Chesapeake Bay Bridge, near Annapolis, Maryland

Originally uploaded by bridgepix.

This is one of those stories that absolutely boggles my mind. Apparently, if you are afraid to drive your car across the Bay Bridge, the State of Maryland will provide you with a driver, free of charge, for that leg of your trip. Or, rather, they were doing this up until recently. They’re now bidding out the process to private contractors who may charge as much as $50 to do the task.

Seriously, can you really be that afraid of the Big Bridge that you’re unable to drive it? And keep your license?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

We’re 18 days from the DC Mayoral Primary, and chances are, you’re starting to think about who you ought to vote for. Bring on today’s sweet google maps mashup from DC Wannabe: Contributions Mapping for DC for this September’s election.

The data is about ten days old at this point, but the message is still there. See who your neighbor is supporting, check out your area of town to see which way the wind is blowing. Not that I even remotely recommend making up your mind solely off financial data, but this will let you know who in your area to talk to and ask why they’re supporting their candidate of choice.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Secret Service: Hey V-DOT, would you mind if we closed down the HOV lanes for six hours on Wednesday?

V-DOT: For What?

Secret Service: Well, *wink*, I understand that a certain world leader will be travelling that day and might like to make use of it.

V-DOT: The President wants to close 395 South’s HOV lanes during rush? Are you high? He may be the leader of the Free World, but this is Rush Hour, dammit.

Secret Service: But, but, but, he’s the President of the United States.

V-DOT: So? 8600 cars have to make their way home tonight. His poll numbers suck enough without 25,000 more people hating him, don’t you think?

Secret Service: Well, he’s the President and Senator Allen needs him at a fundraiser.

V-DOT: Did you even talk to the Allen campaign about this? I just talked to his campaign manager. He said: “We would not have supported such a proposal. Oh my Lord. Wow. No. Not aware of any such proposal. Certainly grateful it didn’t happen that way.” Don’t you guys have helicopters?

Secret Service: Okay, fine. Be that way.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

One of my goals in writing for Metroblogging DC is to expose the unexposed raw talent that’s sitting right here in our little state city of Washington DC. There are photographers, and then there are photographers, but some of them take the medium to a new level, a level that approaches “art” status.

One of these photographers is Joshua Yospyn. Originally from Detroit (aren’t we all from somewhere else?), Mr Yospyn has been living, breathing, and documenting the DC area for over five years now. His photos “provoke response, elicit emotion, or give obvious definition to the viewer.” Not many postcards here. The goal is ART.

I love this shot of his titled “Tunnel Tracer”. The exposure and shutter speed were dead on to catch this stream of light through one of the tunnels in town. The lines, the flow, the slopes, the patterns – all incredible. Even if he is a Nikon man (yes, he’s the proud owner of a D2X and a boatload of other gear), he knows his stuff and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for his eye, his lens, and his shutter finger.

Be sure to check out his website at www.yospyn.com.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Architecture nut? Like the cool buildings in DC but want to be able to talk about them a bit more intelligently? The DC Chapter of the American Institute of Architects is putting on its annual Architecture Week celebration starting September 9th. Events include a walking tour of Penn Quarter, tours of architects’ offices, and a house tour in Rosedale.

Some of the events sound pretty cool, so check them out and mark your calendars.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s not a happy feeling to drive by the local hoitsy-toitsy child-care place, Creme de la Creme, and see two ambulances outside with the lights on. Here’s hoping it’s something benign.

I’m not sure what causes such a feeling of additional empathy in a case like this. It’s not like I’ve never seen an ambulance with its lights on out in the world, and with a mom who worked as an RN I practically grew up in the local hospital waiting room. Somehow it seems worse when it’s children, though. Is that a biological reaction? Assumption of innocence? Simply the fact that they have – one hopes – longer lives in front of them and more time to potentially lose?

Good luck, little ones.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Once, he was in an accident so awful, it crushed his hip. Monday night, he detonates the charges that will bring the bridge down. Dan Ruefly was the lucky winner of the contest to blow up the old span of the Wilson Bridge, and his essay was chosen from 312 entries:

His toughest commute came in September 1999 when he switched lanes and slammed into a stopped tractor-trailer straddling the right lane and the bridge’s four-foot-wide shoulder.

Ouch. Yeah, that’s way better than my story of being stuck on the bridge twice in one day back in 2002. The bridge comes down at midnight on Monday.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

While we’re on the food theme today, if you are like my couch-surfing cousin (who is still ISO housing), you should be ecstatic that the sidewalk outside of CVS @ 15th and K looks like this.

You know that this CVS at least is fully stocked with all your food (and sundries) needs. I went for the $3.99 roasted almonds & cashew sale while my cousin went actual grocery shopping at CVS.

His only disappointment on leaving with several bags of groceries: no soy milk. Damn that vegetarian starter kit for influencing his young and malleable mind.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Hello my little green friend. What might you have there? Yes, inside you and just for me.

A Vegetarian Starter Kit

Hmm, that’s interesting. Why might you be here, on this random street corner in Adams Morgan? Does PETA think they will change hearts and minds here? Or are they hoping to open pocketbooks?

I would think Adams-Morgan already has plenty of vegetarians, no need for a starter kit. And those here that are not vegetarian, good luck with them.

They are either like I, know about it and are happy carnivores, or like the family next to me, confused as much by the dense English text as the overall idea of living chorizo-free voluntarily.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

DC Public Schools is feeling the crunch this morning, having had to rehire all the uncertified teachers they let go over the summer, and add a hundred more, to fill all the vacancies within the District’s school system. Therein lies a siginificant difficult: if you can’t find enough certified teachers, what do you do? You can’t just increase class size, or you’ll drive out the teachers you have already. You can’t leave uncertified teachers in place because it tends to be against the law and bad for public opinion of the schools. You can’t remove the certification clauses because the teachers’ unions and parent associations freak out.

There’s really no good solution to the teacher crisis, so what can be done to help DC’s schools? Neither Linda Cropp’s education plan, nor Adrian Fenty’s White Paper on Education mention anything about the teacher shortage in the District, just a generalized plan to move forward with better schools despite the lack of certified teachers.

How do we handle this? Is it even a problem?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Folks, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “Chances are, there’s a blog for everything.” Today’s example is the newly created Arlington Parking Blog which deals with parking incidents gone terribly awry, but primarily focusing on the illegal parking jobs done by Arlington County employees in Arlington County vehicles.

The author generally follows up the article and particulars with a photo of the incident. I sense high comedy, or at least some bemusement, will become of this.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I don’t normally read the Washington Times but someone left it in the bathroom today. I’m glad they did – I’d never have seen this amusing confluence of headline and photo otherwise. Who was cracking wise, I wonder? The editor who wrote the header or the photo editor who picked the shot?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

You might have seen the big Style-section story yesterday about a Metrobus Driver who liked to get his passengers involved in politics. Metro, as it turns out, was not amused. They have placed the driver on administrative leave while they sort out their options. Turns out he wasn’t just pushing community-involvedness, but rather his favorite candidate, Vince Orange.

Perhaps it’s time for Bus Driver Davis to have a chat with his friends:

Davis became involved in this year’s election at the urging of Orange supporter Al-Malik Farrakhan, a leader of the anti-violence group Cease Fire . . . Don’t Smoke the Brothers Inc.

Or maybe Councilman Orange has a job for him?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Part of Stop in the Name of National Stop on Red Week, we’re here to provide you with all manner of good information about traffic in DC. Today’s awesome new utility is the Google Maps Mashup with DC-area Photo Enforcement Locations, so you can know where to slow down, and know where to slam on the brakes and cause a four-car pile-up so you don’t get a ticket.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

DC-based employment blog Magic Pot of Jobs brings us today’s “boggle and gape” story:

Our colleague calls to inform us that this client had asked her branch for a receptionist this morning. They immediately sent their most qualified, available talent- a woman who happens to be a Muslim and wears a hijab.

