I love to watch the urban scavengers strip a bicycle carcass. Slowly, they take every item of worth, here they’ve started with the seat.

Then they bend or break the bolted on metal, here the wheels. Last, they fill any remaining orifices with trash and refuse.

The whole process only takes about a month or two, before a perfectly suitable bike becomes a useless hulk.

Thankfully, DC is not China. There, abandoned Chinese bicycles are the scourge of major cities, the rusting metal impeding progress.

Here, we just have occasional street art.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

While you were freezing your bits waiting for the bus this morning, or wishing your car had a pre-heater, give a thought to the bus drivers.

They were up well before you and had to warm an entire cavernous bus before starting their day.

Or give a thought to the person riding in the back of the hearse. No matter your chill I am sure they’d trade temps.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

So a few of us DC Metrobloggers met up at Union Station on Thursday night to cab over to a few other DC Metrobloggers so there could be communal drinkin’. Before said drinkin’ even started, though, we noticed this giant, inflatable colon on display in the lobby.

But this inflatable colon isn’t just for show, oh no. It’s educational. You can walk through it and see what Crohn’s Disease, polyps, and colorectal cancer look like! So you can, I don’t know, diagnose yourself? Yikes.

Anyway, it was such a surreal experience that we felt the need to share it with you.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I know we have a reputation as a pretty type-A city, but c’mon! 7-11: your one-stop-shop for doughnuts, gasoline, and heart palpitations. Seriously folks, I don’t care what you do here in our nation’s capital, there’s no way you need to be THAT awake.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Arlington Police are on their way to pick the guy up. No joke. I just heard it on the scanner. He is probably 10-96 (a nut job) but it makes for interesting listening all the same.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The next time you see smoke at Farragut North or a bus on fire, WMATA suggests you call Metro customer service for information: 202-637-7000 It will now give emergency information before the prompts for general Metro information.

Um, yeah, depending on the day, that might be a long wait before you get to the standard information prompts.

A better action might be checking the WMATA website for real-time information about Metro service disruptions, bus detours or other emergency information, or signing up for the e-Alerts.

I say the latter, for the custom e-mail notifies me via text message to my phone when suspicious packages are found.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

As a former long time resident of Pennsylvania, I knew that we had two days that were very special, and almost totally unique to the rest of the country, the First Day of Deer Hunting Season (aka “Deer Day”) and Groundhog Day. Now the first was actually a state-wide holiday, where schoolchildren (at least in the 1980’s and earlier) were let out to join their fathers, uncles and grandfathers in the time honored tradition of weeding out the flock of Bambi and Bambi’s mother from the thick woods and countryside of PA. This is also noticeable by the stream of pickup trucks sporting gun racks heading north on the Turnpike from Philly.

The latter holiday, celebrated today, and co-opted by every other state in the union and most media outlets, is today in Punxsutawney, a burg outside of da’Burgh, Pittsburgh. As reported, he hasn’t seen his shadow, and was also seen sporting shades, a Hawaiian shirt, and Bermuda shorts because of the wacky weather which is now undoubtedly blamed on human-kind. So, bust out that DVD of Groudhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie McDowell and get your “Phil” of goodness before the big game on Sunday, even though the “Igles” or “Stillers” aren’t in it this year.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s midnight. Cold, with sleet falling from the sky. A random street corner in Mt. Pleasant.

As I park the clock-stopping hottie’s car, I see a guy walking down the street towards me.

He calls out, “Hey brother, I have a question,” as I lock her car. Guard up, I answer, “What?”

“Do you wanna buy an electric toothbrush?” And from his coat, he shows me a new Oral-B in the package. “I’m selling them cheap!”

For once, I am too shocked to speak. All I can think of is “What the F*^k?”

And I head inside, to warmth, to brush.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

When I travel, I travel crazy light. I am so minimalist, I never check my bags.

But even my economy pales in comparison to this traveler. They’ve compiled their entire existence into one shopping cart for total mobility.

Before you think this is sarcasm, be it known that I am truly in awe of many homeless people’s personal effects transport systems.

This is a very vertical arrangement, but there are others, horizontal, multi-directional, that are just as impressive. Feats of engineering to facilitate survival on DC’s rough streets.

Of course, they would probably rather trade daily wanderings with more sedentary, and secure, domiciles, but until then, for all my dislike of bums, I do give them this:

They are the master packers, baggage transporters extraordinaire.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

What happened to our “Al Gore Spring“? One week it’s warm and sunny in January (yea!), and this week we have bone chilling cold (boo!) in February. To top it off, today the National Weather Service issued this advisory for the DC metro area today:

EXPECT SNOW TO DEVELOP IN THE LATE EVENING AND THEN MIX WITH OR CHANGE TO RAIN AND FREEZING RAIN. EXPECT ONE OR TWO INCHES OF ACCUMULATION AND THEN SOME ICING ON TOP DURING THE NIGHT TONIGHT.

Or in DC-speak, that means we’re gonna have a day of “wintery mix” where everyone looses their mind and there are panic runs on salt and shovels.

I don’t know about you, but I like the whole Global Warming thing if it means less AccuWeather forecasts that look like this.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The folks at The Peace Alliance are having a big shindig this weekend at the Lisner Auditorium, and the promo graphic looks like this:

All we need now is John McCain singin’ Streisand to make the weekend complete!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

This morning during my perusal of the Post, I saw an article about Chili, and its relationship to the Super Bowl, which I’m told is on Sunday. Only now, at just after dinner time, have I calmed down enough to write about it. In their article, they mention a multiplicity of types of Chili, and that I can certainly get behind, but for the Post to claim that anyone in their right mind can include carrots and celery in their chili, they must have clearly slipped.

Chili, in its many forms, requires a tomato base, and the presence of beans, and is cooked low and slow, barely reaching much more than a simmer. Meat tends to be what defines the chili, either through its presence or absence, but really, mirepoix has no business belonging in a chili.

Post, listen well, and please find my very own native California chili below the cut.

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