Inspired by my recent trip to the Tivoli Theatre, I found a fantastic book on lost buildings in DC.

Ranging from architectural treasures to the more mundane, James M. Goode’s treatise “Capital Losses” features beautiful old photographs and well-researched text. Some of the stories in here are classics and it’s well-worth a look.

I spent most of my lunch hour leafing through it at the downtown Barnes & Nobles, sighing over some spectacular visions of DC Victorian grandeur.

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Well, the DC area has one less Talk Radio Host as of today, WMAL fired Michael Graham for his anti-Islam remarks. Michael has proved so delicately for all of us that while you do have a right to free speech as guaranteed by the Constitution, you have no right to be an asshole and not have to suffer for it.

Of course, talk radio hosts are a dime a dozen, so it’s one down, 20,000 to go…man I miss Art Bell.

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Yesterday I returned from that classic DC summer ritual, the long weekend at the beach. Congratulating myself for the foresight of taking today off to clean in preparation for a mid-week house guest, I set out to battle against acres of dust, piles of dirty laundry, stale air, and the usual minefield of cat hairballs.

Several hours later, sweaty and frustrated, I’m still at it.

When you have an old house, cleaning eventually vanquishes you. You endlessly run up and down stairs with buckets of cleaner, finding all the little presents your cats left you. Somehow even more dust descends the second you turn off the vacuum. So I find myself thinking of the first owner, Mrs. Campbell (we found her calling card once in the space behind the pocket doors), and how the hell she must have managed.

If I complain about cleaning the house, scampering about in a little sundress and sneakers, how did she do it in 1890’s full regalia – underdress, corset, petticoats, wool dress, laced up boots, long hair (real and false) piled high? And there was even more dust in those days – our house was at one time equipped with a “modern” coal system venting hot air into the rooms, leaving a nice film of soot to clean every day. Wool carpets, heavy draperies, all the tchotchkes of Victorian life – it’s a wonder those people could breathe!

All the moaning we do about how hot it is, and we have the luxury of CAC to escape to!

Were they all just tougher than we are today?

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Dear Guy in the Blue Coupe at the Glebe Rd. Harris Teeter this afternoon:

If you’re waiting for a parking space, perhaps you could, like, wait near the parking space you intend to take, instead of parking over by the curb in front of a parked minivan where no one can see you. Maybe then people would notice that you’re waiting for it.

Instead, in a fit of impotent rage at my indifference to your self-created predicament, you screamed a phrase that was clearly calculated to anger me, but only entertained me. After all, there you were, seething in your car, still circling the lot, as I was on my way into the store. Clearly, I win.

Love and Kisses,
Tiff

PS: I may be a “fat c*nt,” but you’re not exactly a prize package yourself, you scrawny jackass.

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A week or so ago, a friend of ours stayed at Hotel Monaco down on 7th and F on the verge of Chinatown. Apparently, the Klimpton Group Hotel also drew the attention of View from the Wing writer George Leff:

Once we had finished our entrees, the waitress brought our check. We asked whether they offered dessert? And she took away our check and brought new menus. No, she wasn’t trying to get rid of us. I wasn’t commenting on all of these deficiencies during our meal, we were more than pleasant! It just never occurred to her that at 11:45 am we might want dessert after brunch. Bad for the restaurant (it reduces average bill amounts) and bad for patrons (it’s hardly anticipatory service, and if she’s unsure if we’ll want something she might do better to ask).

And that’s just part of his complaint. Yowza.

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Okay, so I may be new to this whole “speeding ticket thing,” I’ve only ever been hit by the Arlington PD for going to fast along Lee Highway (dude, 30 is not realistic for a four lane street that is a major thoroughfare, c’mon now.) in 2002, but this to me seems a bit off-axis. There’s an off-duty DC cop who is pulling people over for speeding.

Yes. You read that correctly. He’s giving out speeding tickets as a hobby.

Am I the only one who sees this as vigilante work? If he was doing something like stopping robbers, or preventing rapes and murders, I suppose that would be one thing, but just generating revenue for the city? Now I’m not so sure…

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Some things are just too bizarre to be false. Seriously, much like our baby panda “Butterstick” (which got some serious love in the Express yesterday.), some things are so bizarre that they must actually exist:

Part of Frager’s 85th Anniversary Celebration

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EVENT:
Bring us your biggest, ugliest and heaviest homegrown tomatoes. $85 Gift Certificates will be awarded in addition to the tomato most resembling our owner Mr. Ed.

STREET ADDRESS:
Frager’s Hardware on Capitol Hill. 1115 Pennsylvania Avenue SE.

Sadly, all of my tomatoes were perfectly lovely, and, well, delicious. But if you’ve got ugly tomatoes, take ’em to Frager’s, you could come up with some cash for next year’s crop.

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God, I love Google. From Google’s spy eye in the sky to drilling under your desktop they are really bringing good things to light. In doing so, they are opening up many of their products to hackers too, and look at the goodies produced so far:

Cheap Gas Hack
The next time you’re facing gas sticker shock, or like Tom watching it rise by the day, go on over to this cheap gas Google hack where you can put in Washington, DC and find that gas is $2.52 at Connecticut & Veazey. Powered by GasBuddy and Google Maps, this little hack could save you more than GEICO!

Traffic Advisory Hack
Next up, you can use this amazing Traffic Advisory Google hack to make sure you’re not getting the long line of red lights that Gridlock DC often provides. Powered by Yahoo traffic alerts, it tells you where construction and such is going on.

Distance Traveled Hack
Better yet, be like me, and go car free DC. Then you can use the Gmap Pedometer Google hack to figure out how far you walked, ran, or biked without resorting to a sextant or a GPS. While it take a little work, and clicking on the “Click here if you don’t live in Hoboken” link, this hack is a dream for those of us who don’t run the way cars drive.

Apartment Rent Hack
And when you’re ready for that shower after your run or a beer after your drive, look no farther than this kick-ass Housing rate Google Hack Combining the “for rent” posts on Craigslist with Google maps, you can search for places to live by geography and cost. Also this is a great rent leveler – is your one bedroom really worth $1,500 in your hood?

They are so good, I think I’m gonna work for Google!

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Local Megalomaniac Dan Snyder, fresh off his bribery attempts at the Department of Interior is now after a park of a whole other nature. Yup, that’s right, Dan Snyder wants to own a controlling share in Six Flags. He’s been outspoken of the management there since he bought a 8.6% interest in the company a little while ago. He apparently said they need to win the playoffs, and he’s just the guy to helm them to do just that. He wants to make sure that Daffy gets more catches and that Bugs gets a few more carries each quarter. Or something like that.

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Yesterday the Herndon Town Council approved a Day Laborer site run by a grant from Fairfax County to the tune of $170,000 and administered by Project Hope and Harmony out of a former police station. This stirred up a bunch of controversy when Wayan wrote about it earlier in the month.

Friend of DC Metblogs Marisa Martineau is quoted in the WTOP article:

“We do not support illegal immigration,” said Maria Martineau of the Hispanic Committee of Virginia. “Rather, we favor eradication of societal structures that create a permanent underclass.

This is going to be an interesting project to watch. If it works, better for the area. If it fails, however, are we going to see further crackdown on day-labor gathering places?

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Welcome back Redskins fans! Now get ready to pay more. WMATA is gonna charge folks who park at the station lots at Morgan Boulevard or Largo Town Center, then walk to the stadium, $25 for the privilege. This is comparable to what the team charges in its lots, but unlike the team lots, there is a way out: Anyone whose SmarTrip card shows a subway ride within two hours of leaving the lot will only pay the regular parking charge.

So my dear car-loving football fans, save yourself $20 the easy way, ride the metro from one lot to the other before and after the game. Say you parked at Morgan Boulevard. Then Metro to Largo, walk to the game, and after the game walk back to Largo & metro to Morgan. Poof! You just paid $6.20 for parking, ($3.50 parking + 2.70 for the metro ride) instead of the full $25.

And while I’d much rather you actually Metro all the way to/from the game, just remember, you read about this Metro hack here first.

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Great piece in the Post today on bringing football back to Gallaudet. Gallaudet is one of the District’s frequently over-looked universities, providing liberal-arts education to over 1800 students who are hearing-impaired. Football’s a bit of a challenge when you can’t hear your coach. Their coach, Ed Hottle, is just learning sign language with 2-hour practice sessions every day.

Workouts start tomorrow, with their first game on September 4th against the Shenandoah University JV squad. Go Bison!

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So all I wanted in the world yesterday morning was to get in my car and go to work. I like my job. I was in my mental “Go-to-work” zone. I got in my car, pulled away from the curb, and noticed a vague rumbling noise from under the car, and an odd feel to the handling that I couldn’t quite identify. So I pulled over.

Well shit. I’ve got a flat.

I parked the car again and considered my options. Fortunately, Tom drove me to work instead of our usual carpool arrangement. He offered to change the tire for me too (because I can barely get my spare out of the back, much less jack up a car), but since the car was parked facing down a hill, I was less than comfortable with the idea of asking my life-partner-in-crime to get on the ground next to 2,500 pounds of steel that could shift unexpectedly off the very teeny jack on a 30% grade. Thanks, no, I value Tom’s life and personal structural integrity.

But… my certified pre-owned Beetle came with roadside assistance! Aha!

After an evening of dealing with a Volkswagen rep and a towing company rep that were dumber than a bag of hammers, a truck from King Towing in Fairfax (Fairfax? Is that the closest garage you could find, VW?) appeared around 7:30 PM. They brought a tow truck with the winch that can grip the rear wheels of a car, thus preventing it from sliding anywhere.

This is why I call a professional Emergency Truck Road Service. They have professional equipment.

The whole thing took about half an hour, swatting at mosquitos the whole time.

And now my full-size spare is securely on the Bug and my car is once again driveable. But it’s on the right side, which is also the side I banged up a bit against a parking garage wall a few months ago. So my car looks all gimpy on the right. If you see a little green Bug matching that description, wave at me and my poor, bruised ride.

Fortunately, it’s just a very small hole in my tire, so I can fix it and reinflate it for less than $10, rather than spending hundreds of dollars getting new front tires. Maybe I’ll finally get that rubbing compound to take out the scrapes, too…

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Sure, the Georgetown DMV is closed for renovations, and the K st. location is closed for at least another week or so due to disrepair, but that always leaves the C St. NW location if you’re trying to get stuff in Northwest….right?

Well, today, not so much. While I wouldn’t hesitate to that most times, the DMV is full of crap, today that was literally so. Due to a sewage issue, the office was closed for most of the day, only reopening at 2:30 this afternoon.

C’mon guys, get your shit together, this is just embarrassing.

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Welcome to the twenty-first century, Mayor Williams! You’ve gotten yourself a blog. Welcome to the internet. Sadly, no RSS feed just yet, but I look forward to reading your site. Take a lesson from Councilman Garcetti in Los Angeles, and come hang out with the bloggers. We’ll all be at The Washington Weblogger Meetup Group event at Pharaoh’s tonight. We look forward to seeing you there.

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That evacuation at the Mayflower this weekend? The one that happened twice? It was a terrible mistake. The box itself belonged to a Secret Service contractor who left the device there accidentally. Apparently, had the box actually been a bomb, and had it exploded…

…it would have taken our two city blocks.

Oops.

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I love Wally’s Aquarium. Back when I wasn’t car free DC, I would head out to Wally’s at least once a month to fish-shop. They have a great selection of fish gear and the service is amazing. When I became a proud guppy dad, they helped me with much of my stress and worry, and now I have guppies galore.

If you’re jonesing for your own guppy family, or really wanna get crazy and challenge The Reef in its salt-water glory, head on down there. Better yet, sign up for Wally’s email list and you can get deals like this one:

Bring in this e-mail and take 30% off all the fish you can handle. Good only Aug. 18 – Aug. 21 This includes freshwater and saltwater.
WALLY’S AQUARIUM: 6493 Little River Tnpk, Alexandria, Va 22312

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The Post released their Best Bets online this afternoon. Some of my highlights:

Cake Love for Best Bakery
Five Guys for Best Burger
California Tortilla for Best Cheap Eats

Definite Lowlights:

Ray’s the Steaks loses to Ruth’s Chris in the Best Steaks category. Ray’s is doing some amazing and unique cooking at their little storefront in Arlington, and they lose to the bland chain? What the fuck, people? This is disrespectful.

What are your highlights? lowlights?

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Friday I was whisked away for a night of last-minute theater in Columbia Heights. I wasn’t too crazy about the production, but it was worth it to see the semi-restored theater space in the Tivoli, long the subject of contention in that neighborhood.

The original theater was a grand vaudeville palace. To create a smaller theater space for the renovation they basically took the top balcony and built a floor under it, so that part of the original ceiling, an impressive dome, is over the audience and the stage. It’s so close in places that you can really admire the intricate detail. I’m not sure why the paint is peeling given the fact that the renovation was recent, perhaps it’s the bright stage lights so close to the ceiling, but in any case it adds to the sense of faded grandeur.

Be sure to go up to the elevated side seats and sneak past the gate of the catwalk, so you can lean over and check out the murals on the dome – signs of the Zodiac, rather faint but still visible. Extremely cool.

Afterwards I did feel a bit sad, thinking of the lost architectural treasures in the city. There’s a Giant now sticking out of the Tivoli’s side, and across the street they’re clearing the way for the usual suspects of corporate shopping conglomerates.

More often than not we lose our historic buildings due to that infuriating inferiority complex which makes us craven with developers – give them whatever they want, just please build that Target! We almost lost the Tivoli in this mad dash for surburban-style big box development – the whole building might have met its fate by bulldozer, and several bids only wanted the facade. Though I’m haunted by the possibility of the entire theater being reclaimed instead of just a sliver, it’s heartening that some part of its past glory was saved.

And it certainly made for a wistful DC night, peering at the half-lit friezes of laughing satyrs.

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When I was a kid, I was a lego-maniac. My parents thought I might end up an engineer, and that my masterwork would be composed entirely of all the legos that they had purchased while I was growing up. I’d make castles, and space bases, and forest scenes, all from my lego bricks.

Apparently, though, I am barely a talented amateur. Lego enthusiasts the world over converged on GMU this weekend to show off their very best. The photo here, taken by Jaki Chikwendiu of the Post shows a version of the Indy 500. The Post’s gallery of the event is astounding. Of course, I’ve never been to Legoland, so perhaps it just doesn’t compare. Sadly, I missed this event, going to have to watch for next year’s!

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