Shortly after the talent arrived, she was sent away from the client and back to our colleague’s office. The HR Director (with a Senior Professional in Human Resources certification, mind you) explained to our colleague that “Image is everything here, and we just can’t have her sitting at our front desk.”

Yikes. Here’s hoping that business has good lawyers. I thought companies in this town were, well, sensitive to not being sued for things like this? Guess not.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

How odd you are, a plywood chrysalis on the lawn of the Kazakhstan Embassy to the United States and Canda.

Might you become a Monarc like the sign says on front? Or maybe a Nursultan Nazarbayev, proud of your autocratic rule?

Every morning as I pass, I wonder, and I wait. What might you become?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

As we stood in front of Pho 75 on Friday, full from the delicious noodle soup, a plane went screaming overheard at just the wrong angle to freak me out a bit. They’ve changed the flight path of planes from over the river to right through lower Courthouse and upper Rosslyn. Passenger jets streak through the evening sky drowning out conversations in the outside tables at the bistro next door, and forcing everyone to stare up.

No, it’s not terrorism, it’s just a changed flight route that’s taking passenger jets over the residential neighborhoods of Arlington instead of over the river as usual.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Okay, who else, beside Circumlocutor saw the article in yesterday’s Post about a beating in Dupont Circle? I’m really pretty horrified that this guy both witnessed a guy getting the crap kicked out of him in the middle of Dupont, and not only was there no response from the Metropolitan Police Department, there was nothing but excuses made by the MPD in the conduct of same.

This is the most incrimination paragraph of the whole thing:

“They were responding to a dispute at a restaurant, and they walked off. I ran and caught up to the attacker, though trying to stay out of sight, and managed to flag down another police car. I again described the man, pointed him out just up the street and then pointed back toward the circle, where emergency workers were loading the victim into an ambulance. The cops seemed annoyed. They gave each other a look, sat for a beat, then said “Okay, thanks” and drove off — in the opposite direction from the man who had just attacked a person in the middle of a public park. He strutted off into the dark.”

But clearly, all we need in this crime emergency is some surveillance cameras that won’t even be watched, just maybe looked at in retrospect. Thanks DC Council, you guys rock hard.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

I know it is not pretty and probably not healthy, but when a professional Geek loses his Internet connection at work, this is the result.

Luckily, my cool Nokia 6682 allows me to post and if I get really desperate, surf, but a 2 inch screen and one finger entry just makes me hunger for what I am missing.

Pray with me to the Great Internet Gods for renewed connections and access. Man cannot work on telephone and fax alone.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

He is NOT the enemy

Following the Wash Post’s great alarmist article on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, Channel 9 jumped on the fear-mongering bandwagon with its own “Trail Rage” news report.

While rehashing the same “cyclist are the enemy” line of the Post, but with remarkably less hysteria, Channel 9 did reveal two possible changes to the W&OD Trail system.

First, local governments and the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority to widen the rail from eight to ten feet sometime in the distant future.

Also, NVRPA is negotiating with area police departments to add bicycle cops to the 40 trail monitors who already patrol the route.

I think their first act may to be arrest the fool on the DC Tri Club form who said:

“i try to regulate on my own at my own risk. if i am running and hear a bike and they dont announce themselves i take a quick step to the left to make them react. if they let me know they are there i wave and shift right.

i am sick of ipod wearing hot shots blazing by me at 20+, apparently just like many others. if i am putting you at risk, maybe you should shout out or ring a bell.

a half step to the left to get someones attention is not that dangerous, really only makes people ride their brakes. [When cycling] i also brake at the last minute when crossing GW pkwy to try and get cars to stop, any comment on that tactic?

Um, yeah, I think you are gonna get yourself (and someone else) seriously hurt. That half-step, asinine. The GW parkway braking, suicidal and asinine.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs