Zone.

The Washington Post's Sally Quinn, explored the issue in 2006 in "Hell on Wheels":

If the railroads won't reroute hazardous shipments voluntarily, then what's the answer? It's simple: President Bush could pick up the phone and demand that they do so.

Well, it was never that simple.

Rail operator CSX argued that the legislation interfered with interstate commerce and a legal challenge ensued in CSX Transportation v. The District of Columbia.

Washington, D.C., is a troublesome freight rail bottleneck on the East Coast and planners ideally see a freight rail bypass of downtown Washington, but that is a long way away. "It is unlikely that any of the bypasses would be operating before 2017 at the earliest," Greater Greater Washington's Matt Johnson wrote in in an examination of the topic last year.

While building atop of rail infrastructure isn't impossible — see Atlantic Terminal, the East Side Access Project and Penn Station/Moynihan Station/Hudson Yards redevelopment in New York City, or for that matter, the proposed Burnham Place development atop the Union Station rail yards in the District — it is expensive.

And security sensitive sites like Capitol Hill present additional challenges. So don't expect a Pelosi House Office Building anytime soon on top of that parking lot, no matter how ugly it is.

Photo of the Cannon House Office Building surface parking lot from Google Street View

UPDATE: 7 Days Later, DDOT Is 'Researching' Errant Route 29 Signs

2010-03-21T14:37:00.003-04:00

A WEEK AGO, I decided to test the social media responsiveness of the District Department of Transportation related to what should be an easy task for the D.C. government: Remove some errant signs at Dupont Circle that suggest that Route 29 travels through the area via New Hampshire Avenue. In fact, Route 29 had been rerouted years ago via Georgia and Rhode Island avenues and 11th and K streets NW. For all the background, click here.

Immediately once I tweeted a request to DDOT to remove the signs, I received word from the agency that my request was "interesting" and that it was being looked into.

So where do things stand now? After I inquired again last week Wednesday, I received an update via a Twitter direct message: "We're researching the signs."

I'm not sure what depth of research this issue requires to determine that Route 29 doesn't go through Dupont Circle. Click here, or here, or here. (Look for the Route 29 shields on adjacent roadways that are not New Hampshire Avenue.)

So seven days later, the signs are still posted. Rest assured, I will be watching this issue as it develop and remain a champion for wayward travelers trying to make their way between Virginia and Maryland via Route 29 through the District.

Postscript: Oh yes, Metro: You also have Route 29 going though Dupont Circle on some neighborhood maps posted in stations. One agency at a time, I suppose ...

After Winter Floods, Signs of Life in the Potomac Gorge

2010-03-18T16:46:00.007-04:00

ODDLY ENOUGH, one of the most biologically diverse natural areas in the Mid-Atlantic lies inside the District of Columbia’s borders. Few people, however, know where to find it. And right now is perhaps the best time to see the landscape change.

The Potomac Gorge, which stretches from a point upriver from Georgetown to Great Falls beyond the District boundary, is a wild area reshaped annually depending on the severity of flooding. In the vicinity of Little Falls, just upriver from Chain Bridge, the river channel narrows and fast-moving floodwaters can litter the floodplain, which stretches up to the C&O Canal, with boulders, trees, sediment and other debris.

I used to live on the bluffs overlooking this wonderful natural area and have spent a good deal of time exploring the gorge, which falls largely under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. Earlier today, I went on a 7 1/2-mile roundtrip hike into the gorge from my apartment and for the first time, have seen this landscape fresh after floodwaters have receded.

Currently, there’s a fresh layer of sediment that has already sprouted new plantlife. Water has pooled at different elevations, abandoned by receded floodwaters which have drained away through a complex network of streams and rivulets back to the river channel. The other dominant sign of intense flooding: The vegetation that had survived the winter has been bent over in a downstream direction.

Once spring takes hold and this area leafs out, it will be quite difficult and treacherous to navigate if you leave the established trails between the C&O Canal towpath and the river’s rock-strewn channel. So I got the timing just right — after the winter floods and before spring has sprung.

I was not, however, able to hike all the way to the river channel at Chain Bridge because of the way the flooding had left behind pooled water. Normally, I like to go to hike there to a point opposite Pimmit Run on the Virginia side of the river, where there was once a mill where the Declaration of Independence was stashed away safe keeping as the British were torching Washington in 1814.

From way down at the bottom of the gorge looking up at the Chain Bridge, it’s hard to imagine that floodwaters could rise so high as to wash away the bridge’s superstructure. That happened in 1936, when the Potomac had its largest recorded flood. The bridge was rebuilt atop the stone piers that date to the 1870s. On one of them, there’s some 1880s-era graffiti if you look closely enough.

Attention DDOT: Route 29 Doesn’t Travel Through Dupont Circle

2010-03-14T13:58:00.019-04:00

THE DISTRICT DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION has been receiving plaudits in the local Twitterverse recently for being responsive to pothole repair requests coming in via Twitter following our epic snowfall and slow snowmelt, all which tore up D.C. streets. I’ve seen a few DDOT pothole patrols patching rough spots around town. So Twitter has certainly shown its effectiveness in promoting responsive government — as long as those in government want to be responsive.

I have a non-pothole related issue I'd like DDOT to address: incorrect wayfinding signage.

The "bastard child” of U.S. highway routes through the District, Route 29, has an identity crisis. Although it technically runs from the Key Bridge to the D.C.-Maryland border at Georgia Avenue via Rhode Island Avenue, 11th Street NW, K Street NW and the Whitehurst Freeway, pedestrians and drivers heading through Dupont Circle might be a bit confused.

For years, the city has posted signs at the circle indicating that Route 29 travels along New Hampshire Avenue, which is not accurate.

The Route 29 signage confusion isn’t necessarily a new concern. I wrote about it when I was editing DCist back in 2005. Years ago, Route 29 ran through the District via New Hampshire Avenue, 16th Street NW and Alaska Avenue and at some point — when, I’m not too sure — was rerouted to its current path.

While I sort of like the old Route 29 signs at Dupont as a relic of historic wayfinding, there’s no need to have them posted.

To test DDOT’s social media responsiveness, I just tweeted a request for DDOT to remove the old Route 29 signs. ("Happy Sunday @DDOTDC! Can you please remove all Route 29 signage from Dupont Circle? Route 29 was rerouted years ago. Thanks.") Let’s see how much time it takes for the signs to come down. A couple days? A week? Four years? Only time will tell.

In the course of researching the history of Route 29 in D.C., I dug through my map archives and pulled out a 1973 Amoco Oil Company map of the District, pictured below. It has the old New Hampshire Avenue routing, plus an ALT 29 routing between the Key Bridge and New Hampshire Avenue via M Street NW. Route 50, which cuts through the District on Constitution Avenue, was once routed via Independence Avenue.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, when a northern extension of Route 29 into D.C. and Maryland was considered in the 1930s, there was an "understanding that when the by-pass and direct line around Washington has been constructed that [Route 29] will hook up and follow it, or some route passing around out of the thickly congested area in Washington."

Well, that never happened.

Most curious, perhaps, are the former D.C. truck routes meant to “expedite traffic through the city.” For some reason, one truck route for Route 29 takes the trucks from K Street NW to Virginia Avenue via 25th and 26th streets. Imagine the uproar within the membership of the Foggy Bottom Association if DDOT were to re-sign the truck route on such quiet residential streets!

Photos by Michael E. Grass

Dodge the Interior Rain on the D2 Metrobus, Which Falls in All Directions

2010-03-13T15:24:00.010-05:00

IF THERE ISN'T A WORSE TORTURE than waiting for a D.C. Metrobus in the rain, it's riding one where it's raining inside. As transit rolling stock ages and deteriorates, moisture will find its way in, especially around the emergency roof hatch. (Or in the case of older New York City subway train cars, like the R32s, leaky ceiling air conditioning units.)

This afternoon heading into Dupont Circle on the D2 bus, the rain came inside as I was sitting toward the back. Depending on turns and the rates of acceleration and braking, streams of droplets would rain down in all sorts of directions. Since the D2 has a twisting, stop-and-go route through Georgetown, Burleith and Glover Park, you can only imagine all the fun dodging the water inside the crowded bus.

While the leaky buses are no doubt annoying, at least D2 riders don't have to deal with the old Orion II Metrobuses, lovingly called the "short bus" by some and derided by others (I have previously described the trip on a rush hour Orion II as a scene from an Dickens-esque omnibus). These contraptions were formerly seen on a handful of routes around town, including the now-defunct Adams Morgan-U Street Link (with the odd multi-colored linked paper doll design) and on the D2 as well. While the tiny Orion II buses had issues with engine smoke making drivers regularly nauseated, neighborhood residents in Glover Park were more vocal about how bad WMATA's squeaky bus brakes were disturbing the peace.

Smoke vs. rain? I think I'll take interior rain than a nauseating ride on the short bus.

Manifest Destiny in D.C. Landscape Architecture

2009-11-30T08:59:00.010-05:00

LOOK HERE: A TASTE OF DUBAI, right on the Potomac River! Via Greater Greater Washington, Nikolas Schiller points us to a 112-year-old plan to turn the Potomac River's former tidal flats into a United States-shaped park complete with visions of a nation that stretches down through Mexico and Central America. Down near Panama, there's a convenient canal leading to an interior Tidal Basin-like lagoon, complete with a Cuba and a mini-Eastern Seaboard that ends at the foot of the Washington Monument at today's Constitution Avenue (right where the Potomac levee's missing gap is at 17th Street NW). Missing from the manifest destiny/landscape architecture proposal are Alaska and Hawaii.

According to a previous incarnation of The Washington Times, the park would have had some elevation to represent the Rocky Mountains, about three feet high.

Over in Dubai, do the World Islands constructed in the shape of the globe have any elevation? What about the Maldives? (Speaking of the Maldives, here's a great weekend Financial Times interview with the nation's president, Mohamed Nasheed, who recently held a cabinet meeting underwater to demonstrate the threat his low-lying archipelago faces from climate change.

» "A Projected Relief Park Map of the United States – The Washington Times, March 28, 1897" [Nikolas Schiller via GGW]
» "Afternoon tea with the FT: Mohamed Nasheed" [FT]

On Early Morning F Train, Daily News Doomsday Predictions: Creatures From Sea to Test Earth’s ‘Protectors’ in Epic End Days Battle

2009-02-23T07:18:00.010-05:00

WHAT IS IT ABOUT RONALD REAGAN that sparks space conspiracy theorists? Back in college, my freshman year random-pick roommate ended up being involved in the state chapter of the Mars Society and at one point, I remember him saying there was some crazy Reagan administration conspiracy to thwart efforts to send Americans to Mars.

And now, earlier this morning while riding the F train into Midtown Manhattan from Brooklyn for a 6 o'clock Acela Express en route Washington, D.C., came more maniacal Reagan-fueled space program machinations.

This chatter, uttered by a man who sounded (and looked) like Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny initially caught my attention somewhere between Delancey Street and Broadway-Lafayette:

Earth, wind and fire, I’m telling you. … The forces of the world. … They aren’t telling us. … They aren’t telling us!

Whoa! What aren’t they telling us?

So out came a nice Doomsday scenario from Vinny, who was talking to a guy who could have been Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone. I suppose this could have been a refashioning of some Xenophonian myth a la The Warriors or a History Channel special on Nostradamus or a Captain Planet episode involving Wheeler, Gi, Kwame, Linka and Ma-Ti battling evil toxic waste peddlers.

But the Gipper in conjunction with sea creatures and space missiles make it such a better tale.

And Vinny happened to be wearing a black jacket with the Daily News logo emblazoned on the back! So this has to be true. No?

So, did you know … ?

That all those missiles Ronald Reagan put in orbit as part of the Star Wars program against the Soviets are going to come back to haunt us?
“They” aren’t telling us that Earth’s orbit will come too close to the sun?
“They” intervened in the 1980s to stop Reagan from putting more missiles in space?
That there are still too many out there?
That those missiles will explode because of they’re getting too close to the sun?
That the toxic material from the missiles will change the chemistry of the world’s oceans?
That there are thousands and thousands of sea creatures we haven’t discovered yet?
That the change in oceanic chemistry will cause the sea creatures to come to the surface and attack our cities?
That “they” are here to protect us?
That if you aren’t trained as a Navy SEAL, “you aren’t gonna be ready” to battle the sea creatures in the end times?
That “you can’t do anything about it” … ?

Oh well. We must be in the end times. Happy Monday morning to you all.

Creative Commons photo via dorywithserifs/flickr

METRO: A 42 Limited Stop? A Palisades-Bound Bus No. 3855?

2009-02-22T12:34:00.004-05:00

MANY METRO OFFICIALS don’t use public transportation regularly. Lena H. Sun’s story in The Washington Post is one that gets written every few years checking in on how in-touch Metro’s decision makers are with the average commuter. (Then-General Manager Richard White was criticized for driving an SUV in from his Fairfax home and avoiding the daily pains of the Orange Line crush.) These days, according to The Post, only half of Metro’s board members ride public transit regularly and several haven’t paid their parking fees at Metro headquarters. C’est la vie.

Sun interviews an average commuter who is “actually stunned” with the news.

It’s understandable for some officials who represent some suburban jurisdictions to skip public transit and in some cases, those who are from more urban areas, too. In any regard, a balance should be struck.

But it might do D.C. Council member Jim Graham some good if he rode the bus a little more as his ward is one of the best places in the entire Washington, D.C., region served by transit. And Ward One is generally within a 30-minute bus ride from places Graham needs to go regularly, like the Wilson Building and Metro headquarters downtown.

AS A REGULAR BUS RIDER over the years, I’ve found that you get a better chance to observe your surroundings while riding the bus. And notice problems that need fixing.

Here’s my list from the past week riding the D6 and 42 buses and the Red Line in Northwest Washington:

1. For those who may be unfamiliar with the 42 bus line which runs from Mount Pleasant to downtown via Columbia Road and Connecticut Avenue, it serves Adams Morgan, a top destination for locals and visitors alike. Adding “via Adams Morgan” to the “Mount Pleasant” destination signs is very nice, an update made sometime in the past year or so when I was living in Brooklyn.

But what is the “42 Limited Stop?” Isn’t that the newish 43 bus, which runs only in the peak direction to and from Farragut Square, skipping stops in Dupont Circle? I’ve also recalled, though many months ago, seeing a “D6 Limited Stop” bus on MacArthur Boulevard. Wouldn’t it be nice if that actually existed and skipped Foxhall Village?

2. Hmmm, the No. 3855 bus doesn’t seem to match Metrobus’ route numbering conventions. But on three occasions, the 3855 bus was making D6 stops along MacArthur Boulevard in the Palisades.

3. Wednesday morning of last week, there was a bus with the directional sign reading “D6/Stadium-Armory.” However, the bus operator told people as they tried to enter that it was a D5 bus going to Farragut Square.

4. The Metro Trip Planner seems to be a few minutes off from posted bus schedules, at least along MacArthur Boulevard (at Cathedral Avenue and Newark Street), when compared twice last week. The buses arrived at the time posted at the bus stop, not the Trip Planner. (I will try to keep an eye on this to better document the discrepancies.)

5. Twice last week, D6 buses had a malfunctioning fare card machine and I rode for free, along with many others.

6. Friday evening heading from Gallery Place to Dupont Circle, there was a train bound for “Twinbrook.” heading in the direction of Glenmont. (I think I can diagnose that one fairly easy: Refer to my 2007 Express piece on how even though the Metrorail extension to Dulles extension does not yet exist, train operators can (accidentally) punch in the wrong destination code and still have the train go to “Dulles.”

Oh details ... I should add though that I've had great bus service thus far. The devil's in the details.

Lest I Forget ...

2009-02-22T12:32:00.001-05:00

Here’s the new job.

TRAVELS: Sun Sets on a Fantastic Hiatus

2009-02-11T20:34:00.003-05:00

Photo of the sun setting over Silverlake, Los Angeles, Feb. 9, 2009.

I'M NOT SURE WHAT TIME ZONE I'm in right now mentally. After relaxing, sitting in traffic and eating In N' Out burgers and carnitas tacos in Los Angeles over the past week, eating fish tacos in La Jolla on Tuesday, catching the red eye to JFK last night and now sitting on a rather stuffy Amtrak train bound for Washington, D.C., my hiatus is coming to a close. Work awaits me tomorrow. Details TK.

CALIFORNIA: On the Road

2009-02-08T11:26:00.004-05:00

Looking out over the San Fernando Valley from the top of Topanga Canyon. Feb. 7, 2009.

GREETINGS FROM GREY CALIFORNIA, where residents of the Southland have been drenched in recent days. Following a nice sunny drive down the coast to San Diego County on Thursday -- Encinitas, Carlsbad and Solana Beach to be precise -- the rains came heading into Orange County on my way to Santa Monica. Traffic was literally moving 4 or 5 miles an hour on the 405 freeway on the way up the coast.

The sun is starting to come out this morning and I'll be on my way to Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House later this afternoon.

NORTHEAST CORRIDOR: Philly Pit-Stop

2009-02-04T09:38:00.003-05:00

I'M TAKING SOME VACATION TIME and headed out to California, but that's with stops in Philadelphia -- where a snowy 5th Street, pictured here last night -- and later today in Washington, D.C. Then I'm flying to Los Angeles for some rest and relaxation, perhaps with some dispatches from the road.

I'll be back on the East Coast later next week.

BROOKLYN: A Beautiful Inaugural Morning

2009-01-20T11:13:00.004-05:00

ON THIS MORNING OF BARACK OBAMA'S INAUGURATION, it's a beautiful day here in Brooklyn. I hope things are just as beautiful where you are. Onward and upward ...

Photo of a snowy, but sunny Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

New Study Shows That Rats Prefer Cities With Logical Street Grids

2009-01-19T14:55:00.009-05:00

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, I covered an unfolding drama in Washington, D.C.'s Dupont Circle where a rat had jumped into a baby stroller, leading to a jurisdictional squabble over exactly who had rodent control responsibilities there. While rats certainly do enjoy the circle, a new study shows that they like rectangular grids. According to Science Daily, rats love Manhattan in particular because they can cover more territory because of the logical street grid.

According to Science Daily:

"We put rats in relatively large areas with objects and routes resembling those in Manhattan,” explains Prof. [David] Eilam. The rats, he found, do the same things humans do: They establish a grid system to orient themselves. Using the grid, the rats covered a vast amount of territory, “seeing the sights” quickly. In contrast, rats in an irregular plan resembling New Orleans’ failed to move far from where they started and didn’t cover much territory, despite travelling the same distances as the "Manhattan rats."

So if rats understand street grids, what does that mean for the District of Columbia, where much of the city is a giant grid interrupted by giant diagonal avenues? Does Pennsylvania Avenue provide an easy route for rats to cross quadrants? Does that mean that traffic circles and squares, at the intersection of the grand avenues, create natural gathering spots for rats (and I suppose people)?

That would be an interesting study ...

» "Rats Say: Manhattan Rules!" [Science Daily]

Park Slope Air Crash Tribute Video Depicts Burning Boy in Odd Re-Enactment of Tragedy

2009-01-19T10:24:00.008-05:00

THE U.S. AIRWAYS jet that ditched in the Hudson River last week has been brought out of the icy waters off Battery Park City. The pilot and crew, along with some intrepid ferryboat operators and others, have been hailed as heroes for saving all the passengers from what would have otherwise been a mass casualty event.

While following the news developments of the crash, I was poking around online to find some basic information about the massive mid-air collision over Staten Island in 1960, which sent one plane toward Park Slope in Brooklyn. In all 134 people died including six people on the ground. When United Flight 826 initially crashed into a block of brownstones apartments in the vicinity of 7th Avenue and Sterling Place, very close to Flatbush Avenue, first responders did not know that a plane had crashed. It had seemed as if there was an explosion. Then the tail section was discovered in the middle of the burning rubble of Park Slope.

Poking around YouTube for some news clips of the 1960 air disaster, I came across a tribute video dedicated to the boy on the United flight who survived the crash but then died at the hospital the next day. It's an interesting video to say the least, complete with a pseudo re-enactment of the boy -- burning no less -- crashing into the snow. While the air disaster is certainly scary enough -- considering what could have happened if the U.S. Airways flight had crashed somewhere in the Bronx or Manhattan -- this video tribute is a bit creepy. Watch for yourself ...

Do Svidaniya Brighton Beach: Brief Visit to Gawk at Furry Streetscape a Success!

2009-01-16T16:03:00.010-05:00

IF YOU SEE ANY FUR COATS on a Coney Island- or Brighton Beach-bound subway train, there's a good chance the owner's destination is Brooklyn's own Little Russia-by-the-Sea. Heading out on the F train earlier today, I spotted the first clue that confirmed I was headed to the right direction: A woman in her 50s bundled up in a sable coat with matching fur-covered pillbox-type hat. With her there was a Bed Bath & Beyond bag carrying some sort of comforter and a second bag with an overly earnest looking Raggedy Ann doll.

Because the train was late, it ran express out the Culver Line. As the train pulled into the W. 8th Street station, the woman stood up to exit -- I surmised she wanted to transfer to a Q train to Brighton Beach, like me -- the F train pressed forward to the Stillwell Avenue terminal. The woman made a sour face, looked about the train car and sat back down, clearly miffed. Raggedy Ann continued to look out of the bag, not phased.

Fifteen frigid minutes later, and a transfer to a Q train at Stillwell, we were in Brighton Beach. Like neighboring Coney Island, much of the action is on the boardwalk. But not in January. Instead of using the seaside promenade as a parade ground, the fur-festooned Russian residents of Brighton Beach take to their boulevard under the tracks.

If PETA organizers were looking for a good place to stage an anti-fur action, Brighton Beach Boulevard in January is the place to be. But I wouldn't want to face off with the locals, a fierce bunch hardened by the icy winter sea breezes and sharp-edge typography of the Cyrillic alphabet that dots the main drag under the B/Q train tracks.

Six years ago this weekend, I was visiting friends in Manhattan and ventured out to Brighton Beach, went to M&I International Food and gawked at the birch sap for sale while a Russian friend of mine bought caviar in bulk. Over yonder, a babushka was seated on the stairs, selling tubes of lipstick, perfume and eyeliner neatly arranged on the stair steps. (A health safety violation? Izvinite!) I didn't go in this time, but a recent review on Yelp aptly sums up the atmosphere: "The customers are rude and will push you without apologizing or saying excuse me, but that's most of Brighton Beach."

Six years ago, it was frigid, much like today. But instead of sunshine, it was cold, gloomy and snow was blowing through the elevated tracks. It was Brooklyn's own little Arctic Murmansk.

From my memories of that trip to Brighton Beach -- my first time there was back in the early 1990s -- it was the first time I'd ever seen fur coats en mass. Growing up in Michigan where it was indeed cold, fur coats might have been looked upon as a little too showy, reserved only for a select few woman of a select stature in town. In middle school, a friend had said the way to judge a woman in a fur coat was how wide the strips were: The thinner the strip, the cheaper the pelt and the cheaper the coat. And why would you want to be showy with a cheap fur coat?!?

In Brighton Beach, it's mostly wide strips at least from my informal survey. And it seemed that more than half of everyone on the street was bundled up in fur. Russians, you see, take the cold very seriously.

I blended in with the streetscape wearing my dad's old sheepskin coat from the 1960s. Plus, as someone who is half Latvian, I looked sort of Russian. (But never tell that to a Latvian, just in case you don't know your Soviet history. Stalin, gulags and occupation are never leisurely topics of conversation.)

Stepping into an all-Russian book and gift store, I walked through, looking at the array of titles, trying to do a rough translation from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet. (Like that was going to help me figure it out ...) I carefully moved from section to section, trying to figure out an escape that would involve avoiding having to move around anyone. An encounter might have necessitated an uncomfortable conversation in my non-Russian.

I found my route out, snaking through what I think was the religion section and to safety on the street.

While six years hasn't changed the Brighton Beach strip that much, there's now a Starbucks and a Bank of America. While getting cash from the ATM, Russian voices dominated. And there was more fur in the lobby!

And while the fur today wasn't as dominant as it was six years ago, there were some show-stoppers: There was the woman in something that looked too orange to be natural. Then there was an elderly man in a Rascal-type scooter wrapped in a black fur thing, and matching ushanka, ear-flaps up and looking absolutely miserable. And then there was the otherwise striking woman with a brown fur bonnet showing off some Snuffalopogus-style Ugg things. She got looks from some of the locals hanging out. You don't see something like that every day, not even in Brighton Beach in January. Too bad it was too cold to take many photos. I got a couple, but Bill Cunningham should really swing through.

And while it's hard to tell how the recession is affecting retail sales along the strip, you can get something furry starting at $999, as you can see in one of the photos here.

My toes frozen, it was time to leave for the warmth of home.

Sidenote: Do they make fur-lined Snuggies?

First photo by Flickr user arimoore; the rest by Michael E. Grass

Might Possible UDC-SEU Merger Eliminate Directional Confusion?

2009-01-14T00:22:00.010-05:00

IS THERE SOMETHING in my sidewalk stature that suggests I excel at giving street or transit directions? In the past three days, I've been asked for directions on four different occasions including yesterday's "Yo, where's the bread store?!?" question from a lost driver on Court Street here in Brooklyn (Caputo's, naturally!) to some French twentysomethings lost in the maze of the Atlantic-Pacific Street subway complex trying to get to Times Square (Uggh, really? Times Square? Either the 2/3 express via 7th Avenue; the N or Q express via the Manhattan Bridge and Broadway; or the R local via the Montague Street tunnel and Broadway ... Sacre bleu! Choices!).

While it's indeed easy to find Times Square when you emerge from the subway, I wonder what the navigational mess it'll be if the University of the District of Columbia combines forces with Southeastern University in Southwest Washington, D.C.

From The Washington Post's Susan Kinzie we learn that the University of the District of Columbia plans to open a second campus for two-year community college programs. Sources tell The Post that UDC hopes to merge with Southeastern, which is a private college.

From my observations, a merger could mean other things, including the elimination of the pesky-but-not-really-important directional confusion surrounding the whole Southeastern in Southwest D.C. thing.

But there's more navigational madness: Just examine the official directions on SEU.edu!

The following are just the first four parts of the eight-part step-by-step instructions on how to get to the Southeastern campus from the L'Enfant Plaza Metrorail station:

• Exit L'Enfant Plaza Station using the L'Enfant Plaza exit. This exit is marked by signs throughout the station and distinguished by a round portrait of an astronaut standing straight up with arms to the side (not angled and waving).
• There should be a shoe shine station at the top of the escalators and a newsstand to your left. Take a left. [ed.: This is the site of Gene Weingarten's Joshua Bell experiment]
• Exit through the bank of doors and go down the stairs. You will now be facing the back of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] building. A small park should be at your right and the HUD Creative Child Development Center [a gated playground] at your left.
• Take a left at the playground and pass briefly under the HUD building, heading towards the parking lot and the street.

And that's all before you have to cross over the I-395/Southwest Freeway! (Which Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry wanted to turn into a ceremonial extension for Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, which violates some basic cartographic and wayfinding principles.)

Photo of Southwest Freeway/Michael E. Grass Archives

You could, however, just use the Waterfront-SEU station on Metrorail's Green Line, but SEU's directions from there require seven different steps, including exiting through a parking lot adjacent to the M Street SW Safeway location.

Anyhow, as The Post notes, UDC doesn't have a second location in mind. But let's say Southeastern's campus is combined with UDC. Does that require a name change for the Waterfront-SEU station? Metrorail station name changes aren't always so easy.

UDC's Van Ness campus (... do I dare say it? ... near North Cleveland Park!) was once located at Mount Vernon Square, where the Washington Convention Center is today. It's been known under different predecessor names and existed as different institutions since it was founded in 1851, e.g., Miner Normal School, Wilson Normal School, Miner Teachers College, Wilson Teachers College. UDC as we sort of know it today formed as a merger between D.C. Teachers College, Washington Technical Institute and Federal City College in the 1970s.

See UDC's full official evolution on the official history page and background info and related links below.

Maybe this new move will ease the school's identity crisis ...

» "UDC Plans to Operate Two Campuses" [WaPo]
» "UDC History" [UDC]
» "Locations and Directions" [SEU]
» "Southwest Freeway: Isn't It Already Named for Dwight Eisenhower?" [Washington Oculus]
» "'Change Agent' to Lead UDC" [WaPo]
» "UDC is a School to Retool" [WaPo]

LONDON: A Pre-Post-War Post-War Reconstruction Plan for the City

2009-01-13T22:18:00.001-05:00

I'VE BEEN EXAMINING a most fascinating preliminary report published in 1944 by the British government on the post-war reconstruction of the City of London. it was originally private and confidential, but released for publication in July 1944. So as German bombers targeted the City of London -- note Big-C City, not little-c city ... as in the heart of the financial capital, near St. Pauls and adjacent to the Tower of London -- planners were already planning for the post-war reconstruction.

The City had already been largely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and despite a plan by Christopher Wren that would have imposed a new street plan, the City was rebuilt largely along the same meandering, helter-skelter medieval non-pattern. Enter the 19th century: Railway companies brought trains into the heart of the capital. Traffic increased. Congestion built. And post-war rebuilding provided an awful nice excuse to acquire property to widen streets, build new ones, open up land around historic properties (like St. Pauls).

Anyhow, it's been great to examine the the full-color pull-out maps that include land surveys of the City from before the war (1936) and during the war (1943) where a large swath of the City was colored in orange for "Opportunities and Considerations" for redevelopment. (Orange is also a color that could be associated with Blitz fires!)

For those familiar with the City, Upper Thames Street (mapped below) and Lower Thames Street, which is your quickest best driving between the Tower and Blackfriars Bridge, was proposed at the time. A ring road that would have formed a northerly arc from Holborn Circus to Liverpool Street Station via Barbican (itself, a major post-war design landmark) was proposed but never built.

View Larger Map

SUBWAY SAGA: An Old Time Train Ride on the IND 6th Ave. Local

2008-12-14T14:14:00.002-05:00

I was headed into Manhattan this afternoon when the F train pulled into the 2nd Avenue station. Across the platform was one of those nostalgia trains, made up of different decommissioned rail cars that once ran through the subway system.

Just as there was some sort of historic photo shoot going on, people were filtering through the rail cars. I've been through the New York City Transit Museum in Brooklyn (in the old Court Street station, once part of the Fulton Street Line), so I've seen the historic interiors before. But I've never been on a nostalgia train as it’s gone through the subway system.

This train ran from 2nd Avenue along the 6th Avenue Local to Queens Plaza via 53rd Street. These train cars are incredibly loud. When there gaps in the third rail current, the lights go out momentarily. The announcement system was not working, so the conductor yelled out: "E train to Queens Plaza making all local stops."

The rattan seats are pretty comfortable. I sat adjacent to an older couple who looked around with giant grins on their faces. It's not every day a time machine pulls into your subway station.

ARCHIVES: Eyewitnessing Jon Stewart's 2004 Appearance on 'Crossfire'

2008-07-03T19:53:00.003-04:00

Photo of the Oct. 15, 2004, "Crossfire" episode on CNN with host Paul Begala, left, guest Jon Stewart, center, and host Tucker Carlson, right, by Michael Grass

WHEN I WAS OUT with friends a week or so ago in Brooklyn, the topic of Jon Stewart's famous 2004 appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" came up. "Oh, yeah, I was in the audience," I said, barely remembering that I was an eyewitness to the "The Daily Show" host berate the bow-tied Tucker Carlson and more or less indict "Crossfire" -- and perhaps cable news in general -- as an element hurting civil discourse in the nation: "Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns. ... You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks."

Stewart's comments and Carlson's response caused an uproar, less than a month away from the 2004 elections. Looking back on the episode, it's likely to go into the history books as one of those major intersections of culture and politics of the first decade of the 21st century.

At the time, I was working at Roll Call newspaper on Capitol Hill and while I can't remember the exact circumstances, I somehow got an invite from CNN to be part of the studio audience. From my understanding at the time, CNN had regular trouble filling the "Crossfire" audience -- eh, it was "Crossfire," where the ratings weren't all that great -- at its studios on the campus of George Washington University.

I went with one of my Roll Call colleagues, John McArdle, who at that time an editorial assistant based on the copy desk, where I was a copy editor and jack-of-all-trades for the K Street Files lobbying column and RollCall.com. Less than two years later, McArdle would go on to break news that U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) had been arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in what would become a top scandal -- and comical one at that -- of the 2006 election cycle.

Since Stewart's "Crossfire" appearance had been talked up a few days in advance, I had a sneaking suspicion that CNN was banking on a blockbuster performance. So naturally, writing a post for DCist seemed to make perfect sense, since the site I had started just two months earlier, had quickly built up a readership of a couple thousand readers. But yet, I hesitated ...

Looking back on the DCist piece that I would write from the "Crossfire" event, I went out of my way to avoid any sort of appearance of partisanship. At that point DCist had only been live for two to three months, and while my blogging project was never a secret around the Roll Call newsroom, I had said that I would only stick to local D.C. issues and avoid national politics. (And therefore a potential run-in with my editors ... but then again, this was a newsroom where I'll always remember the time where political analyst Stuart Rothenberg said, "I don't get it. What's a blog?" when CNN's "Inside Politics" introduced the blog segment earlier in the year. Stu's reaction pretty much mirrored the facial expression of Judy Woodruff when those strange blog things started popping up online.)

Still, I knew that not writing about Stewart's "Crossfire" appearance would be a crime, especially since the looming Stewart-Carlson showdown promised to be toxic.

So what did I write about? The choice in music being pumped into the studio, to entertain the audience, mainly filled with George Washington University students and parents in for Colonials Weekend. After Stewart initially started laying into Carlson, CNN went to commercial break. And it was off-air when the confrontation became more heated. But for whatever annoying reason, the in-house music drowned out any of the commercial-break conversation, which sadly, never made it into the transcript. So as Stewart and Carlson were gesticulating and becoming quite animated, all we could here was the bland combination of Canada's Bare Naked Ladies, Dusty Springfield ("Son of a Preacher Man") and Simon and Garfunkel ("Cecilia"). What I would pay now for an official transcript of the off-air comments ...

After the show ended, McArdle and I walked out to the side entrance to catch of glimpse of Stewart leaving. But there wasn't too much to see. So I decided to head home. I walked up 21st Street NW toward Pennsylvania Avenue -- to the block where my family had a townhouse decades earlier (today's Kinkead's restaurant at 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue.)

I guess to me, the Stewart episode wasn't that big a deal at the time. But in Washington, the bubble the envelops the capital can mute your senses and the memories of those big events that don't seem all that big at the time. And maybe, just maybe, HBO's "K Street" will be given a second chance ...

» Crossfire's Damned Studio Music [DCist]

NORTHEAST CORRIDOR: My Third Home

2008-06-23T21:44:00.007-04:00

IF I'M NOT in New York, there's a good chance I'm in Washington (like I was in the past few days). When I'm not in those two cities, there's a good chance I'll be on Amtrak somewhere on the Northeast Corridor. One of the great things about my job helping to edit and manage the Politicker.com network of state politics websites is that I get to dive into the nuts and bolts of campaigns and political news state by state, whether it be the Vermont governor's race to state Senate campaign in California. We're in 16 states now, including Massachusetts, which officially launched today. Our Pennsylvania site has been live for two months or so now and a few weeks ago, our permanent reporters started. Two Sundays back, I paid a visit to our Philadelphia bureau (the view is pictured at top) and had a nice brunch with our Pennsylvania reporters.

Although I haven't spent too much time in Philadelphia, it's a great food city. And I've generally found exploring the city's alleys and half streets to be great time, as long as the weather isn't too miserable. You never know what you'll come across as you turn a corner. (In the case of Uber Street, above, it was a homeless man using the tiny roadway as an outdoor toilet. Philly sure has its charms.)

NEW YORK: The View From, Near My Office

2008-06-12T22:55:00.006-04:00

From top: The Flatiron Building, Broadway at 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue; The Empire State Building from the base of the Flatiron Building; the old Met Life tower on Madison Square Park; view of the Empire State Building from the offices of The New York Observer.

U STREET: Looking Back at a Scarred Strip's Evolving Sense of Time and Place

2008-05-05T23:05:00.013-04:00

AS THE HEARSE carrying my great uncle's casket made its way east on U Street NW, I couldn't help but laugh when it bounced up and down on the rough pavement.

I was in middle school at the time and meant no disrespect to my late great uncle, a Foggy Bottom native who had died at the age of 97 during that hot, humid summer of 1991. Still, the scene was sort of amusing. My great aunt couldn't technically blame the rough road on one of "Marion Barry's potholes," at least in the stretch between 10th and 13th streets. Although U Street's Metrorail station had gone into service that May, D.C.'s famous but faded Black Broadway was still a mess of construction -- wooden planks held up uneven metal plates, which gave Uncle Bill a wild ride to his final resting place at the family burial plot in Prospect Hill Cemetery off North Capitol Street.

The memory of the bumpy funeral procession along down-and-out U Street faded quickly, but when I resettled in the District of Columbia after college, the recollections resurfaced. U Street, I was told, was “coming back.” Indeed, when I explored the area, there were signs of new life. But memories of the corridor’s scars from my great uncle’s funeral procession were quickly resurrected. As U Street evolved in the past quarter century, Uncle Bill’s wild final ride, to me, was one of the many scenes of life, death and rebirth on a street that very much symbolizes everything good and bad associated with the District's recent renaissance.

A month ago, I left the District — a place where my family has roots dating back to the 1860s — and during my transition to my new environs in Brooklyn, I've been thinking back to U Street. I never lived in the neighborhood but like many who have resided in D.C. during the past decade, I've seen the place change slowly and then much more quickly in recent years as the real estate boom went into overdrive in a time when credit was dirt cheap, developers had big plans and dreams of a better city were ever expansive.

My favorite personal refuge has always been The Saloon, tucked into the streetscape slightly below sidewalk level just a stone's throw from Ben's Chili Bowl, which is very much the lasting symbol of U Street. A one-time roommate had discovered the place in 2003 and introduced it to me. Our group of friends gravitated there. I met there with writers and brainstormed ideas for DCist; I would sometimes hold office hours there with my freelancers for The Washington Post's Express newspaper. The staff is friendly, the specialized beer list is superb. A few years ago, the place was never terribly crowded. You could nearly always find a seat and on the off chance there wasn't one, they'd somehow make room. The Saloon has a no-standing rule and an odd regulation where you can't order beer and food at the same time. The place's peculiarities weren't meant to exclude, just create a civil, stable and comfortable environment for those who considered the bar a friendly, hidden gem where the stresses of professional life were temporarily left outside, unless of course you want to vent while snacking on pistachios.

But during this decade, construction cranes followed the U Street crowds as they looked eastward toward lower-numbered streets for new, cool places. The Ellington condo building opened at the corner of 13th and U streets NW in 2004 to much fanfare and more or less cemented gentrification into the streetscape. It's not that the street wasn't changing before the Ellington's arrival — from the Civil War to the Jazz Age to the 1968 riots to the construction of the Green Line, U Street's always been a place in transition — it's just that the massive building symbolized something very different. It aimed to institute a totally new environment almost immediately, like a Loudoun County neo-Colonial townhouse development, except with Art Deco-accents, ornamental brick and a neon sign. The Ellington had a catchy and annoying marketing slogan ("B U on U!"), a tanning salon and franchise restaurant imports from Ward 3 and beyond (Alero and Sala Thai) ... places very different from The Saloon and the other businesses that had helped rebuild U Street's sense of space and place — elements necessary for condo developers to take interest, bloggers to roost and provide an environment to complain (and later apologize for statements) about how "barbaric" it is that "young, computer savvy white people" in nearby Mount Pleasant don't have any cool coffee shops to hang out in.

A DCist commenter once wrote the following, reacting to the annoying background music on the Ellington's website:

The theme music for that building will have to be the sound of crass gentrification crushing a neighborhood's soul. Or possibly Beyonce, who is about as far from The Duke as you can get.

Back in 2004, the owner of The Saloon, Commy Jahanbein, told The Washington Post:

We didn't expect all these changes around us. But I don't worry about it. I'm happy with what I've got here. We cannot pretend to be something we are not.

The gentrification debate has played out time and time again on U Street and has shifted to new frontiers up 14th Street, Georgia Avenue and elsewhere. But this post isn't about praising or decrying gentrification, but about one's conception of place and time.

In the past year or so, finding a seat at The Saloon hasn't been as easy as it once was. It's grown more popular, a testament to U Street's new commercial vitality. I hadn't stopped by The Saloon as much as I used to for a variety of reasons. My old roommate Artie, who had introduced me to the place and its lovely Köstritzer Schwarzbier Lager, had his going away party there March of last year. If you knew how much he loved the place, you know it was the best place for his send-off. Artie, a campaign operative who was featured in the documentary "Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?," was headed to New York City for a new job working as Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's press secretary. About a month later, Artie took his own life. After that, The Saloon I knew, the U Street I knew, was suddenly and forever changed.

A bunch of our friends pooled our money to get Artie's name painted on one of Saloon's exterior bricks as part of the bar's charitable Bricks for Schools fundraising efforts. It would cement his legacy on the building and on U Street, a memorial to his life and times and to me at least, the U Street as we knew it from our limited experience in recent years (including that unfortunate time at the now-defunct and burned-out Kingpin where a mutual friend consumed a bottle of nasty beer that we were told had been on the shelf for at least five years or so, a feat that got us free drinks for the rest of the evening.

When I co-founded DCist back in 2004, one of the prime directives from the folks at Gothamist in New York was to keep DCist's outlook on the city it covers upbeat and positive. It's done that more or less and to great success. But in the District, there's much to be bitter about. There are many problems. Skeptics and cynics abound, the product of the often awkward relationship between the District and federal government and the residents caught in the middle. But in the midst of all that, there are also many good reasons to be hopeful about Washington's future, too.

During one of my final weekends as a D.C. resident, I walked into The Saloon. It was jam-packed and didn't appear that there were any seats available. But the staff made room, once again. It was the same friendly, warm, engaging place, I've known for years, a gem in the midst of constant change on U Street, where the lives of so many have intersected. Let's hope things stay that way.

Images from Flickr users dbking, sandcastlematt and facelessb

PARK SLOPE: Danger! Sextegenarian's Face Meets Feisty Dog Walked by Multi-Tasking Stroller Mom

2008-05-04T20:22:00.024-04:00

DESPITE HAVING nearly 20 subway lines running through Brooklyn, taking the train between Point A and Point B in New York's most-populous borough isn't necessarily the quickest and certainly not the most direct option. Brooklyn's subway lines -- except the indigent and deficient-G -- feed into Manhattan, get intertwined in Downtown Brooklyn with few connections. So walking can be the best inter-neighborhood transit option as is riding the bus, which gives you a nice above-ground tour of the local environs.

Saturday afternoon, while riding the B71 bus along Union Street from Smith Street in Carroll Gardens to Grand Army Plaza at Prospect Park, I saw my first certifiable Park Slope "stroller incident." And was it ever a glorious sight to see! For those who don't know, Park Slope is home to well-off thirtysomething professionals, many with young children. Sharing the sidewalk can be a contentious neighborhood issue with stroller-pushing parents facing off against essentially everyone else for precious personal space on the public sidewalk and the right of way when crossing the street.

At the corner Union Street and 6th Avenue, in the heart of the Slope, a power-walking thirtysomething mother was multitasking, pushing a stroller with child aboard and walking a giant, commanding bulldog-like canine. As she was headed north on 6th Avenue, another thirtysomething was walking her petite, scrappier-looking dog. Just as the two dogs began to take interest in each other in the warm sunshine -- it's spring ... dogs get feisty -- an older couple pushing 60, strolled right into the nexus of danger!

The bulldog got excited; the scrappier dog did too. There was some barking. The bulldog leaped into the air and did some sort of acrobatic half twist, and in the process, hit the poor sextegenarian woman right in the face!

So, this begs the question: What's the bigger threat to the sacred quality of life of Brownstone Brooklyn? Those skateboarding punks supposedly menacing nearby Boerum Hill or stroller-pushing, multi-tasking Park Slope mothers who can't choose between their dogs and kids?

When I related the story to someone today, she said that you have to consider that when you're a mother, you sometimes must juggle a pet and a child and thus are forced to bring both out into the public arena. Thankfully, I have yet to see such multi-tasking on Smith or Court streets in my neighborhood. And here's a sign that sidewalk life is better on my side of the Gowanus Canal: I have yet to see a double-wide stroller. I'm crossing my fingers that I will avoid an awkward sidewalk-sharing encounter down the road.

Map courtesy the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; photo of Court Street's stroller scourge courtesy Pardon Me for Asking via Curbed

NORTHEAST CORRIDOR: N.Y.-Bound

2008-03-30T22:27:00.002-04:00

I'M HEADED TO NEW YORK in the morning. New job.

Oh yes, I don't think I've actually technically announced it on this here blog. Earlier this month, I accepted an offer to be deputy managing editor of Observer Media Group's Politicker.com, an expanding network of state-specific insider politics websites. If you're familiar with PoliticsNJ.com an PoliticsNH.com, they've been renamed with the Observer's Politicker brand. More have been launched, more are on the way. Here's some background on the project from The New York Times' Brian Stelter. I'll be working from the offices of The New York Observer near the Flatiron Building. I'll be resettling in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in the next two weeks, which means that I'm splitting my time between D.C. and New York. But Washington won't be a stranger to me and I plan semi-regular visits.

Photo of Manhattan taken from Long Island City, Queens, by Michael Grass

SOUTHWEST FREEWAY: Isn't It Already Named for Dwight Eisenhower?

2008-03-29T18:20:00.004-04:00

FROM THE CITY PAPER, there's a report that D.C. Council member Marion Barry is pushing legislation to rename parts of the Southeast-Southwest Freeway complex of I-395 and I-295 (which includes a section that's actually an unsigned portion of I-695 ... if you can keep that all straight) in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But there's one problem if you're into cartography like me. If you examine some maps, the Southwest Freeway portion of the proposed renamed route already honors President Dwight D. Eisenhower (see photo). Honoring Dr. King is not the issue here, but on technical grounds it seems that the renaming could create a new layer of confusion to navigating D.C.'s chopped-up expressways.

Nichols Avenue in Ward 8 was renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue many years ago. Barry is proposing that the 11th Street bridges, the Southeast-Southwest freeway complex and a portion of Maine Avenue up to its intersection with 15th Street SW/Raoul Wallenberg Place be renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Note the difference between Avenue and Drive. Most of the Drive portion is actually part of the Interstate highway system, while the Avenue portion is an existing D.C. roadway. (I've mapped it all here.)

While the extended King Avenue/Drive might make sense to Barry (it's perhaps the quickest route between Ward 8 and D.C. Council chambers at the Wilson Building) it might be incredibly confusing to those coming from Virginia or Northwest D.C., not to mention other quadrants.

The argument cuts in different ways. In any regard, it's awfully confusing.

EXPRESS: At Oyamel, Tequila Is a Key Ingredient

2008-03-19T23:12:00.004-04:00

AT OYAMEL, the management won't stop you from doing a shot of tequila. But what a waste, considering the Penn Quarter restaurant is the first place in the D.C. area with special Agave de Oro certification from the Tequila Regulatory Council of Mexico. It's an honor only a handful of restaurants in the U.S. can claim. And for Oyamel, which specializes in contemporary Mexican cuisine, it wasn't easy to get. [More ...]

Photo by Pablo de Loy

MEADOWLANDS: New Jersey Is On Fire

2008-03-18T11:23:00.004-04:00

SO ON MONDAY, I was on Amtrak heading into Penn Station in Manhattan. As we were crossing the Meadowlands between Newark and Secaucus, there was a giant wildfire on the side of the tracks, right off the New Jersey Turnpike viaduct. Fun times ...

ARLINGTON: Observations From the 38B

2008-03-13T21:37:00.004-04:00

FOR BUS RIDERS, the sight of an Arlington County police officer subduing an uncooperative man on the Wilson Boulevard pavement would be a great window-gazing side-show spectacle. But on Monday afternoon, few riders of the 38B bus bound for Ballston noticed as they were distracted by a humorous drama between two women on board.

When the bus stopped to pick up passengers at the Rosslyn station, it was delayed for a few minutes by an older woman — perhaps in her 60s or 70s — who didn't have exact change for the $1.35 fare and was asking passengers if they could break a $5 bill. There was something odd about her, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. She moved slowly and methodically, sizing up everyone in a manner that could be considered sinister. She moved toward the back and I put her out of my mind.

Then, another woman took an available seat toward the front and started to carry on an open conversation with the people around her and started complaining about something I didn't understand at first. Then things came into focus: "She's a nasty woman." ... "She's always been a problem on this bus. A witch she is." ... "Sister ain't gonna steal my joy. No. No she ain't."

I put two and two together: She was referring to the woman who had just passed on by.

All the sudden I heard from the back: "Lay-dee, you hush! I don't even know you."

A heated conversation ensued as other passengers laughed, taking the whole thing in.

"Shut your trap, lay-dee! I don't even know you," the targeted woman snapped back. "Lay-dee, you lie!"

To that, the other woman said: "See what I'm saying. She's always nasty. Nasty, nasty. Sister ain't gonna steal my joy. No, not today."

Sometimes the Orange Line, despite being crowded with people, can be a boring trip. The 38B, referred to as the "Orange Line With a View" can provide ample entertainment, as long as you're not in a rush and aren't looking to steal any person's joy.

DECISIONS: Here Is My Bat Signal

2008-03-12T13:21:00.000-04:00

SO, FOR THOSE WHO know about the big decisions I've been weighing, here is a big clue. Details to come.

Looking out toward Madison Square in Manhattan; Photo by Michael Grass

EXPRESS: Empanada Prices on the Rise Locally

2008-03-11T12:18:00.001-04:00

IT'S A SIGN OF THE TIMES. As global food prices continue the rise and U.S. consumers worry about inflation, the price of one reliably low-cost snack has increased locally. [More ...]

WOODLEY PARK: I Survived the Blackout

2008-03-11T07:29:00.000-04:00

LAST NIGHT, around 11 p.m., my neighborhood was sent into darkness by some sort of manhole fire way over on 14th Street NW, two neighborhoods away. I looked out my window. The street lights were dark, as was the Marriott Wardman Park hotel. I toured the neighborhood. There was electricity three blocks to the west and across Rock Creek Park in Adams Morgan and Kalorama. Late-night diners at Open City were illuminated by candle light. On Connecticut Avenue, cab drivers ignored the basic rule of treating a non-functioning traffic light as a four-way stop. Typical.

In the grander scheme of things, the situation wasn't all that bad. I just went to sleep and woke up around 5:30 a.m., when the lights in my apartment suddenly came back on. I like to think of myself as sort of prepared for emergencies. I have a big stockpile of bottled water should disaster ever render the Washington Aqueduct useless. I have a flashlight, someplace. Ready.gov has taught me that in the event of a radiological attack that I have to "[u]se available information to assess the situation" and ideally have "a thick shield" to block the nuclear threat.

But I don't have any candles. And last night, that was my critical weakness as I worried about how long the illumination from my laptop and cellphone batteries would last. Thankfully, I survived the threat.

MAYFLOWER HOTEL: Spitzer's 'Room 871' Sounds Sort of Familiar to Me

2008-03-10T22:29:00.005-04:00

SO, I THINK that I may have been in Room 871, the now-infamous guest suite where New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer allegedly had relations with a prostitute. On Monday, The New York Times reported that Spitzer has been linked to a prostitution ring targeted by federal investigators. Law enforcement sources tell The Times that Spitzer is "Client 9," an individual in D.C. on business who was staying in a room on the Mayflower's "Club Floor," according to a federal affidavit.

This description in The Times sounds sort of familiar:

Kristen, having already passed through the lobby, with its wing chairs and its gilded half-clad cherubs, arrived in a small room in a quiet corner of the “Club Floor,” a special wing for V.I.P.’s. A king-size bed commanded the floor. Two photos — of the Capitol and the Washington Monument — hung beside a wood-framed mirror.

OK, I don't know who this "Kristen" is, but the two photos, the mirror and the big bed sound familiar. If I remember correctly, it was on the 8th floor where my father conducted interviews for his PBS documentary on Gerald Ford. It's pretty nice suite from what I remember. Is it the same one? I'm not sure. Perhaps all the Club Floor suites come with the same interior furnishings.

Perhaps Gov. Spitzer should have booked a room at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City. Considering its history for scandal, it would have been quite appropriate ... assuming these prostitution allegations are true.

ARCHITECTURE: Robert Bruno's Steel House

2008-03-10T09:34:00.006-04:00

WOULD LIVING in a house made entirely of steel get hot, especially in Texas? For the past 23 years, Robert Bruno has been crafting this structure outside Lubbock. First are foremost, the place is a sculpture — Bruno has been welding it himself since day one. But it's turning into, perhaps, one of the most intriguing pieces of residential architecture I've come across in quite some time. To me, it reminds me of the submarine from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

This weekend's Financial Times has a great feature on the place:

... [A]s the road peters out around an anonymous corner past yet another bland bungalow suddenly, squatting on the suburban skyline, is something else entirely: something that looks like it has landed from a planet where straight lines and sobriety were outlawed.

Something tells me that if Bruno were looking to build this in D.C., our architectural tastemakers would have a hard time digesting the design.

Photo by Flickr user JoshEwwAhh

NORTHEAST CORRIDOR: New York-Bound

2008-03-04T15:11:00.003-05:00

I'LL BE IN NEW YORK for the next few days and hope to get out and around town with my camera and such. Nothing huge on the agenda. Maybe I'll get out to Rego Park, Queens, for some Uighur food. But that's been on my agenda for the past year or so.

BALLSTON: Old Peck Site to Peek Out From Proposed Replacement

2008-03-04T15:00:00.001-05:00

OVER AT THE CORNER of Glebe Road and Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, the old Bob Peck Chevrolet car dealership — and its architecturally interesting showroom, pictured at left among new additions to Ballston's skyline — sits, waiting for redevelopment. When the car dealership closed in 2006 in advance of future mixed-use redevelopment at the site, it was thought that all traces of the 1960s modernist structure would be erased from the streetscape.

But if you look at the rendering posted at What's Up Arlington, take careful note of the corner section. The old Peck showroom seems to be peeking out, which is an exciting development for architecture buffs.

EXPRESS: Will D.C.'s Anacostia Move Follow in Reeves Center's Footsteps?

2008-03-04T13:13:00.005-05:00

MARION BARRY is sometimes credited with sparking the revitalization of the area around 14th and U streets NW. It was there during his tenure as mayor when the District government moved many of its agency offices to the Reeves Center, which officials hoped would anchor the area's revitalization. And while the Reeves Center brought jobs to the U Street corridor, some say it's debatable whether the municipal complex sparked the neighborhood's renaissance, which didn't kick into high gear until more than a decade after it opened in 1986. [More ...]

WOODLEY PARK: Downfall of American Civilization

2008-03-02T23:07:00.004-05:00

POKING AROUND the Woodley Park neighborhood Yahoo! Group, I came across this quote from a recent posting:

It is fifty years since John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about "private affluence and public squalor." Here’s an example right here in Woodley Park.

What's the complaint? Excessive dog poop over along Woodland Drive, home to some of D.C.'s most exclusive residences. (Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's house at 2930 Woodland Drive, mapped below, was sold last year for $2.65 million, according to Washingtonian.)

View Larger Map

HOUSEKEEPING: Updated Blogroll Progressing

2008-03-02T23:03:00.002-05:00

SO ... IT'S BEEN SOMETHING LIKE three years or so since I've last updated the blog roll here. I was able to get through a good chunk this weekend, but there's still more work to be done. I'll continue on these efforts during the week.

WOODLEY PARK: A Mini-Mart, Barely Open, to Close

2008-03-02T20:27:00.005-05:00

THE CONNECTICUT AVENUE business strip in Woodley Park is dotted with some odd businesses. And one, an unnamed mini-mart, is about to close. But it was never really open to begin with. With two very large hotels — the Marriott Wardman Park and the Omni Shoreham, you'd think that the busy commercial district between Woodley Road and Calvert Street would have a vibrant business environment. But living in the neighborhood for now more than three years, I've found that there are precious few shopping options. The Manhattan Market is expensive and the inventory, including beer, is nothing special. But it does have the essentials. The CVS has more in the necessities department, but like any CVS, it comes with frustrations, especially when there's a line of tourists buying gum and cigarettes and you're in need of paper towel.

So late last year, a random convenience store opened, tucked away between the Chipotle and Mr. Chen's. But it had one lone small window. It didn't sell alcohol, but advertised specials on cigarettes and milk, two things I generally steer clear of. I think I saw it open maybe three or four times and then it went dark for many weeks. Until this weekend: It's closing down and everything must go, the sign out front says, advertising discounts of 50 percent to 70 percent for just a few days.

I am in need of paper towel, so I might swing through. But oh would I ever love a Wawa in the neighborhood. It'd make a fortune.

Anyhow, what's the next store on my Woodley Park failing business watch list? No, not the Oriental rug place on Calvert Street NW. (I think they've been through a series of "Bankruptcy" and "Under New Management" sales over the past three years.) No, not Antiques Anonymous. (It will end up the lone survive of a nuclear winter.) It's the random souvenir shop next to Velvet Garden that's peculiarly open past midnight during some weekdays. It has a friendly sign at the door that says "No Stealing." The last time I checked out the store, around Christmas, its campaign trinket collection consisted of anti-John Kerry tschotskies from the 2004 campaign. Mind you, this place has only been open for a year or two. Great bulk buy, eh?

PETWORTH: Grant Circle Greenery

2008-03-02T14:00:00.007-05:00

OF ALL OF THE DISTRICT'S TRAFFIC CIRCLES, the rotary where New Hampshire and Illinois avenues meet in Petworth is one of my favorites. Grant Circle's variety of architecture is eye catching — it's too bad that most of the drivers heading through the neighborhood are speeding by too quickly to likely take careful notice. The New Hampshire Avenue axis puts the spattering of coniferous trees (not sure what kind they are) front and center, making Grant Circle lush and green even in the middle of the winter. (Look at Prince of Petworth's iconic view of circle.)

As for the deciduous trees, they'll start budding in a few weeks and eventually mask parts of the architectural streetscape, including the churches on the western side of the circle. (The shot above was taken from the southeastern side of the circle.) So right now, the combination of evergreens and deciduous trees creates an evolving urban portrait that residents there are fortunate to have. If I'm not mistaken, Grant Circle may be the only traffic circle in D.C. with coniferous trees anchoring the center of a rotary park.

CHAIN BRIDGE: A Winter Reflection

2008-03-01T22:44:00.009-05:00

ONE OF MY MOST FAVORITE places to hike in the District is below Chain Bridge in the ecologically fascinating Potomac Gorge, not too far from where I used to live in the Palisades, at least how the crow flies. (It generally takes a good half hour to hoof it down from my old haunts on Potomac Avenue down to the trail off the C&O Canal towpath.) On the Virginia side of the river is Pimmit Run, the site of an former mill where the Declaration of Independence and other key government documents were stashed away during the 1814 British invasion of Washington ... before they could be taken to Leesburg for safe keeping.

The Potomac Gorge runs approximately for 15 miles from the Key Bridge near Georgetown in the District and upriver past the Capital Beltway's American Legion Bridge to Great Falls. The marshy area between the Potomac River channel and the C&O Canal, one of the most biodiverse areas on the East Coast, floods periodically, creating an ever-changing environment that is criss-crossed by rivulets and small ponds and marked with boulders, tree limbs and other material washed down from points upriver.

I photograph the this section of the gorge a couple times a year to chart the changing nature of the ecosystem.

BACKGROUNDER: About The Washington Oculus

2008-03-01T21:28:00.030-05:00

Updated, February 2010

THE WASHINGTON OCULUS is an online notebook, journal and personal blog by Michael E. Grass, an editor, writer, Web developer and editorial manager, originally launched in 2003 in the District of Columbia.

Grass co-founded DCist.com in 2004 and has helped develop online media platforms for The Washington Post’s free daily newspaper Express, and The New York Observer’s 17-state national political reporting network during the 2008 campaign cycle.

He most recently served as editor for a D.C.-based non-profit news organization that funds investigative, public affairs and politics reporting in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico, and managed work on dioxin contamination, HIV policy, rural health care, ethics and transparency, among other issues.

He has written for The Washington Post, Roll Call and Crain’s Detroit Business and was once jokingly described as “Zeus” and, more seriously, a “tireless, content-generating machine” by The Huffington Post.

At Roll Call, Grass was a copy editor, writer, K Street Files lobbying column contributor and helped manage RollCall.com. For his highlights from Roll Call, click here.

In 2005, Grass was recruited to edit the Local section of Express and later as Web editor, was part of The Washington Post Co. team that conceptualized, planned and launched ReadExpress.com in April 2006. He also edited restaurant coverage and on Free Ride, wrote on a variety of localized topics, including transit, politics and neighborhood news. For his highlights from Express, click here.

An alumnus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Grass worked for The Michigan Daily and as a news reporter and editor covered the administration of then-President Lee C. Bollinger, including the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger affirmative action lawsuits. Grass served as editorial page editor and edited an award-winning series of dispatches from a Daily writer sent to Pakistan and Afghanistan during the fall of 2001. He is a published contributor to “Writing Ann Arbor,” (University of Michigan Press, 2005) a literary anthology featuring the work of Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Wendy Wasserstein and other writers who have made their way through Ann Arbor.

Although Grass grew up in East Grand Rapids, Mich., his family has lived in the District of Columbia since the 1860s. During the Civil War, his German ancestors settled in what is today Foggy Bottom. His great-great grandfather, August Grass, would open a carpentry and furniture-making workshop at New Hampshire Avenue and M Street NW and was commissioned to craft much of the intricate woodcarving in the Dupont Circle mansion of D.C.’s master brewer Christian Heurich, which is today open for tours. Pictured at left is the Heurich House’s dining room, where some of the best Grass carvings can be found. His grandfather grew up in the house that is now Kinkead's restaurant on Eye Street NW just west of Pennsylvania Avenue and 20th Street NW, a few blocks from the White House. The Swiss branch of his family, which has ancestral ties to the oenologist who helped develop the Muller-Thurgau grape, settled on Capitol Hill near Lincoln Park. His great uncle and great aunt were some of the last residents of K Street NW, living in a rowhouse in what is now D.C.'s infamous lobbying corridor.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Greatest Hits From Roll Call

2008-03-01T21:04:00.008-05:00

MICHAEL E. GRASS worked at Roll Call newspaper on Capitol Hill from January 2003 to July 2005. He served as a copy editor and writer, contributed to the K Street Files lobbying column and helped manage RollCall.com. Below is a sampling of his work at Roll Call (subscription required for full article).

» "Recent Defense Debate Has Echoes of 1991" [May 29, 2003]
WHEN IT COMES to examining Defense funding debates, an old adage quickly leaps to mind: The more things change, the more they stay the same. That was never more true than during the recent back-and forth over the massive $400 billion Defense authorization measures passed by the House and Senate on May 22. [More ...]

» "California Finds Messing With Texas Troublesome in Major University Spat" [June 11, 2003]
KEEPING A WATCHFUL EYE on moves by the Energy Department, the University of Texas is gearing up for what would be a major coup in the research community: taking operational control of the nation’s top government nuclear weapons lab away from the University of California. [More ...]

» "Bill Divides Capito, Bush" [July 30, 2003]
AS PFC. JESSICA LYNCH returned to a nationally celebrated homecoming in West Virginia last week, the former prisoner of war’s Congresswoman found herself in a public relations pickle. [ More ...]

» "Saudis Spend Big on Image Work" [Oct. 14, 2003]
EAGER TO CHANGE its image in the nation’s capital, Saudi Arabia has emerged as one of Washington’s biggest spenders since President Bush launched his war on terrorism. According to newly released figures compiled by the Justice Department, the government of Saudi Arabia paid about $15 million in the second half of 2002 for an extensive lobbying and public relations campaign designed to persuade the Bush administration, Congress and the American people that the Islamic kingdom is an ally, and not an adversary, in its counterterrorism efforts. [More ...]

» "Guantanamo Fight Comes to K Street" [Nov. 17, 2003]
IN AN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE, a dozen Kuwaiti families have hired K Street lobbyists to help them try to free family members from the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. military is holding enemy combatants from terrorist sweeps in Afghanistan. [More ...]

» "K Street Files: K Is for Kandahar" [Nov. 23, 2003]
OF ALL THE AMERICAN POWERBROKERS registered to represent Afghan interests, the most peculiar may be Four Horsemen International. While the North Carolina-based group’s name may evoke mythical visions of the apocalypse, it refers to the combined nickname of the founders, four Army Special Forces combat veterans who have an “untiring work ethic.” [More ...]

» "Boeing Playing Defense in New Session" [Jan. 20, 2004]
SENATE SOURCES say the Boeing Co., which is already under fire from the Pentagon, will face increased heat from Capitol Hill in the next few weeks. [More ...]

» "Flap Over Intern Infuriates Frank" [Jan. 28, 2004]
REP. BARNEY FRANK (D-Mass.) is accusing the nation’s largest internship placement organization of misleading him over the firing of a program supervisor allegedly dismissed for assigning a student from a conservative college to the openly gay lawmaker’s office. [More ...]

» "Home Is Not Where the Hart Is" [Sept. 13, 2004]
OFFICE SPACE ALLOCATION has always been a complicated matter on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate. And in the fall of 1982, when the Hart Senate Office Building was set to open, Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), like many of his colleagues, was not happy about the prospects of moving out of the Dirksen Building. [More ...]

» "Jefferson’s Bible Returns, Controversial as Ever" [Jan. 24, 2005]
IT IS A GREAT IRONY of American history: Thomas Jefferson, the man credited with coining the term “separation of church and state,” wrote his own version of the Bible — and for decades the views in that Bible were imposed on Congress. [More ...]

»"The Keystone of Washington" [June 16, 2005]
IF YOU WERE to stand at Union Station and look down Delaware Avenue Northeast toward the Capitol, it’s possible to see how the Congressional campus has changed in the past 50 years — if you know what you’re looking for. [ More ...]

NORTH CLEVELAND PARK: More Proof That It Exists

2008-03-01T11:26:00.004-05:00

BACK IN AUGUST 2006, there was a pointless online debate about whether there was actually a neighborhood called North Cleveland Park. While it is commonly called "Van Ness," after the Red Line station, I showed that yes, indeed, North Cleveland Park exists.

Now, more mounting evidence from The Washington Post: D.C. property tax assessments increased by 4.29 percent in North Cleveland Park.

PHILADELPHIA: Boar Meat, Brussel Sprouts and Searching for the Mildred Street Mosaics

2008-03-01T01:12:00.009-05:00

ALTHOUGH I HAVEN'T spent too much time in Philadelphia, on a recent weekend, I got to take in quite a lot of Center City hanging out with a Michigan Daily alumnus who lives in Queen Village, not too far from the heart of South Street and Jim's Steaks, the cheesesteak emporium that sadly, I wasn't too impressed with. (Sorry, It's Not Always Sunny in Philadelphia.)

For a city that I normally pass through on Amtrak on the way to New York, I had a great time exploring that is one of the nation's most walkable places, though I'm told that Philadelphia residents hate to walk and would rather drive, despite the congested colonial-era streets and scarse parking.

Two highlights from my visit:
» Up in the Northern Liberties, I had one of the best brunches in quiet some time. At the Standard Tap, I ordered the boar meat and brussel sprout baked eggs, paired with a nice beer. Philly, to my surprise, has plenty of places that put a lot of time and effort into their beer lists, much of it comprised of local brews. It'd be nice if D.C. had more local breweries, but alas ...

» My mother told me that a few years back, she and some of her mosaic tile artist colleagues had worked on an installation on Mildred Street. When I told my friend that my mom had worked on the famed mosaics in the blocks near South Street, he got all excited. There are tile installations in odd places making explorations in the tiny alleyways a fun afternoon activity. But over the course of two days, we were having trouble finding Mildred Street. Philadelphia's Center City, for being on a grid, is also made of up of many tiny alleyways and side streets off the grid, like Kater Street, pictured at right. Mildred — a most dreadful name — is another. We eventually stumbled upon it, coming across three tile installations, one partially deteriorated and vandalized with tile debris on the sidewalk.

GRAND RAPIDS: 'American Pie' Hot Dog Haven Escapes Gas Leak Destruction

2008-02-29T23:51:00.007-05:00

USUALLY WHEN I GET NEWS from Grand Rapids, Mich., the city of my birth, it's about record amounts of snow. This past week, however, a building in the Eastown neighborhood, not too far from my parents' house, exploded due to a gas leak. The Grand Rapids Press video team incorrectly identified the building as being in East Grand Rapids — close enough though — and also as a "landmark" building. While I'm not aware of any particular historic significance, the building located at Wealthy Street SE and Ethel Avenue SE nonetheless anchored a key corner in a neighborhood that's often described as Grand Rapids' "Greenwich Village." (Though anyone who has been to New York would likely beg to differ.)

Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured and the explosion spared Yesterdog, the hot dog joint across the street that inspired "Dog Years" in "American Pie," the 1999 movie based on my high school. (It was in Dog Years where the Jim, Finch, etc. hatch their plan to lose their virginity by prom.) Anyhow, any self-respecting economically displaced Grand Rapidian will return to Yesterdog over Thanksgiving and Christmas to pound down a couple Cheddars, Yesters, Ultras, etc. after last call. Now, directly across the red-brick street, there is pile of rubble.

One can only hope that the void will be filled by some new structure that fits in with the nature of the neighborhood. While I can't say I have any particular attachment to the now-destroyed building, it would be a shame if the space is paved over to expand the Ethel parking lot. That would really leave a hole in Eastown aesteticly. Parking lots can suck the life out of a neighborhood. And that's the last thing Eastown needs right now.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Free Ride's Greatest Hits

2008-02-29T21:37:00.009-05:00

RECENTLY, I've been paging through Express' Free Ride archives for a trip down memory lane. From the time we launched the blog in April 2006 up to now, I've authored more then 4,000 blog posts. Though it isn't a definitive list, below, I've selected some of my greatest hits.

» "Rat Jumps Into Baby Stroller in Dupont Circle"
ON MOST DAYS of the week, Jim McGrath can be found taking a coffee break on the outer ring of benches in Dupont Circle. And while he says he tries to sit away from the "gigantic rat holes" in the section of the park opposite the Sun Trust Bank, it's not uncommon for some of the circle's rodent residents to make their presence known. [More ...]

» "Update: D.C. Rat Patrol Targets Dupont Circle Park"
IF THE RECENT COLD WEATHER hasn't been hostile enough to rats living in Dupont Circle's park, then recent visits by D.C.'s "Rat Patrol" might have been a more lethal threat. [More …]

» "Out & About: Clinton Makes Cameo, Bores Partiers"
WHEN HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of people cram into a crowded ballroom to hear Hillary Rodham Clinton speak at a major Democratic Party social function, be sure to guard your nasal passages. If you're sensitive to the interaction of perfumes and colognes wafting about in close quarters, then the gathering of party faithful at the West End's Park Hyatt last night might not have been your cup of tea. [More ...]

» "Taxi GPS Doesn't Eliminate Fare Zone Confusion"
WITH THE DISTRICT facing a deadline to act on taxicab reform this fall, some companies have been trumpeting their use of dashboard global positioning systems to navigate D.C.'s confusing jumble of taxicab fare zones. But as I found out on Saturday, even with GPS technology in cabs, it still takes one's human GPS to figure out when a cabbie is making a fare-calculation error — or just trying to scam you. [More …]

» "Around D.C., Mixed Reactions to Meter Decision"
AROUND NOON on Wednesday, one cab driver on M Street NW pulled up to the light at 16th Street, where another driver was stopped. Both of their windows were rolled down, and one shouted to the other that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty could go ... well, you get the picture. [More …]

» "As Riders Sleep, Special Metro Cleaners Get to Work"
AFTER THE GATES of the Stadium-Armory station's Independence Avenue entrance were locked behind us and we walked past the empty station manager's kiosk, the sights and sounds of Metrorail after hours slowly emerged. The rattle of machinery grew louder as we approached the escalators leading down to the platform. [More …]

» "Fortunately, They Didn't Bring Down the Roof"
AFTER TWO NIGHTS of concerts at the 9:30 Club, this writer's ears are ringing, but during Tuesday night's Editors' show, they were still sharp enough to overhear a conversation that unnecessarily caused worry: "What would happen if the roof caved in?" one guy said to another. "Yeah, that'd be nuts," came the reply. For sure. [More …]

» "A 14-Mile District Alleywalk"
WE SPENT OUR MEMORIAL DAY walking through District alleyways. That may seem strange, but after reading Lyndsey Layton's article in Monday's edition of The Post about living in D.C.'s alleyway housing, we wanted to take a stab at listing and photographing our favorite District alleyways. It turned out to be a nearly 14-mile trek. (Only about two miles of the journey was by Metrobus.) We started at the Stadium-Armory Metrorail station in Southeast, walked across Capitol Hill, up through Shaw to Adams Morgan, Woodley Park, back through Adams Morgan to Dupont Circle and onward to Georgetown, ending our trip at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Observatory Lane in Glover Park. Our feet hurt and we're slightly sunburned. [More ...]

» "Out & About: At Palm Gala, Vanity Meets Revelry"
D.C MAYOR ADRIAN FENTY has finally made it in this town. Last night at The Palm's grand reopening party, cameras zoomed in on the all-grins mayor as he climbed to the far end of a "power booth" to sign his caricature, which has joined the hundreds of other boldface names, current or has-been, that grace the walls of the famed Dupont Circle steak house and place to be seen. [More …]

» "D.C. Diary: In the Words of Gore Vidal"
WHEN MY FATHER interviewed writer Gore Vidal in Los Angeles last year for a documentary project, the outspoken figure told him to relay some advice to me back in Washington: "Tell your son to keep writing, even if it's a suicide note." [More …]

» "D.C. Diary: Going Hungry at Hooters"
SOMETHING WENT TERRIBLY WRONG at Hooters on Saturday night. For restaurateurs in the bustling Gallery Place-Chinatown-Verizonville area, there's plenty of money to be made. And there's plenty of money to be lost. And the manager on duty at the 7th Street NW outpost of the national chain best known for its well-endowed wait staff and chicken wings wasn't having a good night. [More …]

» "Escalator Canopy Not Coming Brookland's Way"
FOR YEARS, the escalators at the Brookland Metrorail station have been regularly out-of-service. In fact, a 2005 investigation by The Post found that the station's escalators were among the most problematic in the system. [More ...]

» "Convention Center Needs an Anime Invasion"
THE WASHINGTON CONVENTION CENTER is hurting for business. As The Post's Dana Hedgpeth reported on Monday, "convention attendance is dropping, the surrounding neighborhood is yet to be transformed by the promised new development, and conventioneers are filling fewer hotel rooms than expected." So the massive convention center complex — which stretches from Mount Vernon Square to N Street NW — is sort of a white elephant, with no adjacent convention center hotel and little in the form of street-level retail, which was supposed to transform the 9th Street NW corridor in Shaw. [More …]

» "C-List Borat-Type Tricks Kids at Lincoln Mem'l"
OVER THE YEARS, the Lincoln Memorial's steps have been home to countless notable events, speeches and performances, from Marian Anderson to Martin Luther King Jr. to, eh, Ricky Martin (at President Bush's 2001 inaugural celebration). On Saturday, in the midst of cherry blossom festivities in the city's monumental core, another notable joined the esteemed ranks of those who have used Mr. Lincoln as their backdrop: Jamie Kennedy. [More …]

» "Poll Center: Who's Worst at Winter Clean-Up?"
A LARGE PIECE OF ROAD SALT hit this writer directly in the forehead last night at U and 17th streets NW. A D.C. Department of Transportation snow plow/salt truck was clearing the road when its salt distributor sent a large chunk of NaCl product at your faithful scribe, who was waiting for a No. 90 bus a bit after 11 p.m. [More …]

» "Poetry for Pakistan's President"
ON FRIDAY, the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, visited Washington, stopping by the White House for an East Room news conference with President Bush before his entourage went to an evening event at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel. The buzz that day for most of Washington that cared to notice was Musharraf's assertion in a "60 Minutes" interview that Richard Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, had threated to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks if Musharraf didn't step in line with the United States. [More …]

» "36 Hours: Washington D.C."
ON FRIDAY, some local bloggers — and certainly other D.C. denizens — objected to The New York Times' Escapes section's "36 Hours: Washington, D.C." feature, written by the esteemed political reporter Adam Nagourney. To sum up the commentary online, Nagourney's choices of local fare to highlight left critics underwhelmed. After all, does anyone really care if former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe "holds court from his regular table in the front right corner" of Cafe Milano's dining room? [More …]

» "D.C. Diary: A Morning at the Protests"
ON SATURDAY MORNING, this writer decided to check out the anti-war protests on the National Mall. The influx of thousands upon thousands of demonstrators who flooded into the nation's capital was a living, breathing example of American democracy in action — so we went along for the ride. [More …]

» "Memory & Myncis: Euros Childs"
WHEN TOLD ABOUT the recent closure of Dupont Circle's 40-year-old tavern and music club the Childe Harold, the soft-spoken, unassuming Welsh pop-folk rocker Euros Childs said endearingly: "Oh, that's sad." [More ...]

» "D.C. Diary: They Came, They Got Arrested"
AS HE WAS ARRESTED about an hour and a half ago on the steps of the Sudanese Embassy, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., put on a wide-brimmed hat and was escorted away, as if we were going on a leisurely walk. But then he was put in a Secret Service paddy wagon, where Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., on the left next to Lantos, John Olver, D-Mass., Alexandria's very own Jim Moran, D-Va., and other Darfur activists joined the ranking member of the House International Relations Committee. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, was put in the back of a Secret Service cruiser. [More …]

» "On the Case of the Mysterious Blue Splotches"
ON WEDNESDAY, a man walked into the Wilson Building downtown, threw a white substance at a security guard, and then ran off. The seat of the District's government was evacuated for about two hours. Authorities determined the substance was probably just harmless table salt. It was the kind of incident that has cropped up now and again after the anthrax attacks of 2001 made mysterious substances in office buildings something to fear. But what if someone throws a suspicious bright blue material, like the stuff pictured here, on the ground? Would that spark the same kind of reaction from authorities? [More ...]

STIRRINGS: The Oculus Is Comin' Back

2008-02-29T19:56:00.002-05:00

PARDON THE CURRENT dated look of the Oculus. Links and such are so 2004 or something. Changes are a comin'. Details to come, at some point.

D.C. BLOGS: iPhones and the Black Cat

2007-07-09T15:09:00.000-04:00

WELCOME READERS of Huffington Post and elsewhere. For the record, I most certainly did not gawk at Matthew Yglesias' iPhone. I was, however, at the Black Cat on Friday night. Also, I really don't blog here much anymore. I am, as HuffPo points out, "a tireless, content generating machine" at ReadExpress.com, a publication of The Washington Post. I am also in need of a vacation. Here's my sort-of dated bio, for those who are interested.

We Interrupt This Interruption

2007-04-13T23:47:00.001-04:00

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A come back for The Washington Oculus? At least for one post ... Ever since ReadExpress.com launched nearly a year ago, my blogging here decreased significantly. It seems that vacations or trips to Michigan for the holidays are the only time that I get to blog. And here I find myself Brooklyn, on a three-day weekend of sorts. I'm a frequent visitor to New York, and it seems that when my schedule is free, I can get a lot of writing done here. Tonight, I'm out in Bushwick on a street where there's a non-descript man/woman/thing with a bow of a ship ensnared in its hair not too far away and I thought it'd be good to inject some life into my long-neglected personal blog, if only for a moment or two.

While this blog is generally dormant, it still attracts random Google hits. So if you're new here, or have randomly stumbled upon it, and don't know who I am, please take a moment to go over the About page. The Washington Oculus was founded under a different URL in fall 2003. It switched to its current template a few months later. It's a template any regular blog reader would recognize from 2004. The blogroll dates to that time period too. So this is sort of like a random time machine.

You can read my daily work here.

GRAND RAPIDS: A Quick Primer

2006-12-29T11:50:00.000-05:00

WITH MANY JOURNALISTS and others heading to Grand Rapids, Mich., for Gerald Ford’s funeral, I thought that as a public service, I’d detail some of the better bars, restaurants and landmarks to visit. Online resources on Grand Rapids are pretty Spartan, so I hope I can help. You may think that going to Grand Rapids is a punishment, but with the city of my birth, I’m surprised more and more every time I go back with the city’s revitalization. Michigan’s second-largest city has a pretty vibrant bar scene. The alcohol is cheap. And while having a car is definite plus, if you’re stuck downtown without vehicular transportation, all hope is not lost as places are located pretty close together.

In March, Gridskipper did a good rundown of all things Grand Rapids.

The Amway Grand Plaza hotel, which stands across the Grand River from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, is pretty much the center of downtown at Pearl Street and Monroe Avenue. Across the way there’s an ice skating rink, which stands in front of the new art museum currently under construction. To the south of that is the entertainment district surrounding the Van Andel Arena, with Ionia Avenue SW (south of Fulton Street) being home to the main strip of bars and restaurants.

If you ask your concierge of where to go, you will most likely be directed there or to the BOB (the Big Old Building, home to a collection of bars and restaurants in a renovated warehouse.). I typically stay away from the BOB and I would say you should too, as it will likely be packed with Ford-related visitors.

If you do find yourself on Ionia Avenue in search of, your two best bets are J.Gardella's and the Black Rose, both of which have a good beer selection, but can be packed.

» HEAD NORTH: The place most of my friends like to hang out is a place called Cambridge House, which is a two-minute drive north on Monroe Avenue from the Amway Grand (or it’s a 10-minute walk). Cambridge House is in an old warehouse on Trowbridge Street, on the other side of the Gerald Ford Freeway. This area used to be home to a number of furniture factories. Today, there are condos and a few bars. The wine list and scotch list are extensive and the price is right. Try to snag a few chairs surrounding the rough-stone tables.

In the Brass Works Building on Monroe Avenue, just to the north of Cambridge House, is the Founders micro-brewery. Pitchers are cheap and the wait staff expects you to throw your peanut shells on the ground. The Celebration IPA is tasty.

If you’re elsewhere and see a Bell’s Beer product, get that. The Kalamazoo-based microbrewery is loved by many beer experts.

— Cambridge House, 600 Monroe Ave. NW (North Monroe)
— Founder’s Brewery, 648 Monroe Ave NW (North Monroe)

» RESTAURANTS: If you’re looking for a decent meal, here are some places to try to get reservations. The top restaurant in town in the 1913 Room in the Amway Grand. Reservations will be likely tough to get. Sierra Room on Ionia Avenue and Weston Street and San Chez at Fulton Street and Commerce Avenue. (This might surprise you, but Grand Rapidians have been enjoying Spanish tapas since the early 1990s. San Chez was one of the first restaurants to venture south of Fulton Street in the downtown renaissance.) There are a few other places downtown, but I can’t recommend them because I haven’t been there.

If you have a car, you might want to venture elsewhere. Rose’s on Reeds Lake in East Grand Rapids and Olives in EGR’s Gaslight Village are both popular. Bombay Pub serves up solid Indian food in Eastown.

If you’re stuck out by the airport, Tuscan Express on 28th Street SE near Thornhills Avenue is probably your best bet. There are, as you might expect, plenty of franchise options to choose from everywhere.

— 1913 Room at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, 187 Monroe Ave. NW (Downtown)
— Bombay Club, 1420 Lake Dr. SE (Eastown)
— Roses on Reeds Lake, 550 Lakeside Dr. SE (East Grand Rapids)
— Olives, 2162 Wealthy St. SE (East Grand Rapids)
— San Chez, 38 W. Fulton St. (Arena/Heartside)
— Sierra Room, 25 Ionia Ave. SW (Arena/Heartside)
— Tuscan Express, 6450 28th Street SE (Cascade)

» LATE-NIGHT SNACK: No stop to Grand Rapids would be complete without a stop by Yesterdog in Eastown. The menu is simple — boiled hot dogs with toppings. I personally like the Ultradogs (chili and relish), but Killers (Ultras + kraut) aren’t listed on the menu board. The atmosphere is 1930s Great Depression, packed with odd artifacts. Think of it like a Potbelly’s with real stuff and no annoying guitar guy. It’s most crowded around last call (1:45ish) when the very smoky bar Mulligan’s across the street begins to empty out. Unfortunately, you need to drive there if you’re staying downtown. But the drive is about 10 minutes. Nothing too arduous. Here is a backgrounder I wrote some time ago.

» BREAKFAST: If you’re looking for breakfast/brunch (or casual, easy meal) head to the intersection of Diamond Avenue, Lake Drive and Cherry Street, halfway between Eastown and downtown. There are three places to go. Marie Catrib’s (deli/pastries), Cherie Inn (sort of French-influenced brunch) and Gaia (vegan-vegetarian).

» FORD-RELATED SITES: If you’re looking for two of Gerald Ford’s boyhood homes, head to Union Avenue SE north of Thomas Street, on the far edge of the Heritage Hill historic district. A second is located in East Grand Rapids on Argentina and Santa Cruz drives, not too far where I grew up.

Photos by Michael Grass

NORTH CLEVELAND PARK: See, It Does Exist

2006-08-11T13:25:00.001-04:00

DCIST CONTINUES TO REVEL in its revisionist history by poking fun at those who insist that there is indeed a North Cleveland Park neighborhood in Upper Northwest. The term Van Ness didn't really take root until the Red Line went through in the late 1970s. This is a point that I've made in DCist comments on the original offending post.

Denying that there's a North Cleveland Park is like saying that Burleith or Glover Park is Georgetown. Sure, I might be going overboard by calling the area of Adams Morgan north of Columbia Road as "Lanier Heights" but for someone to tell me that Lanier Heights doesn't exist is just foolish.

It's OK to refer to the area immediately adjacent to the Van Ness-UDC Metrorail station as "Van Ness," but to refer to Politics and Prose as a "Van Ness bookstore" is not correct. A bookstore "near Van Ness" is, however, acceptable.

GRAND RAPIDS, Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave

2006-08-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

For my introduction on my Grand Rapids series, click here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- I’m not certain how strong the Grand Rapids real estate market is, but all I know is that it’s a buyers market. From historic homes to condos, there’s something here that should please you. And yes, even prime views of the downtown skyline including the gravesite of former President Gerald R. Ford could be yours.

I seem to remember that during an interview with Larry King around the time of the Reagan funeral, the now 93-year-old Ford said that he and wife Betty would be buried on the grounds of his presidential museum, which lies just to the right of the parking lot across the street from the construction site seen in the photo below. Bridgewater Place, built in the 1990s, was originally designed with two towers in mind. Now, construction has started on the second part of the riverfront complex called River House and it’ll be condos … with unit layouts with local names like Pere Marquette, Manistee, Rouge and Grand.

They’ll offer great views of downtown, but boast the best vista of the eventual resting place of the 38th president. Let’s see if that makes it into the marketing materials, which currently trumpet the slogan: “Make River House your home and join the privileged few to own the view” …

Depending on which real estate resource you look at, River House units will start somewhere between $185,000 and $215,000. But if you’re looking for that downtown lifestyle, there are plenty of condos either ready for move-in or will be delivered in the coming year or two.

There’s Icon on Bond, a proposed 20-story condo that’s currently under construction as 400 units in a nine-story residential building. Since it’s in a “Renaissance Zone,” it’s “Tax-Free Living” in a building that looks like could be built somewhere in the heart of Arlington. Icon is being brought to Grand Rapids by the local father-son development team of Moch International LLC. Coming from Washington, where developers are cooling to or backing away from Icon on Bond-like buildings, it makes me somewhat uncomfortable that Grand Rapids is proceeding with such new construction when the state’s economic base is so destabilized.

Grand Rapids has been all a buzz about the massive "River Grand" development (or as some still call it, the “Mystery Development”) south of downtown, a mixed-used retail/residential/entertainment complex that’s supposed to generate 10,000 new jobs. But if all those service sector jobs are purely to serve the big box or anchor entertainment at the site, then the vast majority of those workers aren't going to be itching to buy downtown condos, they're more likely to be renting apartments in Walker or Grandville.

Granted, I haven’t poured through labor statistics, it’s all just a gut feeling. And an acquaintance of mine who analyzes real estate and economic development has been somewhat wary of the overall benefit and success of the “Mystery Development” but we'll see how it all shakes out. The site proposed ... within walking distance of downtown and the redeveloped Heartside district all with great freeway access ... is a golden opportunity for something. Whether it's a House of Blues, as was one rumor I heard (there are countless others), who knows ... It does seem rather suspicious that secretive developer Duane Faust has taken such a keen interest in Grand Rapids of all places and went to great lengths to mask his involvement in the Mystery Development.

What about what’s in town that doesn't require new construction? Want a one-bedroom condo in a renovated furniture factory for under $100,000? There are plenty of old furniture and other factories that have been renovated. In D.C., you have to have P.N. Hoffman come in and build a brand new fake warehouse to give salivating buyers that “urban” experience, a la Adams Station … buyers who will pay $600,000 and up and up for the privilege. Here, there’s plenty of building stock ready for conversion.

In all of this, it’s good to remember that Grand Rapids is a totally different market and the city has been pretty wise over the past decade in what and where it allows development to go in. Considering that many other cities that have gone through speculative real estate frenzies recently are in for some sobering years ahead … (Las Vegas and Miami come immediately to mind) … Grand Rapids may be in fine shape. Yet in Grand Rapids, all the signs for “$0 down” I’ve been seeing seems to signal that many sellers are desperate for buyers.

But after living on the East Coast amid high rent and property values that are generally out of reach of young professionals, the cheap, cheap rent, cheap real estate and the low cost of living in Grand Rapids are assets that are very enticing. Of course, Grand Rapids would need a few additional assets to draw me back. Like I’ve said, every time I come back, there is more and more to like, but yet …

Earlier in this series ...
Part I: Two Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim
Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead

The rest of the series, to be posted in coming days ...
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

GRAND RAPIDS, Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead

2006-08-10T12:18:00.000-04:00

For my introduction on my Grand Rapids series, click here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- My friend’s memorial service wasn’t the only death-related ceremony I attended on Sunday. At noon was the annual Latvian cemetery blessing, where local Latvians gather to remember loved ones and the graves of the cemetery’s permanent residents are blessed by Lutheran clergy.

You ask: Latvian? Yes, I’m half Latvian … on my mother’s side. My father side of the family has roots, as I have mentioned, in the District of Columbia, and through the geopolitical realities of World War II, I would eventually emerge in Grand Rapids. Since there are only a few million Latvians in the world, it’s an interesting ethnicity to be tied to, though I can only say that I’m a casual observer of Latvian culture than one who spends time being Latvian, what ever that might be. (Being fluent in the language might help.)

When you think of celebrations at a cemetery, don’t picture the Latvians in some sort of New Orleans-esque funerary parade. It’s actually quite a beautiful ceremony without the dark, somber overtones that are associated with the funerary traditions of some cultures. All of the families with loved ones buried in the Latvian section of Woodlawn Cemetery are expected to return the first Sunday each August and flood the gravesites with floral displays. While there are certainly families who don’t go to the cemetery at all, there are others, who visit the graves of their loved ones frequently, making sure that the graves are looking their best, with new flowers coming in on a regular basis. Having the best floral display has sparked muted competition between certain families in the past. (This year, white gladiolas were the stand-out winners.)

On Sunday, there were about 100 people gathered in front of the large Latvian monument on a knoll on the cemetery’s edge. The weather was nice and not too hot, and unlike a slightly amusing episode from three years ago, the sprinklers did not automatically come on during the middle of the ceremony. (I have never seen a group of octogenarians in their Sunday best move so quickly …)

While the cemetery blessing is a beautiful, touching ceremony –- especially if you understand the Latvian language -- it is also a very sad gathering, and not just because it deals with loved ones who are no longer with us. Year after year, as the Latvian-born participants age and the number of graves increases, the number of American-born descendants at the blessing seems to decrease. I guess that is inevitable in any immigrant population as the first generation dies off and the more Americanized second and third generation loses interest in their heritage. But it is nonetheless sad.

Latvians are well known for their musical heritage -- during the annual song festival outside Riga, where thousands of people get on the national festival stage to sing centuries-old folk tunes and other songs important to the nation -– and on Sunday, it was somewhat uncomfortable listening to the aging Latvians sing … knowing that in a generation or so, the singing is likely to stop all together at Woodlawn. The prospect of the younger generations returning to the cemetery year after year to tend to the graves is not very good.

In the meantime, those who do put a lot of stock in their Latvian identity are good stewards of the cemetery. My grandfather, for instance, is a regular at cemetery, keeping careful watch over the graves of my grandmother, who died in 2001, and my uncle, who died in 1998. We tease him about his new cemetery girlfriends, one who will give him Latvian newspapers and bake him pirags (a type of Latvian pastry usually filled with bacon, fat and onions). It’s a strange widows and widowers club, something that you wouldn’t see at your normal cemetery.

My mother is sending me home with a bottle of Riga Black Balsams, a Latvian liquor that most people tend to hate, but I actually like. To explain what this is, I will leave it to Victor Ozols, who wrote a great post about the stuff on Gridskipper earlier this year.

Riga Black Balsam is a strong, dark, scary Latvian booze made from a centuries-old secret recipe of things you can find in the forest. It has the consistency of crude oil and, to the untrained tongue, the bitter flavor of death, but Black Balsam is an acquired taste that pays off big.

If anyone wants to join me in taste testing, let me know. We’ll drink in the honor of all the dead Latvians in the world … saying “Prieka” of course.

Earlier in this series ...
Part I: Two Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim

The rest of the series, to be posted in coming days ...
Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

GRAND RAPIDS, Part I: Three Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim

2006-08-09T20:51:00.000-04:00

For my introduction on my Grand Rapids series, click here.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- I thought that when I left the District, I was leaving the troubles of the crime emergency behind me. But yet, juvenile crime somehow followed me here. According to Wednesday's Grand Rapids Press, the city recorded its 16th homicide -- not quite up to D.C. levels ... but it’s a large number nonetheless. Many of the shootings have been happening on or near Wealthy Street SE, which anchors a zone of a gentrification of sorts going from the north and inching slowly south. This corridor between historic Heritage Hill and Eastown has seen a lot of investment, with new businesses, a restored Wealthy Theatre, coffee shops, a great new bakery, antique and design stores and the like. But yet, the crime remains.

On Tuesday, I was driving south on Fuller Avenue SE just south of Wealthy Street at Bemis Street when a little boy -- no older than six or seven -- threw a bright green water balloon into the open passenger window and it exploded all over me, all over my camera and my iPod. The cup holders filled with a half inch of water. I was pissed, but fortunately nothing was seriously damaged. While it was just a child’s summertime mischievous prank, what really angered me is that the child was in a group of other children with an adult supervisor -- perhaps a mother in her twenties -- who seemed to not care that drivers passing through on busy Fuller Avenue were getting pelted, potentially causing a car crash.

So if you find yourself in Grand Rapids, beware of the streets south of Wealthy Street. The locals may either shoot you or lob a water balloon at you when you least suspect it. (Speaking of snipers targeting cars … police are also searching for a person who has been shooting up cars on the South Beltline near Byron Center with a be-be gun …)

The rest of the series, to be posted in coming days ...

Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead
Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

GRAND RAPIDS: Dispatches From West Michigan

2006-08-09T20:28:00.000-04:00

There's me, rearranging the various pieces of the donor wall at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., last week Friday. My mom put me to work on her creation, shifting different pieces of the mosaiced grid around.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- As a professional blogger, it’s awfully strange not to blog. But I’m on vacation. Sort of … I was chatting online with Kyle Gustafson of Information Leafblower on Monday who scolded me for being on the Internet while on my “vacation.” But yet, western Michigan is not normally a destination for most in search of rest and relaxation. Although my father’s side of the family has deep roots in the District of Columbia, I grew up in East Grand Rapids, an inner suburb of Michigan’s second-largest city, the home of former President Gerald R. Ford.

I returned to the city of my birth last week for a friend’s funeral, a friend who was too young to die, a victim of very unfortunate, tragic circumstances. Out of respect for the family, which I have known for two decades, I’m not going to discuss what is a very private and painful matter.

But this trip home does provide me an opportunity to write about Grand Rapids. Each time I return, this place becomes a nicer and nicer place to return to. But I don’t really have any friends left here as all of my friends who are from here live elsewhere, and left for more interesting places and opportunities Grand Rapids could never provide. I’ve found that Grand Rapids isn’t such a bad place as it once was. In fact, it has a lot going for it, unlike the rest of the state. On the surface at least, Grand Rapids -- which has never been heavily invested in the auto industry -- is a stable, relatively prosperous city in an economically lackluster pocket of the country.

When I examine the site meter of The Washington Oculus, I've found that many of the people who come across this blog do so by doing searches for Grand Rapids-specific terms. So I will continue doing what I can to harness the power of Google and the like to give Grand Rapidians and others what they need. If you’re based in Washington, and don’t care about my hometown, then I suggest you follow my Grand Rapids series, which I start today. In my opinion, this city is woefully underserved by its media outlets and there are very few online platforms to discuss the city how it should be discussed. Most people look at this place as a conservative Christian stronghold where the saying goes “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much.” Well, there’s quite a lot more than that. If only I had some spare venture capital and a crew of bloggers, what I could do with this place …

Part I: Two Blocks South of Wealthy, Me … A Targeted Crime Victim
Part II: In My Weekend of Death, the Latvians Celebrate Their Dead
Part III: Condos With a View of Jerry Ford’s Grave
Part IV: Unhealthy Eating: A Guide to G.R.’s Best of the Worst
Part V: Cheap Ballpark Beer, Sandy Dunes and a Reeds Lake Trek
Part VI: Junk Drawer: A Grand Rapids Sampler

BIRTHDAY: 3rd Annual '90 Bus' Pub Crawl

2006-07-18T10:50:00.000-04:00

You know I hate Evite ... so not creative ...

YES, I DON'T REALLY BLOG at The Washington Oculus anymore (you know where to find me), but I thought it'd be good to use my blog as an vehicle to advertise my 3rd annual "90 Bus" Pub Crawl, where birthday celebrants have followed me across town to eat, drink and be merry, all the while celebrating public transportation -- in this case the No. 90 bus, which snakes its way across town from Anacostia to McLean Gardens via Capitol Hill, U Street NW and Adams Morgan.

There were earlier stirrings that I would be celebrating my birthday with fellow blogger Alex Pareene of Wonkette, but because Pareene will be in Minnesota, that's complicated efforts. Anyhow, please join me this Saturday, July 22. It's open invitation. Details below the map.

I've created a Wayfaring Map for you to plot out the route. The way the pub crawl is mapped out is that you don't actually have to follow me across town, just pop in at one of the stops. Last year, we started Woodley Park and headed east ... this year was return to the westbound track, starting at Stop No. 1, Tunnicliff's Tavern, across the sreet from Eastern Market at 222 Seventh St. SE. I will be there starting at 6:30 p.m. for dinner and hope that early birds can join me then or come on by until approximately 8:30 p.m., when the pub crawl will head on to catch a 90 bus.

After two years of swinging by DC9, I've decided that it's just too confined a space, so we're headed to that old stand-by, Stetson's on U Street NW, just west of 16th Street, for Stop No. 2. I really don't like the place since they installed track lighting, but it's a location that seemingly everyone can agree on. I predict we'll arrive around or just after 9 p.m. and we'll drink for two hours.

Around 11 p.m., we'll catch a 90 bus, bypass the mess in Adams Morgan and try to liven up the normally sedate Cafe Deluxe on Wisconsin Avenue, which is Stop No. 3. If we have a large enough crew still with us, we'll take the bar by storm and close out the place ... and then find taxis and be on our merry way home. I can't stay out too late. Aunt Louise has a birthday brunch planned that Sunday morning ... (Please note that the final stop could and is likely to change depending on circumstances. We may cut it short in Woodley Park.)

It's an odd assortment of places in an odd assortment of neighborhoods, but that's the point. Please join me.

Places visited in year's past: the bar at the Omni Shoreham hotel (does it have a name?) ... Pharmacy Bar ... DC9 ... Stetsons (an unintended stop on the first pub crawl) ... Finn Mac Cool's ...

I'm hoping that next year, we'll be able to stop by Mike Benson's new bar/restaurant in the old fire station at North Captiol Street and Lincoln Road.

WEB: When You're Real Busy, It's Surprising What Can Slip Your Mind

2006-05-20T12:26:00.000-04:00

I THINK MOST PEOPLE know about my new project. If not, well check out the new ReadExpress.com. That's where you can find me blogging during the day time. Not sure what I will be doing with the Oculus. We'll see.

SWINDON: This Boggles Me: A Magic Roundabout

2006-04-17T22:09:00.000-04:00

I'M NORMALLY ALWAYS very confident in my skills to navigate a traffic circle/rotary/roundabout. But this thing? Hmmm. From today's washingtonpost.com chat with reporters Lyndsey Layton and Steven Ginsberg, I learn of the Magic Roundabout in Swindon, England, where five roads come together in a concentric ring of five traffic circles. For anyone who finds this stuff interesting, do spend some time gawking at the traffic circle photos at this website or at the diagram above. It'll blow your mind. I want a Magic Roundabout in D.C., just as an experiment to see how tourist drivers react.

IN MEMORIAM: R.I.P. William Sloane Coffin

2006-04-13T00:42:00.000-04:00

I MET WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN briefly when I was growing up in Grand Rapids, Mich. He was speaking at my church one Sunday and he was one of those larger-than-life figures who you didn't realize you were in the presence of until many years after the fact. But yet, you still knew he was someone who was a great figure. When I heard the former Yale chaplain speak, I was very much unaware of his past as a Vietnam War activist. But really, that's not really relevant. In an era of the pre-screened perfected sound bite, Coffin will always be someone who I remember as a great orator, thinker and philosopher, regardless of politics. I yearn for public figures who can stir popular passions by the pure use of thoughtful language and intelligent oratory, often times delivered on the fly. Mr. Coffin was one of those people who could do such things.

I would have loved to have heard Mr. Coffin speak at the great pulpit at Riverside Church in Manhattan. A dignified man for a dignified space and vice versa. Alas, that will not happen.

William Sloane Coffin Jr., 81, died on Wednesday of congestive heart failure at his home in Vermont. The Post's obit is here.

Image of the William Sloane Coffin from Columbia University

PLAUDITS: Congrats to RollCall.com

2006-04-11T19:00:00.000-04:00

I HAVE A DRAFTING BOARD THAT'S about 20 years old, a gift from my parents when I was in my Frank Lloyd Wright phase, a time when I was itching to become an architect when I was all grown and big. I still have the drafting board after all these years. It has a small crack in it, but it still functions just fine -- perfect for 11X17 paper and all my projects from the past two decades and for all those down the road.

I don't use the drafting board too often anymore, but it has come in handy for various web design projects oddly enough. 11X17 paper is perfect for so many things, and getting ideas down on paper, organizing them and connecting all the dots, for me, is the best way to clearly think up a strategy before jumping headlong into a logistically challenging project.

My drafting board has been sitting on a dining room chair for the past few months and one of the sheets of paper near the top is from a year ago when I was still working at Roll Call. At the time, we were about to upgrade RollCall.com and introduce a useful Election Map, essentially a campaign tip sheet on all of the 2006 races. I used my drafting board to sketch out various ways to organize the information, content and such, especially when you're dealing with 435 House races and all the Senate seats up for grabs this fall.

Just as we were about to jump into the technical development of the Election Map in the late spring, I jumped ship, recruited by the Post to head over to Express. But I feel that although I did little in the execution of the Election Map (which was unveiled in September), there's a lot of my heart and soul as to the conceptual development and the content organization. It's the little things that count, of course, so that's why I'm excited that RollCall.com has been nominated for a 2006 Webby (for politics), essentially the online Oscars for those who don't know. So go vote for Roll Call, if you don't mind.

Again, congrats to Team Roll Call. I'm going to go celebrate with a nice bottle of wine. I knew staying up late all those nights would pay off eventually.

NOT DEAD YET: A Dispatch From Baghdad

2006-04-06T16:27:00.001-04:00

OK, THIS BLOG ISN'T DEAD ... YET. In the short term, I'll still be posting random stuff when I feel like it until I figure out what I want to do with this blog. And for my friends who think the "Not Dead Yet" lede-in might be a bit insensitive, it's referring to this blog and not my hometown buddy/freelance reporter David Enders, who happened to talk to me via Google Chat this afternoon from the Iraqi capital. (Go buy his book.)

2:15 PM me: are you still in baghdad?
David: yeah
i'd be clinically insane by now if it wasn't for IM
8 pm curfew blows...
2:16 PM me: it's a life line, for sure
play some eucher
2:17 PM David: forbidden by the militias
me: cards are forbidden by the militias?
David: in some places
me: batgammon?
David: not sure
me: what about online porn?
2:18 PM David: tacitly accepted
this is an arab country
2:19 PM David: in fact, i'm pretty sure a good part of the [population] doesn't know computers have any other use
i'm only half serious
the haifa street guys claimed to break legs and such when they caught people playing cards
i don't know what the other militias think about them
2:28 PM me: it seems like you wouldn't want to piss off the men with the guns

David wanted me to note that the Haifa Street Guys not liking cards thing happened last year. But still ... it's a war zone. You should be able to pass the time when you're holed up the way you want to and not having to worry about armed militias and the like. Is Go Fish taboo too?

David, hang in there. Be well.

NEXT STEPS: The Oculus May Die

2006-04-05T18:30:00.000-04:00

YEAH, I HAVEN'T POSTED IN A WHILE. Work's been busy. I'm not sure I'll have time to maintain this blog at the level of general excellence that you and I expect from my abilities. A few months ago, I wanted to dive in and concentrate on architecture and urban planning blogging, but all of that evolved into something else. I'm not really sure what The Washington Oculus is anymore.

Since I co-founded, developed and later left DCist, I have felt that in many ways I've been a major bricklayer that has helped form the foundation from which this city's blogging world has been built. I started blogging (on an earlier version of this blog that accidentally got erased) back in 2003. It's been amazing to see the D.C. blogging community grow, evolve and adapt over time. I'm glad that I've been a part of it.

While that's all been cool, it may be time to take a step back, reclaim some of my sanity and kill this blog so I can concentrate on more important things, professionally and personally. But we'll see. Maybe the Oculus will linger on for a little longer and will turn into something else entirely. I do have three billion ideas floating around in my head.

Many thanks to all my readers.

UPDATE: OR MAYBE IT WON'T DIE. If you've ever been freaked out by clowns, here's something that's creepy: An instructional video on how clowns are supposed to act around elderly people at nursing homes, courtesy of Screenhead. Too good not to pass on.
>> "Don't Stand Around a Large Cluster of Clowns" [You Tube via Screenhead]

WEST POTOMAC PARK: More Photos

2006-03-31T21:30:00.000-05:00

I UPLOADED MORE of my cherry blossom-related photos on my Flickr account. Go gawk at the pinkish floral display. Much more brilliant than a baby panda.

WEST POTOMAC PARK: A Pinkish FDR Mem'l

2006-03-31T14:08:00.000-05:00

The FDR Memorial, taken Thursday morning amid cherry blossom splendor.

MORNING STROLL: Cherry Blossoms and Tourists

2006-03-30T22:59:00.000-05:00

Greetings! I am very excited because I am blogging on my new MacBook Pro. I'm like a kid in a candy store. It comes with a remote control, which I'm quite excited about, but I'm not too sure that I'll actually use it. It's a beautiful machine. And the engine runs real nice. But my screen is quite a bit wider than the one in this MacWorld photo.

EARLY THIS MORNING, before I headed into the office, I ventured down to the Tidal Basin in an attempt to enjoy the cherry blossoms before the area was flooded with mobs of people. I took some photos, but I haven't had a chance yet to upload them, so that'll have to wait 'til morning. Although I'm probably better suited to judge whether a steak has been cooked to a preferred temperature, I thought that the blossoms could use another day to be blooming at optimal pinkish-white brilliance. Things were a bit hazy out this morning too, so the sky wasn't as bright blue as I had hoped, but yet, the blossoms were quite nice. While I think people think of the most utopian view of the cherry blossoms is at the Jefferson Memorial, I think the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial looks even better with the more limited number of cherry blossom trees that pepper its precinct.

As you can see on the Wayfaring map I created, I stopped off at one of my most favorite off-the-beaten path memorials in the city: the District of Columbia World War I Memorial. It is a simple domed structure that reminds you of an ancient Greek ruin with Doric columns. I say ruin because it is, after all, one of the District's most endangered memorials according to the D.C. Preservation League. DC Watch has a good backgrounder on the memorial's history.

I also swung by the World War II Memorial and the Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 17th and 18th streets.

SINCE IT IS CHERRY BLOSSOM TIME, that also means that the first wave of the nation's capital's tourist season will going into high gear in the coming weeks. Rock Creek Rambler is floating an interesting plan to keep tourists separate from D.C. locals who hate them. Surrendering Georgetown and downtown Washington to the tourist classes, RCR has carved out an area north of M Street NW, east of Connecticut Avenue and west of North Capitol Street -- essentially a bubble around the core of Ward 1. There aren't any guard posts, there are no security checkpoints to enforce the no-tourist rule, but you get the point. RCR doesn't want to see a school group from Iowa fouling up U Street, nor does he want to see a fanny pack anywhere the the upper 14th Street corridor.

OF COURSE, that proposal is all in jest, but with the tourist season comes another season: locals-picking-on-tourists-and-the-funny-things-they-do season. In the early days of this blog, and sometimes on DCist, I would be known for posting skewering observations of tourists. E-mails from relatives of mine and DCist commenters called me arrogant, pompous and downright unfriendly. I see their point to a certain degree.

But then there are instances like the following that can justify locals being angry at visitors to our city, instances where the tourists try to tell the locals how to live their lives. This morning, I was riding the Blue Line to the Smithsonian station so I could begin my stroll to the Tidal Basin. Since I am an experienced Metrorail rider, I have mastered physics to where I can stand up on a moving Metrorail car, open up a newspaper and defy gravity and forward momentum. I won't fall over!

But yet, as I was reading the newspaper while standing on a moving train, an older woman decked out in a sweatshirt that read "Louisville," perhaps in her 50s, told me the following:

You need to sit down. It's not safe. It's just not safe to stand up! These trains need to have seat belts!

I wish I had an audio recording, because she was using a tone where she was scolding me, as if I was spitefully challenging Zeus high up on Mount Olympus. She was concerned for my safety, yes, but in a way where she didn't want to be in the vicinity of one of Zeus' lightning bolts (seen here) that was to strike me down for my brash disregard for the laws of physics. I looked back at her:

I do this everyday.

But was I playing with fate? Between the Federal Triangle and Smithsonian stations, there is a cross-over track, a junction where a Metrorail train derailed on Jan. 13, 1982, the same day of the Air Florida crash at the 14th Street Bridge. Fortunately, my Blue Line train navigated the cross-over track just fine. No disasters. I challenged the laws of commuting physics and I won.

ASTRONOMY: Where Did the Sun Go?

2006-03-29T19:38:00.000-05:00

THERE ARE QUITE A FEW really cool photos of today's total solar eclipse. This one is a NASA photo of the scene over Turkey and Cyprus earlier today. We missed out on it in North America, but fortunately, you can look at some great photos on Flickr.

DISTRACTIONS: Leprechauns and Chaucer

2006-03-29T14:58:00.000-05:00

TWO LINKS for you this afternoon:

1.) Via Blah Blah Black Sheep, I discover some St. Patrick's Day-related hysteria courtesy of a local television news station in Mobile, Ala., and a clever mashup response. Be sure to view the news story first, then the mash-up.

2.) Yes, this had to come some time or another. Via Rebecca Blood and Robot Wisdom, Geoffrey Chaucer is blogging in Middle English.

LINKS: Red Line Woes and Bulgarian Feta

2006-03-28T19:57:00.000-05:00

Photo from the archives of Fur Cafe. No, the Red Line hasn't been that crowded this week, at least to my knowledge.

FOR TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW, I've been on Shady Grove-bound Red Line trains where one of the six cars has malfunctioned for some undetermined reason while the rest of the five are in service ... and overcrowded. Why one car breaks down while the rest are running just fine really isn't important here, but what is quite interesting is how people react to such situations.

As a train pulled into Metro Center Monday night, car No. 2 pulled up to the platform darkened and empty, two obvious signs that the car wouldn't be opening its doors. As everyone who had lined up to board car No. 2 moved to the first and third cars (including your friendly blogger), an old man in a trench coat was left behind. When the doors failed to open, he smacked the train car with his newspaper yelling: "Open up!"

When his voice request for Open Sesame failed, he looked down the platform toward the operator. He yelled down the platform, hoping the operator would magically open the doors. The train got crowded, of course, and then the train operator, as we pulled into the tunnel between Metro Center and Farragut North, he came over the public address system and scolded us passengers for failing "to utilize all the doors" and not moving to the center of the train cars. I thought that was a bit rude on the operator’s fault. When you have a hundred or so passengers lined up on a train platform and one train car is out of service, you are forced to cram through 15 doors instead of 18.
Additionally, when the center of train cars are already filled, you cannot move farther in.

Then this evening, while my train was stopped at Farragut North, the operator of my Red Line train announced that te first train car would be going out of service, the exact reason unexplained. I was in car No. 2 and one of my fellow riders asked how we were supposed to know what train car we were in. That's a good point. Not everyone notices what car they board. This becomes more of a problem if one of the middle train cars goes out of service. So there you go.

GOTHAMIST EDITOR JEN CHUNG has two loves in her life: Pandas and the late Jerry Orbach from NBC's "Law and Order." (picture from Gothamist's third birthday party). Well, now add a third: her new husband Jay. If you're one to look at The New York Times' wedding announcements, you might have spotted Jen an Jay in Sunday's paper. Congrats to the newlyweds.

FOR SOME URBAN PLANNING links: First, take a look at Kanishka's photos from Islamabad on his Flickr account. (And also read his account on driving in the Pakistani capital.) Ahh, planned world capitals.

Then, also take a look at this photo from blogger dl004d, who lives on 10th Street NW. It looks like life is springing from the once-souless heart of the old Washington Convention Center. I haven't been down to that corner of downtown in quite some time. I'm anxious to see the city's development plans for the site.

AFTER TWO BURGERS IN A ROW on Friday and Saturday, I've been eating considerably healthier (besides today's burrito for lunch.) I must say that Bulgarian feta and rice vinegar are two essential salad-building ingredients. Chop up some tomatoes, onions and cucumbers, cube some Bulgarian feta (which will deform into blobs of goat's milk product quite quickly) and dress with some olive oil, dill and rice vinegar. Let it stew in its juices overnight. Voila.

AND IF I'M NOT MISTAKEN, the Washington City Paper made history on Monday. Not because of its new City Desk blog (which is something I've been hoping they'd eventually develop ... it's about time.) but because on its first day in existence, it mentioned DCist, making it the last major local media operation to recognize the group blog's existence. I can't say I read the print edition from cover to cover every week, but I think I would have heard chattering that the City Paper mentioned DCist. Certainly, there were many things from our early days (when we were trying to figure out what the hell we were doing) they could have relentlessly mocked. To Erik Wemple and his crew on Champlain Street NW: welcome to local blogging. I look forward to linking to your content.

FOOD COMA: Trying to Survive Five Guys

2006-03-25T19:08:00.000-05:00

I TEND NOT TO EAT burgers and fries as a major source of sustinence. But yet, they do slip into my diet. In fact, Friday's Diplomat Burger for lunch at the Post Pub -- just down the block from The Washington Post's downtown headquarters on L Street NW -- was perhaps one of the more stomach-upsetting experiences I've had in a while.

I just got Five Guys for dinner at their new Wilson Boulevard location in Court House. (Yes, I'm at the office on a Saturday night.) A Little Bacon Cheeseburger sounded like a good idea at the time. Now I'm in stuck in a food coma, trying to digest all this. I'll be stuck in my chair for quite some time. I can taste the saturated fat.

Does any place in Arlington deliver a spinach salad?

BAGHDAD: Can't Escape the Iraqi Heat

2006-03-23T22:19:00.000-05:00

Photo of a sandstorm blowing into Baghdad from Pattiea via Flickr.

I REALLY LIKE THIS QUOTE from the blog Madly in Love With Iraq, a blog authored by an Iraqi currently living in the United Kingdom. Part of it appeared in Thursday's Blog Log in Express:

When I miss home I go and sit in the steam room, the heat reminds me of the scorching summer of Baghdad and brings back all the memories, the ones I want to wipe off and the ones I want to cherish.

The heat contributed a lot to our hot temper, nervousness, anger, restlessness and finally the uniquely genuine warmth.

What this country has been through is unique as well. Fear, scepticism, aggression and defeat are all built in inside our souls.

My longtime friend, David Enders (who I know from way back in Sunday school and more recently The Michigan Daily) has told me much about the heat in Baghdad from his various experiences in Iraq as a gutsy freelance reporter. So I'm going to pull some quotes about Iraq's heat from Enders' book "Baghdad Bulletin," which chronicles his experiences starting Baghdad's first post-invasion English-language publication, that folded after a few months as the violence began to intensify through the late summer and into the fall of 2003.

BAGHDAD, July 5, 2003, after 24-year-old novice reporter Richard Wild was shot and killed outside the natural history museum:

Sleeping on the roof ensures that I never sleep in. As the sun creeps over the low roof wall, it hits my face in a slow burn, impossible to sleep through. For some reason there are always flies in the morning as well, and though covering my face with my sheet staves them off, it soon becomes stifling.

BASRA, Aug. 22, 2003:

Everyone knows I need a vacation. The bombing seems to be a good enough justification, but I'm not really sure Basra is the best place for a break. Rumor has it that the temperature here tops 70 degrees Celsius, but no one seems to have a thermometer. They don't go out during the day, and when I make the mistake of running outside barefoot to answer the satphone one afternoon, I have to doubletime it back into the house to save my feet from the burning tile. The heat melts doorknobs.

...

"I thought all Americans loved pornography."
"No."
"But aren't most porno movies made in America?"
"That might be true, but that doesn't mean everyone watches them.
To be fair, I thought it was the Iraqis who were obsessed with porn. Their ubiquitous satellite dishes largely decode adult stations and a few news channels. In fact, were it not for the pacifying effect of all that televised flesh during the hot summer, popular armed resistance might have begun much sooner.

So does that mean the next American tactic to secure peace in Iraq is to flood the country with pornography? I think that'd probably enflame situations more. We'll see if the violence dies down in July and August when the heat is at its worst. (Dave, be well. I know you're being careful over there right now, but be careful.)

>> "Is It Really a Teething Problem" [Madly in Love With Iraq]
>> "Murder at the Museum" [Guardian]
>> "Baghdad Bulletin" [University of Michigan Press]

LINKS: Chimichurri, A. Kahn and Gawker Stalker

2006-03-23T00:45:00.000-05:00

SINCE SO MANY PEOPLE seemed to enjoy Wednesday’s photo from last year’s Indiana road trip, I guess I’ll include another. These are clouds along Ind. Route 37, between Bloomington and Indianapolis.

WEDNESDAY EVENING, I joined my sister, my brother-in-law and my great aunt for the birthday girl’s 87th birthday dinner at Chef Geoff’s on New Mexico Avenue NW. The uptown location of Chef Geoff’s has a much different vibe than the downtown location on 13th Street NW. I think that’s because Wesley Heights (or for that matter any D.C. neighborhood west of Glover Archbold Park) doesn’t really have any restaurants, it’s generally pretty busy with folks from the neighborhood. (A few years ago, I witnessed a waiter there spill water, nearly missing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein as she was waiting for former Clinton administration Commerce Secretary and USTR Mickey Kantor to show up.)

I had the Argentine flatiron steak with chimichurri and asparagus (which was quite good), but since the Argentine government just banned beef exports in an attempt to slow inflation, I think the only thing that was Argentine about the steak was the chimichurri. Anyhow, since the last Monday of the month is fast approaching, Chef Geoff’s will be having its monthly half-price wine night, something me and a group of friends have been taking advantage of for the past two or three years or so. $5 burger and wine, great deal.
>> "Argentina Halts Most Beef Exports to Tame Inflation" [Reuters]
>> Chef Geoff’s

AN OLD FRIEND who blogs at Cole Slaw Blog was reading my recent blog post on Chicago’s proposed Fordham Spire and eventually got distracted by various architecture blogs to discover perhaps the coolest university library anywhere in the world. That would be in the Netherlands, at the Delft University of Technology (seen here). A description from Mecanoo.com:

The grass roof of the library is freely accessible for walking and lounging, creating a new amenity for the whole campus. It is supported by slender steel columns in a huge hall enclosed with canted, fully glazed walls. The base of the slope to the west is marked by a broad flight of steps leading up to a recessed entrance. A huge cone pierces the green expanse, articulated by a 1500 mm wide necklace of glazing in the plane of the roof. Supported on splayed steel columns, the cone houses four levels of traditional study spaces connected by a helical stair.

I’ll have to visit next time I’m in the Netherlands.

As for more-traditional libraries, I must say that I will always favor the University of Michigan’s graduate library (left) built by Detroit’s greatest architect, Albert Kahn in 1920 (at least the original section, not the adjoining tower section built in the 1970). To me, the graduate library and the Kahn-designed Hill Auditorium (1913), remind me much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s pre-Prairie/post-Louis Sullivan architecture in the 1890s. Both Central Campus structures look like they’re cousins to Wright’s breakthrough 1893 residential commission, the Winslow House (right) in River Forest, Ill. -- elements of which you can see in Wright’s later work, from the Isadore Heller House (1896) in Chicago, the Ward Willits House (1900-02) in Highland Park, Ill., to even the Marin County Civic Center in California, completed after Mr. Wright’s death in 1959.
>> Library for the Delft University of Technology [Mecanoo via Daily Dose of Architecture via Cole Slaw Blog]
>> Albert Kahn [Wikipedia]
>> Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library [U-M Libraries]
>> Hill Auditorium [U-M Music School]
>> William H. Winslow House [Delmars]
>> Isadore Heller House [Peter Beers]
>> Ward Willits House [Delmars]
>> Marin County (Calif.) Civic Center [Marin County]

I WONDER IF THERE ARE ANY Virginia vanity license plates that can top this one that LAist discovered in Glendale. I’d e-mail James F. of why.i.hate.dc for his informed opinion (since he used to keep a detailed catalog of questionable license plates spotted in the commonwealth), but James F. moved to Seattle. To my knowledge, Rusty, the new why.i.hate.dc editor, hasn’t been keeping track of Old Dominion vanity plates.
>> "LAist Discovers City's Biggest Prick" (pt. 1) [LAist via SocialiteLife]

FOR SUCH A HORRIBLE CONFLICT, tasteful World War I humor is hard to come by, especially when you’re looking for jokes that mix in the current Pantheon of the world’s favorite indie bands. Via Kottke, I laughed my ass off after being directed to this news brief in The Onion. Aren’t there any good bands coming out of Sarajevo these days?
>> "Franz Ferdinand Frontman Shot By Gavrilo Princip Bassist" [The Onion via Kottke]

IN WEDNESDAY’S FINANCIAL TIMES, John Gapper penned a column about Gawker Stalker and the limits of citizen journalism. Gapper, who once co-authored a book with former FT reporter Nick Denton -- publisher of Gawker Media -- is somewhat skeptical of Gawker Stalker, the Google-map enabled celebrity-sighting tracker ... at least as a shining model for the much-hyped “citizen journalism” that emerged as a buzz word after last July’s terror attacks on the London Underground.

From Mr. Gapper:

Whatever the merits of Gawker Stalker, it is at least a genuine piece of citizen journalism, a genre that is thin on the ground. ... But [citizen journalism] has not, so far, produced a lot of first-hand reporting by non-professionals.

In fact, it has produced at least three fake instances of reporting, courtesy of Andrew Krucoff, the noted New York blogger who got fired from his Conde Nast freelancing job because of a Gawker post of which he was the source. On Young Manhattanite, Krucoff admitted to submitting fake Gawker Stalker sightings (Kate Hudson, Natalie Portman, Tim Robbins) to see if Gawker would publish them. They did.

From Mr. Krucoff:

... [I]t just goes to show you that anyone can take a guess with these celebrity sightings and it'd probably be right. Or wrong. It doesn't matter either way. ... Consumer-generated garbage in, poorly-designed garbage out.

Now this isn’t to say that I, as a map-obsessed blogger, don’t enjoy Gawker Stalker. It’s just that you aren’t supposed to take it too seriously. It’s entertainment, which is Gawker’s mission anyway -- something Gawker does quite well. So gawk all you want, just consider that not everything is going to be the pure honest truth. And that’s a good rule for many things on the Internet, like, locally, DCist’s Overheard in D.C., which piggy-backs on Overheard in New York.
>> "The Fallacy That Bloggers Have Replaced Real News Hounds" [FT]
>> "Gawker Stoker: A Bad Case of Wisteria" [Young Manhattanite]

SPRING: Tortured Frogs and Turtles

2006-03-22T12:02:00.000-05:00

DON'T BE TRICKED BY THE COLORS in this photo. They are real. I snapped this photo last April while on a road trip through Indiana. I was hiking with some friends in the beautiful hills outside Bloomington, near the famed limestone quarries. A storm was approaching ahead, but it was sunny in the foreground as the trees and bushes were beginning to bloom. Our odd weather in the Washington area as of late (wasn't it supposed to snow last night?) got me thinking back to last year's transitionary weather in Indiana. As Grace's Poppies wrote on Tuesday:

Moody and unpredictable, proudly displaying her mean streak, spring is here. ... It reminds me of malicious little kids who torture frogs and turtles when they're bored.

If only our local weather authorities could learn to better interpret spring's mood swings. They can't be regulated by medicine, no matter how hard we try. Can there be natural beauty in torturing frogs and turtles?

INTERNET: I'm Giving the Bus a Bad Name

2006-03-22T00:45:00.000-05:00

I LOOKED AT MY BLOG'S SITE METER and discovered that some inquiring mind had stumbled across The Washington Oculus while Googling for "tips for traveling on intercity buses in the us." Who ever that person was, they read my post from this past December when my travel plans to visit my parents back in Michigan got botched. (I had wanted to take my time getting to the Midwest, so I had planned on taking a leisurely overnight Amtrak train to Chicago. But due to a computer glitch, my seat on the sold-out Capital Limited wasn't secure, so I was forced to take Greyhound.)

That was perhaps the most hellish trip I've been on ever since being seasick on an overloaded ferry between Santorini and Mykynos during very, very rough seas on the Aegean. So if you have time to waste and want to know what it's like being stuck in the Pittsburgh bus terminal at well past 3 a.m., do read my account. To the poor soul trying to figure out how to travel in the U.S. by intercity bus, good luck.
>> "Intercity Travel Tips" [The Washington Oculus]

LINKS: Pete's Holiday, Buses and Nuclear Death

2006-03-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

Editor’s Note: I’ve gotten some positive response to the way I constructed the previous post of general links. I think I’ll continue this format, or at least experiment with it for a while. If you have thoughts on that, let me know.

WELCOME WONKETTE, FISHBOWL AND DCIST readers. I’ve gotten links from D.C.’s top blogs the past two days. If you like what you see, please, by all means, stick around.
>> "Metro Section: Good Luck With That" [Wonkette]
>> "Too Close for Comfort" [Fishbowl DC]
>> "Fishbowl Has Our Back" [DCist]

I FOUND THIS QUOTE from London’s Mirror unintentionally funny:

Kate [Moss] thinks Pete [Doherty] needs to be rescued. They have been secretly in touch for a couple of months, but the holiday was still a total surprise for him. She's really worried that he's going off the rails and feels a quiet, romantic break away from prying eyes is exactly what he needs.

Wait, Kate Moss thinks Pete Doherty isn't doing rails any more? (Cocaine, right?) I think a number of magistrate judges in England would beg to differ.
>> “Kate and Pete Head for France” [The Bosh via City Rag]
Earlier: “The Ebb and Flow of Doherty's Death Cycle” [The Washington Oculus]

THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA'S government website is full of wonderful things if you ever have the time to go exploring. Rock Creek Rambler writes a post about how the Department of Public Works' winter street sweeping hiatus has come to an end, which drew a comment from a reader name Matt who wished he would have known about the suspension of sweeping-related parking restrictions. RCR responds:

what, you don't read the DC Public Works web site religiously?

I've always found a gold mine of good information at dpw.dc.gov: What about D.C.'s graffiti blaster? Got hazardous waste? How do you report illegal dumping? (This is quite important. My great aunt's neighbor witnessed work crews dump paint and chemicals in the alleyway behind her house -- chemicals which I had actually walked through to get to Auntie L's house thinking it was just typical alley runoff. That's not good for my shoes, nor is is safe for the Chesapeake.)
>> "Street Cleaning Resumes" [Rock Creek Rambler]

I THINK I’LL NEED to re-read Felix Salmon’s recent analysis of a March 16 Slate article about buses. In it, Salmon picks apart the way Dr. Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago analyzed the idea of incentive pay for bus drivers to be more efficient at what they do, like take these Purdue University students to class (above). Goolsbee takes a look at some program in Santiago, Chile, and other stuff. Like I said, I need to re-read Salmon's analysis and Goolsbee's article. But in the Slate article, Goolsbee takes Chicago bus drivers to task for not taking shortcuts to get around traffic jams:

So, if you drive the route every day, you learn the shortcuts. You know that if it backs up from the Buckingham Fountain all the way to McCormick Place, you're better off taking the surface streets and getting back onto Lake Shore Drive a few miles north.

A lot of buses, however, wait in the traffic jams. I have always wondered about that: Why don't the bus drivers use the shortcuts? Surely they know about them -- they drive the same route every day, and they probably avoid the traffic when they drive their own cars.

Now, as a regular bus rider, I want to shift the scenario to Washington. Suppose you're a driver of a No. 30/32/34/35/36 bus, the crosstown line that is notoriously off schedule where buses have a tendency to bunch. There's a huge traffic jam in Georgetown on your way into Downtown Washington, so you jump over to 28th Street (which community activists probably wouldn't like) to bypass the mess in front of Smith Point and Third Edition. What happens to the passengers who are waiting at M Street NW and Wisconsin Avenue to board the bus? I guess to Dr. Goolsbee, they don't matter.
>> "Report Report Report 1: Buses" [Felix Salmon]
>> “Where the Buses Run on Time” [Slate]

IN OUR POST-9/11 REALITY, us folk living in the East Coast's more prominent cities, like New York and Washington, have to think about the possibility of imminent death by nuclear annihilation. It's the risk we take to enjoy gawking at Butterstick at the National Zoo, gobble Bourbon Chicken samples in the Union Station food court ("Yummy, yummy!") or in the case of New Yorkers, spotting Kate Hudson chowing down on a muffin on E. 54th Street looking like a "total rock-sleaze ho-bag" (Andrew Krucoff, you trickster!).

So looking at The New York Times article published Tuesday about the discovery of an untouched Cold War fallout shelter in the Manhattan approach to the Brooklyn Bridge, you have to be certainly happy that our nation was never forced to use such shelters -- or for Manhattanites, forced to consume the estimated 352,000 crackers stored in the bridge's shelter. But The Gutter draws attention to an article on Archinect, about what would actually happen if someone exploded a nuclear device in a large city. Read at your own peril. I think I'd rather be surprised by the flash of light and the elevated temperatures. At least I have thick walls in my apartment in the case I sleep through such an attack.
>> "Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War" [NYT]
>> “Archinect to City: Drop Dead” [The Gutter]
>> “Manhattan Nuclear Nightmare” [Archinect]

LINKS: Spires, Safes and a Tall Chinese Woman

2006-03-21T00:10:00.000-05:00

FIRST OFF ON THIS TUESDAY, I want to wish my great aunt a happy 87th birthday. Auntie L is a proud native Washingtonian (once the grand marshal in the Palisades July Fourth parade), and has the accent -- and stories -- to prove it.

GREAT NEWS for fans of Chicago’s skyline. Santiago Calatrava’s Fordham Spire, which would be the tallest free-standing structure in North America, got the green light late last week from Chicago’s planning board. Next up, the City Council.

But A Daily Dose of Architecture notes that another highly anticipated Chicago structure, Skidmore Owings Merrill’s 7 South Dearborn is having financing trouble. Getting approval for the Fordham Spire might be one thing. Financing the future lakeshore landmark is another.
>> “Chicago Biz” [A Daily Does of Architecture]

MOST PEOPLE in Washington are quite aware of the jumbo slice litter that can scar the streetscape of 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan. What about 18th Street down the hill near R Street? Apparently, safes either fall from the sky (Wile E. Coyote-style) or are dumped carelessly on the curb by insensitive residents of Corcoran House (my theory). You know who you are.
>> “Safe on the Sidewalk” [How Now Brown Pau]

I KNOW ST. PATRICK'S DAY is long since dead and gone, but I just stumbled upon Tom's "Suck of the Irish" post at Unrequited Narcissism. It's a must read in advance of next year's beer-swilling nonsense.
>> "Suck of the Irish" [Unrequited Narcissism]

IT’S SUCH A SHAME. When I was in New York on vacation staying in the general vicinity of Gramercy Park and Madison Square, Shake Shack in Madison Square was still closed for the season. Well, it opened up on Monday. Blast! Next time.
>> “Shake Shack Open, Line-Free” [The Eater]

ATTENTION MATTWDC. If you read my blog, please know I read and enjoy your blog. Others do too. You say:

I've been kind of bored with blogging lately and not really convinced that I have anything of much value to add to the conversation. Maybe it's that this blog has never had much of a focus, or maybe that I'm not much of a thinker or writer.

You describe yourself as a faceless bureaucrat living in Ward 3. Sometimes, it’s the faceless bureaucrats who are the more sane and thoughtful people living among us. I hope you continue writing.
>> “Monday, March 20, 2006” [MattWDC]

SHANGHAIIST RELAYS some Reuters photos of the world’s tallest woman, who lives in Anhui Province. Yao Defen is nearly 8 feet tall. Sadly, it looks likes she’s been tricked into performing in traveling circuses.

During her national tours, she fell several times during the performances, and injured several parts of her body. Her boss, a person identified only as Mr. Qui, refused her request to be taken to a hospital and forced her to continue the performing.

Sad, but not all that surprising.
>> “Yao Defen, the Tallest Woman in the World” [Shanghaiist]
>> More Photos [JSChina]

SOFT DRINKS: A Grab for Tab

2006-03-20T22:01:00.000-05:00

I'VE ALWAYS ASSOCIATED the soft drink Tab with one of my high school social studies teachers. I can't remember exactly if the teachers' lounge had Tab in the soda machine (sorry, I should say "pop machine," as I attended high school in the Midwest) but if it did, I'm sure he used a lot of quarters over the years to get his caffeinated elixir. A friend's mom, also a teacher, drank (maybe still drinks) Tab with religious fervor. Aside from those devoted Tab-fanatics, the soft drink -- which reached its height of popularity during the first or second season of "Family Ties" -- has lost its market share. (But apparently we journalists are big Tab consumers too, Ben McGrath wrote in the New Yorker earlier this year.)

That's why it surprised me that Tab has tried to make a popular comeback in the form of a revamped energy drink, masterminded by Coca Cola. Look here at Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas at a Tab promotional event during New York Fashion Week. She looks like she loves it, don't you think? As The People We Love to Hate wrote a while back:

I think Fergie is the perfect person to sponsor a soft drink that no one has drank since 1982.

I actually got to try said energy drink and well, I can't say I enjoyed any aspect of the new and improved Tab. I'm sure the Tab-fanatics out there shun the new product too. Tab-fanatics don't want to be cool. Tab drinkers are what they are, no matter how puzzling their soft drink choice might be to the non-Tab drinker. Coca Cola’s dragging of the Tab brand onto super-caffeinated bandwagon to hang out with the Red Bulls of the world just might alienate Tab's über-devoted buyers, the overworked high school teachers and journalists of the world.

SO WHY AM I WASTING BANDWIDTH ON TAB? I was picking up some essentials earlier this evening at Woodley Park's overpriced convenience store, where Tab happens to be sold. A twentysomething guy in front of me had filled his shopping basket with three six-packs of Tab and a wheel of some sort of white cheese, I think Havarti. That’s it: Dairy products and pinkish soda. Mind you, the Tab was bought just before 10 p.m., when the store closes. I'm not sure if there are rules about buying Tab considering its ridiculed status among soft drinks, but I think one guideline might be that you can only purchase Tab late at night, when few people are going to witness your purchase. I think it's a worthy theory.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? If you were addicted to Tab, would you be embarrassed to purchase it in view of others? If you buy Tab on a regular basis, are you proud of your purchase or do you hide it?

>> "Don't Phunk With my Tab?" [The People We Love to Hate]
>> "Tab Scare" [New Yorker]
>> "Tab Energy Branding: Will It Work?" [Business Pundit]

DUPONT CIRCLE: Jefferson Place Facades

2006-03-20T00:02:00.000-05:00

I'M NOT SURE what's been happening the past few months, but I've been getting awfully attached to old buildings that I have various connections to. You're all well aware of the (temporarily) successful fight to save the Heurich House (and my great-great grandfather's woodcarvings). I've discussed issues related to facadism using the Eye Street NW townhouse my grandfather grew up in as an example. I probably bored you with storytelling related to the historic Collegiate Gothic structure in Ann Arbor that houses my old college paper, The Michigan Daily, which is about to be renovated.

And now, this weekend, I decided to pay a visit to a rowhouse I used to work in on Jefferson Place NW, a structure that's now in the process of having its innards scooped out for the Jefferson Row condos. It's not that 1830 Jefferson Place was a particularly historic building. But walking by and taking a peek inside, it's sort of sad to see that the place -- all four floors of it -- has been entirely demolished. The narrow staircase no longer exists. A ladder for construction workers to navigate the structural bracing is all that's there. But according to Jefferson Row's condo marketing materials, it says:

Each exquisitely detailed condominium features the authentic, carefully crafted touches so rarely seen in today’s homes. And all of the historic details are complemented by superior modern conveniences and state-of-the-art extras.

I guess the "historic details" are on the exterior. But then another area of the promo sites says the condos blend "the allure of historic charm ..." with modern living. So at least there is some honesty in the marketing of the buildings' historic nature.

The reality at the current time is that you can see clear straight through the back into the alleyway -- an alleyway I might add that has always been particularly dirty, home to many rats and rat skeletons, plus fragrant garbage juices that flowed down the narrow passage between the back of Jefferson Place and the strip of M Street NW businesses between 18th and 19th streets, including Ozio, Sign of the Whale and those two strip clubs. They'll make great neighbors for the new condo owners. Try pulling your car out of the back parking area. It's a pain. Getting out of the alleyway when delivery trucks block the exit on both ends is pretty troublesome too. And 19th Street's traffic flow is just great, espeically during rush hour, or when Rumors is part of a sponsored Golden Triangle pub crawl.

But enough of that. You can't really beat the location of Jefferson Row. So close to Well Dressed Burrito. Anyhow, I always used to be wary of sentimentality. But with all of these buildings and my memories of them, I guess I can't help but be a little sentimental.

SUNDAY WALK: Cross-Potomac Commute

2006-03-19T14:14:00.000-05:00

I DECIDED THAT THE WEATHER was nice enough to walk to the office today. Because of Rock Creek Park and the Potomac River, there is no direct way to go from the Woodley Park area in the District to Court House area of Arlington, so I cut through Rock Creek and Montrose parks and through Georgetown on 31st Street NW and the Key Bridge. It's about a four-mile walking commute.

So I made a Wayfaring map of the walk and posted photos of Montrose Park and 31st Street NW on my Flickr site.

DINNER: Asparagus, Yellow Peppers and Tomatoes

2006-03-19T12:33:00.000-05:00

MY COOKING IS GENERALLY GOVERNED by instinct, not by recipe. And more often than not, is dictated by what leftovers I have and what random stuff I have in my kitchen cabinets and the necessity to use up what was once fresh food before it spoils.

So last night, I realized that I needed use up some salad greens, some asparagus that was cooked earlier in the week and a yellow pepper that had been purchased nearly a week earlier.

The result, photo here:

ASPARAGUS, YELLOW PEPPERS AND TOMATOES with TARRAGON
You need ...
A half a bunch of precooked asparagus
One yellow pepper, chopped to your liking
One can of diced tomatoes with basil

Throw the uncooked yellow pepper in a wok, stir fry for a few minutes. Then throw the rest in. Add a generous dash of tarragon. Serve on a plate and if you want, add some Bulgarian feta on the side. Eat.

I served it with salad greens with yellow pepper, Bulgarian feta, dill dressed with olive oil and rice vinegar.

WEEKEND: Spring Peeks Through

2006-03-18T15:42:00.000-05:00

ALTHOUGH IT IS A LITTLE BIT COLD AND BREEZY, Saturday's been quite beautiful thus far. The skies are very clear which has made taking photos great. Here is Jefferson Place, looking out toward the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and 18th Street NW. Note the budding trees. St. Patrick's Day was a pretty low profile evening for me. No need to battle crowds, the nonsense and the various shades of green out and about on the sidewalks of the capital.

But I did overhear some classic conversation on the 98 bus Friday evening. Rounding the corner at 18th and U streets NW, a woman told what I assumed to be her significant other to look out at the northeast corner of the intersection. The old convenience store that had been there has been reshaped this winter as a new wine store ... De Vinos.

"Look! I wonder what happened to the party store. There's a lot of wine in there."

"Yeah," her companion replied.

"I wonder who owns the place. I bet the Argenteeneans own it," she said.

"Yeah," her mate muttered, not seeming to be too interested.

"Yeah, this city is filled with Argenteeneans."

I then looked back at the two, in bewilderment. I think she meant Salvadoran. Or who knows, maybe even Eritrean or Ethiopian. They're all at lower latitudes anyway.

I wanted to refer her to Wednesday's Ask Tom chat on washingtonpost.com:

Alexandria, Va.: Tom,

I've asked a few weeks in a row about possible Argentinean restaurants. Are you not answering because you don't know of any or are you just not getting to my question?

(I will be trying the gelato from today's food section).

Gracias!

Tom Sietsema: I know of no good Argentine restaurants in the Washington area. Does anyone here recall the very good Las Pampas in Georgetown? I used to save up my tips to eat there with dates. I can still taste that wonderful steak...

Maybe I'm wrong though. There could be a lot of Argentines in the Adams Morgan/U Street area. It's just that they don't open restaurants like the Salvadorans, Ethiopians or Eritreans do.

AND IN UNRELATED NEWS, look how Jessica Cutler responded to my post from last week about the artillery barrage exchanged between Wonkette and the former Washingtonienne. Quite clever if you ask me:

From: xxxxxxx.xxxxxx@xxxx.gov
Subject: OH WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH JESSICA CUTLER?
Date: March 17, 2006 3:16:36 PM EST
To: me@jessicacutleronline.com

"Never! Never, Marge! I can't live the button-down life like you. I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles. Sure, I might offend a few of the bluenoses with my cocky stride and musky odors. Oh, I'll never be the darling of the so-called city fathers, who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about what's to be done with this Homer Simpson?!"

Simpsons references never go stale. Does this mean I'm a "so-called city father" ... ? I'll add that to my resume.

DUPONT CIRCLE: Flowers for Tomas Masaryk

2006-03-17T14:48:00.000-05:00

ONE OF MY FAVORITE TRIANGLE PARKS in Washington is the one on Massachusetts Avenue that's dedicated to Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomas Masaryk. The statue stands where Massachusetts Avenue crosses Q and 22nd streets NW. When I used to live in Glover Park and would ride the D2 bus to Dupont Circle everyday, it always marked that the end of the line was coming up soon.

Mr. Masaryk used to stand in the triangle park all alone, but back in 2003 (I think) is when the park got an upgrade and its beautiful marble plaza.

If case you have no idea who Tomas Masaryk is, here's a backgrounder.

I also snapped some photos today of Ivan Mestrovic's statue of St. Jerome, which stands outside the Croatian embassy, and the statue to Irish patriot Robert Emmet.

Photos here:
- St. Jerome
- Robert Emmet

GROCERIES: Trader Joe's Opens on 14th St.

2006-03-17T10:44:00.000-05:00

THIS MORNING, the long-awaited Trader Joe's opened near Union Square on 14th Street in Manhattan. As you can see from Curbed, there is some saddness: "this momentous day in the history of our fair city will be celebrated without $3 wine."

That's right, New Yorkers are being denied immediate access to what was once known as 2 Buck Chuck. The opening of the wine store is being delayed. Although Washingtonians have for years been able to get their Trader Joe's goodness at a number of suburban locations, the District is supposed to get it's own Trader Joe's location in Foggy Bottom/West End, in the redeveloped former Columbia Hospital site at L and 24 streets NW. That is, I believe, supposed to open by the end of the year. (I can't find any easily accessible news pinpointing an opening date, but construction on The Columbia has been moving along rapidly.)

Yes, there is even a Trader Joe's blog, but it is unaffiliated with Trader Joe's. That's some deep love there.

RANDOM LINKS: A Tasty Assortment

2006-03-16T15:22:00.000-05:00

SOME QUICK LINKS:
FIRST OFF, wonderful news about the Heurich House.

AND NOW EVERYTHING ELSE ...

- I had a wonderful time at the blogger happy hour last night at Yuca. Social chair KathrynOn has a roundup.
- Diplodocus has arrived safe and sound in Islamabad.
- And I Am Not Lying for Real has a great post about the Florida Avenue Grill.
- From Cole Slaw Blog, I learn that Ann Arbor icon Faz Husain of A Hello Faz! Pizza has died. I can't say I ever liked his pizza, but his passing is sad nonetheless. This made me dig up my old Daily article detailing the first-ever Michigan Daily Pizza Challenge:

At 7:59 p.m., A Hello Faz's pizza arrived. Then came the pie from Anthony's 11 minutes later. While Faz was the first in a series of mediocre and average pizzas to make its way past the jury, Anthony's was more distinct. A good crust and sauce, it appropriately fell under its self-proclaimed category of gourmet.

- Gawker's playing with fire.
- This is cool.
- Via Londonist, this photo of the Lancaster Gate tube station is cool. (pictured above)
- Speaking of photos ... Kyle says:

In another 45 minutes I'll be strapping my Burton Custom on for some night skiing action and then I'll finish the night with some sushi from the 10th floor sushi bar. Oh, and we got seven inches of fresh powder this morning. Yes, I am trying to make you jealous. Is it working?

Yes, Kyle, it is. Another blogger I know is leaving next week for Buenos Aires. Lucky bastards.

... And a non-link: DJE, if you're reading this from Irbil or greater environs, safe travels into the hornet's nest. Go do some great reporting. Be well my friend.

BLOGGING: A Smoldering Fire Flares Up

2006-03-15T18:40:00.000-05:00

OH WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH JESSICA CUTLER? The antics of the former staff assistant (she's the on the right, with Ana Marie Cox during happier times) for Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine-turned-Washingtonienne sex blogger-turned-“Washingtonienne” author are all quite entertaining. But this being the Ides of March and all, there must be something looming on the horizon. And that would be HBO’s planned Washingtonienne-inspired series, produced by Sarah Jessica Parker and also, today’s cat fight between Wonkette (the website that launched Cutler’s career) and Cutler.

Wonkette, fires the first volley at Washingtonienne’s television future in a conversation with an “operative” via AIM:

operative: hey, if it keeps her off the streets….
wonkette: obviously, i just wanted someone else to share my pain
operative: also: America needs to know that lobbyists are not, in fact, the lowest form of Washington life
wonkette: clearly. if they were, there would be sitcoms about them.
operative: also: as if flyover country needed more proof that DC is an amoral wasteland

Cutler returns fire, targeting Wonkette’s editor emeritus, Ana Marie Cox, and her novel “Dog Days,” in a similar fashion:

operative: you should write that dog days is going to be made into a tv show
operative: "this makes 2 series about jessica cutler"
Jessica: hee
operative: ooh let's go subtle
operative: have an interview with ana marie cox
operative: and have the normal questions
operative: and then slip in "was it hard for you, as a married woman, to write a character who is single and seeking a relationship with a tv anchor?"

I love a good blog war. And the animosity here runs deep.
>> “Oh, Look, It’s the Ides of March: Jessica Cutler’s TV Show” [Wonkette]
>> “A Girl After Our Own Wonkette” [Jessica Cutler Online]

MEDIA: Mike Wallace Retires

2006-03-14T17:00:00.000-05:00

AS YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY HEARD, Mike Wallace is retiring from CBS' "60 Minutes." If you look at the photo above, you'll see me in the background. Wallace is looking at The Michigan Daily's editorial page, which I edited when I was at the University of Michigan.

You may remember this photo from a few weeks back in black and white and grainy. (That's because I took a photo of a black and white print out of the photo.) Somehow, Rob Goodspeed had the image on file, so he posted it to his Flickr account, where I have stolen it from. Thanks Rob.

HALIBUT: An Easy Recipe

2006-03-13T18:45:00.000-05:00

MY DEAR GREAT AUNT had some minor surgery last week, so she's been stuck at home since returning from Sibley Memorial Hospital. Friday, I prepared dinner for her since she had been complaining to no end about the cuisine served up by Sibley's kitchen crew, including cream of wheat that "had the consistency of chicken broth." I thought my meal turned out so well (and it's easy to prepare), so I thought I'd share it with you all. Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of the preparation and finished product, but that's OK.

As my great aunt says: "Halibut is a bland fish, so you have to dress it up." Here's my attempt to do just that ...

ROMANO-ENCRUSTED HALIBUT WITH CAPERS AND MUSHROOMS
Ingredients:
Halibut (2 filets)
Mushrooms (sliced)
Capers
Romano cheese (grated)

Take the halibut filets, and place them in a pan coated in olive oil. Layer the sliced mushrooms on top of the filets, filling the remaining areas of the pan with the mushrooms. Take 3-5 generous spoon-fulls of capers and distribute them evenly throughout the pan. There's no need to go overboard with the capers. Take grated Romano cheese (parmesan would work as well) and cover the mushrooms and halibut with a generous dusting of cheese.

Put in a preheated oven (350 degrees) uncovered for a half hour or so. Use your best judgment. The mushrooms and capers should get a nice, but not overbearing Romano crust.

CHAIN BRIDGE: Arlington, Don't Blame Me

2006-03-12T20:01:00.000-05:00

I SWEAR, I SWEAR, I was at the office this afternoon when the main water line serving Arlington County burst underneath Chain Bridge, certainly annoying thousands of people who didn't have water on both sides of the Potomac. My co-workers can tell you I was at the office. But if you look at my Flickr account, you might see a slideshow of the area near Chain Bridge with photos taken today. At the crack of dawn, I went hiking in the rock-strewn bog adjacent to Chain Bridge in the Potomac River gorge. I haven’t been sleeping well lately (woke up around 5:30 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep), so I decided to go hiking in one of my favorite spots in the District.

Now this area doesn’t look like it’s in the city, but indeed, Chain Bridge is in the District, but it’s nearly in Maryland. But you might as well be in some remote place in the mountains. It is at Chain Bridge where the Potomac hits its first cataract, Little Falls. When the water runs high -- and it isn’t right now -- the bogs, rivulets and streams between the Potomac River and the C&O Canal can become littered with debris from upstream. It’s been like this for millions and millions of years as the Potomac carved its way to what’s now the Chesapeake Bay.

Like along other stretches of the Potomac -- like Great Falls -- the National Park Service warns of the dangers of hiking on the rocks. While this area is somewhat tame and a short trail leads from the canal towpath, it is still pretty rough traveling. I made a Wayfaring map if you should ever find yourself in the area. Random fishermen head down there -- and leave their remains. (This morning, I found some Tecate cans.) It’s a natural wonder. But it takes some vigilance to get there if you don’t have a car. Fortunately, I had a borrowed car and parked in the parking area off Clara Barton Parkway, just west of Chain Bridge.

While the bridge’s superstructure is indeed of a more modern time, the bridge piers date back to the 19th century. Chain Bridge has a fascinating history. Before there was a bridge, there was a small gristmill at Pimmit Run on the Virginia side of the river. When the British burned Washington in 1814, it was at this mill where the Declaration of Independence was stashed away in sacks of flour for safekeeping. When the bridge was built, it was part of the road linking Georgetown to Fairfax (today’s Route 123/Chain Bridge Road). During the Civil War, forts protected the bridge on either side of the river, including some artillery batteries up on the Palisades, one just down the way from my great aunt’s house. Last fall when I was hiking down near the bridge, I found graffiti dating to the late 1880s, which I think is pretty cool. Newer graffiti (closer to the site of the burst pipe) I found this morning says “Save the Children.” I don’t think Borf ever made his way down here, however.

>> Photos of the rock-strewn bog near Chain Bridge from last fall.
>> This morning's photos

MCLEAN GARDENS: Philosophers vs. Comics

2006-03-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

THE SIDEWALK PATIO at the Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue near Idaho Avenue in McLean Gardens isn't that bad of a place to enjoy a cup of coffee and read the Sunday paper. I was doing that this morning when I observed the following interaction. It's not quite verbatim, but pretty close.

Man A (Man on Sidewalk): "Oh, that's a great dog."
Man B (Dog Owner on Sidewalk Patio): "Yeah, he's a good dog."
Man A: "What's his name?"
Man B: "Oh, Hobbes."
Man A (petting dog): "Oh philosophers, they make great pet names!"
Man B (somewhat offended): "You think that I would name my dog after a philosopher?"
Man A: "Ahhh ..."
Man B: "He's named for the greated comic strip ever, Calvin and Hobbes!"

Man A makes some joke about philosophy that didn't make sense, but Man B laughed and calmed down and became more friendly.

Man A: "What's your next dog's name? Immanuel Kant?"
Man B: "No, Hagel!"

Man A and B laugh together. All is good, sidewalk relations are back in balance. Man A makes his way into Starbucks.

TRANSIT: ISO Volunteer Correspondents

2006-03-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

YOU MAY HAVE SEEN on page 40 of today's issue of Express that we're looking for volunteers who ride public transit to send us interesting observations of their commute on a regular basis for a new feature. So I thought I'd spread the news here. If this is something of interest, read the description below.

Express is looking for volunteers with a knack for words to be our eyes and ears on the Metro, sending short weekly dispatches from their Metro travels. Think you've got what it takes? E-mail three writing samples to inbox@readexpress.com by March 15. Please keep them under 350 words and include "Commuter Dispatches" in your subject line.

BIG BROTHER: So Many Fans in Norfolk!

2006-03-09T16:03:00.000-05:00

JEEZ, RIGHT AFTER my previous post went up about the discovery of mustard gas artillery shells in Spring Valley, my site meter started lighting up from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet. I had no idea I had so many fans in Norfolk that are still using Windows 2000! Thanks for the traffic! I hope my readers realize that this information already was printed in The Washington Post, which has a considerably larger readership base than The Washington Oculus. Nothing sinister here folks. Unless of course you're talking about Curbed's spy shots from within the Hearst Building in New York.

gate9-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil MSIE 6 Windows 2000
09 Mar, Thu, 14:36:50 gate2-norfolk. MSIE 6 Windows 2000
09 Mar, Thu, 14:42:21 gate5-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil MSIE 6 Windows 2000
09 Mar, Thu, 14:42:42 gate3-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil MSIE 6 Windows 2000
09 Mar, Thu, 14:43:51 gate6-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil MSIE 6 Windows 2000
09 Mar, Thu, 14:44:20 gate7-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil MSIE 6 Windows 2000
09 Mar, Thu, 14:46:22 gate4-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil MSIE 6 Windows 2000