This week a friend of mine is bed shopping, looking for a place to rest her head in her new apartment. As all cool folks know, she’s using Craigslist DC to scout out the best deals, and she keeps sending me Craigslist posts asking if this bed or that one looks sturdy yet stylish.

Me, I’m clueless on style, which is why I only bed shop at College Park IKEA (they deliver!). I do have one recommendation for her bed frames odyssey. Look at the way the headboard and footboard connect to the frame. Think about the force that will be applied to that connection in the heat of passion and ask yourself: “Will that hold when I’m screaming his name?”

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This weekend you can enjoy the 6th Annual Sidewalk Sale of the coolest ‘hood in the city – otherwise known as MidCity Dog Days.

Saturday and Sunday all the great funky shops of U and 14th Streets will have specials. It’s always a fun way to explore and discover. Some of my favorite shops are on display, and they’ll be plenty of sales, giveaways, cooling stations, and goodies.

Head on over to my neighborhood and enjoy!

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Now that is already Thursday (where did this week go?!) its time to give you nightlife options. Tonight’s specials are on two ends of the spectrum, so you better be ready for the culture shift if you wander to both.

First up is Professionals in the City’s Swing Dance Lessons – Lindy hop, jitterbug, shag, jive, and boogie woogie let you look like a fool in many ways and you don’t even need a partner to attend. As all of y’all will be toe-stepping students, you’ll rotate throughout the class scuffing everyone’s shoes.
When: 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM.
Where: Lulu’s Nightclub, 1217 22nd Street, NW
Cost: $12 in advance.

Next, its my favorite band in DC, the Skydivers. Back in the day, I was even a Skydivers Roadie, but now I just admire from afar. Well not that afar, as they’re playing at Velvet Lounge, a venue so small that if you’re down front, watch out for Armando’s sweaty hair. The Brit Pop will be good and Koshari will be there too.
When: 10pm
Where: Velvet Lounge, 915 U St NW, DC
Cost: $5

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Last summer, I came late to the party. I remember the Ben Folds Five from my college radio days, but I wasn’t ever really attached to them. That all changed last summer when I saw him with Guster and Rufus Wainwright at Wolf Trap and then I was sold. His piano skills are absolutely astounding, flying all over the keyboard, in perfect sync with the music, never too fast, never too slow, always leading the charge. Sure, Michel Camilo might be the jazz master, but I think even he could learn something from the power piano that Folds plays.

More review (and a short video) below the cut.

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Last summer, I came late to the party. I remember the Ben Folds Five from my college radio days, but I wasn’t ever really attached to them. That all changed last summer when I saw him with Guster and Rufus Wainwright at Wolf Trap and then I was sold. His piano skills are absolutely astounding, flying all over the keyboard, in perfect sync with the music, never too fast, never too slow, always leading the charge. Sure, Michel Camilo might be the jazz master, but I think even he could learn something from the power piano that Folds plays.

More review below the cut.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs Continue reading →

Belga

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

So, here’s the thing. I’ve only ever had mussels once. At Belgo Centraal. In London. I am told they are the best mussels in the world. But I am not a connoisseur.

Tonight, we went to Belga Cafe on Capitol Hill. It’s Restaurant Week, after all, making it a great time to try new places.

Unfortunately, the Restaurant Week entree was rabbit and crawfish, and what we wanted were mussels. Screw the special, let’s get the bivalves.

Mmmm… so tasty. We were sitting back by the kitchen, and I caught Bart, the chef, peeking over at our table to see what we thought. I grinned at him and returned my attention to my big pot o’ mussels.

Mussels are really not that hard to prepare- the trick is to buy good mussels to begin with. These were tender and sweet, with plenty of broth lingering in the bottom to soak the fries and bread in.

Now, this is a minor thing, but it’s a nice touch Belga Cafe has over Belgo Centraal. At BelgO, you have to order the bread separately, and for 2 pounds you get two slices of bread. WTF? At BelgA, as much bread as you need to soak up all the broth you want is included. Take note, because that’s the whole point of bread in that context, people.

And then there was… dessert. Five words: Chocolate. Mousse. In. Three. Colors. Dark chocolate, white chocolate, and milk chocolate. Wee little pots of each. Lisa had a dessert sampler, with a little scoop of passionfruit sorbet (does it come in 10 gallon drums?), the cutest little creme brulee you’ve ever seen, a miniature belgian waffle covered in chocolate, and a tiny pot of chocolate mousse. *drool* The special dessert was a flan/bread pudding thing with cherries and ice cream, which was rather like nirvana in a bowl.

The waitress informed us that their beef stew is one of the best things on the menu when it’s cold outside, so we’ll definitely be back to try that. That or the “waterzooie,” which is a traditional Belgian stew that sounded excellent if it hadn’t been so sticky outside.

