Are you a blogger focused on DC? Did you know of the Washington Post Bloggers Summit next week? The meet-up on January 9th where the Washington Post will give us the digital love we deserve. And are you a cool kid with the cryptic invite:

“You have been confirmed for washingtonpost.com’s DC-Area Blog Summit.”

We Be Blog Famous!

Now be honest, reading that invite, are you more excited that you’re invited to hobnob with Posties or meet local Bloglebrity?

I know why I’m going. I wanna see me some more hot DCist groupies and get up with manly DC Metrobloggers.

And to make it happen, I’m organizing the Blogger Summit After Party! Yes, come inebriate with your favorite local color starting as soon as the gig is up @ 9pm.

We’ll all be transferring the socializing scene from the staid surrounds of Post land for its perfect pair: The Post Pub.

Better yet, you need not a Post invite, or even a blog, to come inebriate with the best of us. Just be into hot DC bloggers and get your game on!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Marc Fisher of the Post has an interesting blog entry on DC Voting Rights that is half his own, half belonging to Paul Goldman, who advised former VA Governor Wilder. The plan is simple: get the House Democrats to craft a bill that grants DC citizens a full exemption from federal income tax, unless a constitutional amendment is passed by the House and Senate and ratified by 3/4ths the states by the 4th of July. The meat of the plan is more complex and deserves some reading, but it sounds like a halfway decent plan.

Either way, DC comes out ahead: get a representative in Congress, get a giant tax break. Sure would make me think about moving into the city proper.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Congratulations to the Black Cat, named as one of the 10 Best Rock Clubs in America (warning, link is to Playboy. Seriously, if you’re at work, and your IT department is cuckoo for cocoa puffs, you may want to wait til you’re at home, seriously. We won’t be held responsible if you get canned for looking at Playboy at work.) Listed as the home of Q and Not U, Dead Meadow and Ted Leo, Playboy says of the Black Cat:

Inside the sprawling complex, which also contains a checkered mainstage for established groups and a somber blue backstage for entry-level acts … If you’re still stir crazy, the adjoining and cover-free Red Room Bar serves up rich Belgian ales alongside pool tables and pinball machines. But this one-stop nightspot makes sure the bands are still the main draw. Local legends like Fugazi have played numerous sets, and the club’s all-ages policy and 7,000-square-foot mainstage have made it a key stop for national tours.

Not shabby, Black Cat. Well Done! I look forward to coming back now that we’re smoke free. Before the ban, the place was smoky to an obscene level. My throat would lock up as I walked into the Red Room. Now I suppose I’ll go back and see if it’s gotten better. Well, that and because I’ve got a fierce pinball jones.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

About 90 minutes ago, the Fenty era began. Mayor Adrian Fenty took his oath office this morning and assumed the powers of Mayor at noon today. The DC.gov site now reflects the new mayor. His section of DC.gov now includes fully printable photos in 3×5 and 5×7 and 8×10 sizes, handy for printing and framing in your home, office, or dartboard (if you’re Linda Cropp) and there’s even a full high-res version suitable for printing Mayor Adrian Fenty t-shirts.

The public ceremonial swearing in will happen later this week and be open to the public. Mayor Fenty has completed his cabinet, which includes transit rockstar Dan Tangherlini, who will serve as Fenty’s City Administrator. The City Council was also sworn in today, and while the council page reflects the new members, bios are oddly lacking for those joining the council, which is a shame.

Welcome to the new administration!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

NYE Biters, Not Breakers

While I wanted to make a New Year’s Eve DC Drunks Photo Pool, my own inebriation put me to sleep moments after midnight. And I hope the same happened to you if you were out and about in Adams Morgan Sunday night.

Otherwise, if you stayed out late and were wandering around the 2300 block of Ontario Road or nearby on Kalorama, the Adams-Morgan Yahoo Group and DC MPD might want to ask you a few questions.

The Adams-Morgan list is reporting serious late-night vandalism:

At about 3:00 a.m. some incredibly large, loud, drunk, and determined weekend visitor to our fair neighborhood took it upon himself to bash in the roofs of several cars on the 2300 block of Ontario Road and otherwise damage a couple of cars on Kalorama. Just a quick thumbnail estimate shows that this idiot did several thousand dollars of damage in just a few minutes.

No word yet on who or why but John Wilcox has a great shout-out to who he believes is the real culprit:

And to the helpful bartenders or wait staff of our tourist bars who helped this guy get so wasted, thanks so much. Hope your New Year is getting off to a better start than ours is.

Better yet, John is assuming the drunk destroyer is a “tourist”. No, not some yahoo from way out of town, but a suburbanite Mr. Incredible from NoVA or MD. And here I thought suburbanites were just “Bridge & Tunnels” not full blown tourists.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Because I can’t stand listening to anything but music while I’m driving, I never hear a traffic report, or local news, while in my car. So while I had this vague understanding that streets would be closing but government employees would be staying home today (this is what happens when your alarm clock is set to NPR), I wasn’t really thinking about it as I headed into the city for work. But as I headed down 20th and crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, I started seeing DC police, in full dress uniform, lining the sidewalks on either side of the street.

Odd, I thought, I wonder what that’s-

Oh right, it’s President Ford’s funeral today.

This is where Tiff starts to shake off the holiday-weekend-haze and pay attention to the world around her.

In any case, the funeral will be over and streets will likely have reopened tonight by rush hour. But if traffic snarls anyway, relax and try to show a little respect before cursing out your fellow drivers. (That’s something I’ll be trying to remember in that situation.)

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Today is the funeral of the 38th President, Gerald Ford. His body, which has lain in state in the rotunda of the Capitol Building will travel via hearse to the National Cathedral for his 10am funeral. The procession will most likely bring traffic across downtown to a complete standstill right about now. As always, the Post has an excellent map of the route from the Capitol to the Cathedral and then the route back to Andrews AFB for his final flight to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The funeral today is invite only, and the security will be heavy near the Cathedral. If you don’t have to be in the city today, it’s probably a good day to be at home. I have a feeling that with the Federal Government off today as part of the national day of mourning, it’s going to be fairly quiet anyway. Banks are open today, financial markets are not (not that we have any here!). The Smithsonian is open today, as is the National Archives Museum, but not their research facility. The Archives have a Special Exhibit of Documents from the Archives.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Yes it is almost 2007 Washington DC! And I do hope you are thinking what I am with these two supermodels on my arm.

24 hours until Smoke Free DC!

So soon I will be able to smell their presence in my life, not the Buffalo Billiards smoke out. Soon they will need not wash hair and clothes the day after a night out.

So soon we all will not risk lung cancer when we go out.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

courtesy of Arena Stage

First in a two-part series of Reviews too Late to do You Any Good, I thought I’d tell you about my experience last week when my darling girlfriend and I caught Arena Stage‘s production of She Loves Me. This is the musical you’ve never heard of but know the plotline to: it’s based on the same Hungarian play that inspired the classic Jimmy Stewart movie “The Shop Around The Corner,” and later the cinematic corporate product-placement strokefest, “You’ve Got Mail.”

Well, two out of three ain’t bad, and She Loves Me was good enough to wash the taste out of my mouth put there by a few minutes inflicted on me by caught on HBO.

She Loves Me was somewhat of a surprise schedule for Arena, put into the lineup because the planned work, A Civil War Christmas by scribe Paula Vogel, “deserves the necessary time and development in order to
bring it to its full potential.” Hard to know what that really means, but the end result was a pleasant one. The numbers in She Loves Me were catchy and often amusing. I can’t think of any side-splitting moments in the musical but I caught myself humming bits of it for days afterwards.

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