But I’ll let Tom tell you about their Belgian beer…

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Now I know that hot days in August are your favorite time to stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Nothing says summertime fun like heat + exhaust + wait. Too bad then that the DMV at 65 K Street NW will be closed Thursday & Friday. It seems that their AC broke and it’s too hard for them to be discourteous when sweating.

In addition, the call center will be down, not that you’d notice since the DC voice mail is down too. But cheer up, you can complain about wrongful parking tickets right to the mayor instead: 202.727.1000

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It was quiet today, driving up 395 through sparse traffic getting to work. I almost always enjoy August simply because all the fatuous gasbag politicians take the month off. But then came Rafael Palmeiro’s positive drug test. Now they’re all clamoring back to town so they can haul him off in irons for lying to Congress. Leading the witch hunt hearings of the Government Reform Committee will be Tom Davis, a local-boy-turned-fatuous-gasbag, who is just all up in arms over steroids.

Of course, were Congress to devote their time to actually useful pursuits, we might only need them half of the year.

Was it wise for Palmeiro to lie to Congress? Not so much.

Could Congress be spending its time in a better fashion? Yes, probably. I recommend putting DC statehood on the list of things they ought to take a serious look at, instead of wasting our time with baseball nonsense.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Now this is nice. A gas station I could spend time at. Not more than it takes me to fill a Honda Civic gas tank mind you, but still a pleasurable time.

Its the Landmark Shell (previously the Landmark Texaco) at 6286 Little River Parkway in Alexandria, VA. Here, S. Akram Ali is doing Shell proud, with a clean station on the corner of Little River and Beauregard Street that is a model of civility on a Tuesday night.

Good tunes are playing from the speakers at the gas pumps, there are new and working window squeegees to use, and even shiny bathrooms for patrons. Their product is still smelly, polluting gasoline, which will soon be fouling the air and lungs of Washington, but for this moment, when buying it, the Landmark Shell is worthy of praise. Thanks! Now how ’bout switching to hydrogen?

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The District’s bureaucratic arm has somewhere on the order of 20,000 phone lines, whose voicemail used to be handled by Verizon. However, if you called any of them over the past few days, you might have heard this:

“Please leave a voice mail message for six million, seven hundred ten thousand, five hundred fifty megats.”

It’s part of the switch from copper wire to fibre that the city is doing to meet post-9/11 robustness requirements, but it’s also going to save the city some $10k a year in costs. Not so shabby, if you ask me. Well worth a day or so of downtime.

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Sure, there’s Tyson’s, Clarendon, Bethesda Row and Montgomery Mall, but why not one more? Apple is opening a Pentagon City location this Saturday morning at 10am. So, if you’re looking for a Mac geek in the tri-state area (er, two state, one federal protectorate area?) they’ll probably at least think about being over at Pentagon City. Me, I’ll be there drooling over a new Powerbook and possibly the 30″ gigantor display.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Say you’re on a McPherson Square park bench and you want to get to Anson’s Selections from Fantasia in Ink, 2005 but you don

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I now know want, desire, need, and it has a name: Atari Flashback 2.0 I’m in line for one of the first models when they ship in late August and once I have one, I’ll be looking for the hack most needed, Fairfax Frogger

Based on the Fairfax Frogger drinking game, where you stand on either side of Route 7 and drink every time a pedestrian makes it across another lane of traffic alive, guzzling two beers if they make it across in one dash, like this guy apparently did, it would be a hit among the DC commuter crowd. Better yet, make the frog a cyclist, and we can see how well those who hate bicycle couriers fare.

Me, I’ll just be smiling ear to ear, playing Defender to save DC from getting nuked.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I love the hypocrisy of Herndon’s Day Labor Site controversy, where the good people of Herndon want to have the benefits of cheap labor that can be hired and fired on a daily basis – manicured lawns, new homes, home repairs, Herndon Labor Day Jazz & Wine Festival clean-up, and other menial, repetitive, and dirty jobs done cheaply and quickly – yet do not want to have the day labor pool that makes that possible.

For several years now, the first Wash Post article I can find dates to 2003, they’ve had an informal day labor market around a 7-11, the time-honored country-wide location. There men, mainly from Central & South America, but in decades past would’ve been Irish or Italian, wait hopefully for work that will pay them a barely-livable wage. A wage which they will use mainly to support families back home, and are often cheated out of through ignorance or outright cheapness.

And still, day in and day out, they congregate there, looking for work that the residents of Herndon demand and yet are too cheap to pay living or better yet, union wages for. Work that none of you reading this would want to do. Work that only recent immigrants, ones whose lack of English skills usually more than trade skills, will stoop low enough to do.

Now that the city is trying to make an organized spot for them, one that would offer formal contracts to workers, teach them English, integrate them better into American society, and even offer them a simple bathroom while they wait, the residents are up in arms. For them, it’s not about adding organization to what is now chaos, which would benefit everyone. Nope, it’s about what really matters to the good residents of Herndon, as this quote from the Wash Post article today shows:

Kathleen Paul, whose house abuts the proposed site, said five of the 30 houses on her street are for sale, but prospective buyers are not being brought to see them. “You are putting our families and our property values in jeopardy,” she said.

Property values, eh? Who do you think built and now maintains that very property you so treasure, the Umpa Lumpas? No, those very day labors you wanna run out of town. Again, from the Wash Post:

“All of you have very nice houses,” said Neddy Vargas, 25, in Spanish. The “majority of the people who built these houses have been those people you are calling illegal,” said Vargas, who identified himself as a day laborer.

As a guy whose worked day labor jobs and once had the calluses to prove it, and whose father was a Mexican construction worker who pulled himself up from the banks of the Rio Grande to a successful community leader, I am disgusted by Herndon’s antics. How can folks look in the mirror or better yet, their family tree with any shred of dignity or self-respect after asking questions like this:

No. 43: “How will the project managers ensure that my grandchildren are not exposed to the workers while they are waiting for their school bus in the morning?”

They should be so lucky as to “be exposed” to hard working immigrants, who gave up everything they knew and loved to fix your sink for $5 a hour, and who will, in a few short years, be more flag-waving patriotic than you could ever be when they make it in this Land of Opportunity. Right after they learn a new word your teaching them right now: hypocrisy

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I love Restaurant Week. I get to go to places that I’m way too cheap for normally. Today, it was David Greggory with my coworker and coworker-turned-boss. The food was good and all that, but while my boss paid the bill, she noticed the line, “Enjoy Bacon? Wine?”

DG does a monthly Bacon Dinner, which includes wine, hors d’oeuvres, and a pound of artisanal bacon to take home with you.

Artisanal Bacon?!

Wednesday night: Belga Cafe, for mussels before the Ben Folds concert.

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I just love it when Congress goes on summer break. The Hill rats sleep in, the lobbyists take their vacations, and best of all… traffic is light. This town practically packs it in for August, which means I can leave my house at 8:00 AM, drop Tom off at his office, and still be rolling into my parking garage at 8:30.

Yet another reason we need a part-time legislature. :)

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Driving up 395 in the morning, right past the Pentagon, I always remember that I’m going to work inside a giant bulls-eye, just a few blocks from the White House, and just a short distance from the Capitol. Of course, now there’s a Google Maps Hack that will show you just how much damage various nuclear weapons would do to the metropolis. 100 Kilotons of nuclear detonation would pretty much level the city. One megaton would pretty much destroy the whole area.

Creepy.

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Now, I realize this is more a post for the currently-non-existant Baltimore Metblog, but this is earthshaking to all those Baltimore fans out there who are DC residents. Rafael Palmeiro, who just stroked his 3000th hit will be suspended for steroid use later today, according to a source inside ESPN. Palmeiro recently appeared before the witch hunt Congressional tribunal, and denied such use. This could be a huge problem if Congress decides to consider Palmeiro in contempt of Congress for lying to them in the hearings earlier this year, and given local douchebag congresscritter Tom Davis’ (R-Vienna, VA) stance on such things, it’s entirely possible he could be jailed or fined for his testimony.

Either way, bad week for the O’s, bad week for baseball. Let’s just hope that Congress decides to leave well enough alone…

Update: “Rafael Palmeiro is in denial mode in a statement he made. To sum it up, he has no idea how a banned substance entered his body. Must be the Baltimore water.” — Greg Gugger, ChicagoSports.com

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The Nats had a wretched July. Seriously. Horrific. Since the All-Star break in the middle of July, we were the worst team in the majors. However, yesterday, they broke their losing streak at six games, picking up a 4-2 win over the Marlins. Capitol Punishment breaks down the suckage and makes some good suggestions about what to do about it. Of course, they’re home at RFK this week, playing the Dodgers (hey LA, wanna wager on the series?) and San Diego, before heading out on the most crucial roadtrip of the season with games against Houston (current wild card leader), New York and Philly (our divisional rivals). If you can spare some good thoughts for our boys, or a few extra voodoo pins in Guzman’s doll, we’d appreciate it.

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Here’s a news flash for those around McPherson Square:

The CVS at 15th & K streets NW, Store #2075, has only one working register.

Yep, only one, as the rest are malfunctioning. And the working one, at the photo center, can’t process Debit Cards. So if you’re headed out for say, Poland Spring Water and Planters Mixed Nuts (buy one, get one for $0.01!), you might wanna head to the Rite Aid at 15th and L Streets NW.

Oh and pity the folks who need a prescription from there today. They will be expecting something extra as not even the pharmacy register is working and the lights in the store keep flickering on a off. Rumor is the store might be haunted.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs