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Happiness is Baltika Beer @ Domku

It is my first time at Domku and I am ecstatic. My new local has Baltika beer, my drunken joy from Russia.

The interior matches the beer selection. Odd tables and mis-matched chairs give a funky, fun vibe. The crowd is a little too Tryst for me but a Baltika 9 can change the view quickly.

I can see many stumblings home from this Petworth gem in my future.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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The best $5 you’ll spend this year

I realized last night I’d completely dropped the ball on this – The Studio Theater is doing a companion reading to their play The Pillowman, called Nightmares and Pillow Tales. I’ll endeavor to write up my experience at the Pillowman this weekend, but you’ve got several more weeks to catch it, wheras these readings are a four-time-only deal, the last two performances of which are today and tomorrow at 5pm. Stop reading and GO – this article will still be here when you get back.

In a nutshell, this is a little over an hour of dramatic reading of stories in the scary childhood tale genre. If you’re skeptical about what a troupe of talented actors can bring to some material when limited to standing in front of some music stands and without costumes beyond a black and gray outfits with a splash of red…. then you haven’t been to this reading.

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Calling All Pirates and Ninjas.

I realize that this is practically no notice, but there is a public call out for pirates and ninjas to show up at Whitlow’s on Wilson tonight between 5:30pm and 9pm. Consider this your warning that Clarendon could be the flashpoint for the greatest conflict of all time.

The Call Reads:

I have a friend who’s filming a public access gig for cable in Va. about Pirates Vs. Ninja. They need one or two pirates to sit at a table and negotiate with some slanty eye pan-asian ninja devils. This goes down tomorrow around 5 PM to 9:30PM at the TV studio in the Clarendon area (near Whitlow’s on Wilson).

If you are interested, then e-mail me and I’ll give you the contact information. But first you will have to explain to me why you are a Pirate reading the website of a Ninja.

And I’d like to see your Pirate headshot.

Sadly, my pirate suit’s at the cleaners.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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No Tunnel for Tysons

Sorry tunnel-lovers, it’s gonna be above ground. Virginia has signed up Bechtel for between $2.4 and $2.7 Billion to do the Metro work out to Dulles, and all the plans currently are for above ground rail, which would allow them to keep the $900M in federal funding promised to the group for the extension. It’s a big blow to everyone who wanted an underground Metro in Tysons as part of a more “pedestrian friendly” Tysons.

Time to embrace Tysons for what it is: strip malls and office buildings and roads galore, and get real with all of it.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Dangerous choice

The risk of going about your day in your PJs is that some obnoxious blogger will make fun of you for it. However this is not one of those situations – personally I’d be happy to go about in a torn t-shirt and my gym shorts all the time, much to the horror of my darling girlfriend. Rock on with your sloth self, girl. Soon enough you’ll be in polo & khaki hell like the rest of us wage slaves, and that’s only if you’re lucky enough to work in a “business casual” office.

No I’m writing because I saw this girl in Panera the other day and thought “I’m willing to bet that she wasn’t even born yet when I went to my last Pink Floyd concert.” Good to see the flame kept going, though you really oughta pick up “Wish you were here,” kiddo – it’s a better album and a dude on fire is a way cooler image than a prism.

Though I do like Richard Cheese’s take on it.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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I Wanna See a Wookie!

Does this Matches ad make you jealous? Don’t you wish it was you who “let the Wookie win”? Especially if you were a young’in being hunted by an older woman in black. Grrrr!

wookie_ad.jpg

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Fare Hike Gone. Kinda.

Don’t worry transit-riding folks, your fares aren’t going up. Well, at least not until Summer, anyway, when they may go up by an amount tied to cost of living factors like the CPI. Instead of infrequent large hikes, we’re going to get used to bi-annual or quarterly hikes in the fares. Instead of the immediate fare hike, Metro’s getting smaller, cutting “inefficiencies” out of the system.

Get ready for a leaner, meaner Metro?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Time to Buy the Jefferson

Check out who is selling off everything this weekend: the Jefferson Hotel.

Like the St Regis sale, expect long lines and frantic people. Liquidations bring out the crazy in otherwise normal shoppers.

Now that I have an empty house to fill on the cheap, I might just get a little crazy myself.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Tickets are here!


Ticket are here!

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

Well, I picked up my Nationals season tickets tonight from our friends in Reston who are the drop box for the Nats mail. Adam and Lynne gleefully handed over our two seats as well as our opening day seats. Driving back, and stuck in traffic after the toll plaza, I opened the booklets.

Good God, Nationals, these are what we were waiting weeks and weeks on? I mean, couldn’t we have at least gotten some foil on the tickets? Maybe some embossing? I mean, we are shelling out $20 per seat per game for RFK, for crying out loud. To watch a team that by all accounts is going to finish Dead Last in the NL East? At least let us have some pride in our tickets.

But, cheapness on the part of the Lerner Family isn’t exactly surprising, I guess. I mean, just look at the roster this year…it’s a miracle that they filled out all 25 Opening Day Roster Slots.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Annual driving reminders

It seems that it is once again time for me to remind some of you about certain driving facts, as they relate to the laws in MD, DC, VA, and as to my personal behavior.

Before your driving test, you should study the rules of the road and go to the driving school dublin, and practice driving as much as possible on all types of roads and in all types of traffic situations. This will improve your driving techniques and build your confidence.At

One, it is permissible to turn right on a red light under certain circumstances in our locale. It is not, however, required. Thusly, you have no reason to honk at me because you feel I am taking too long to do so. I am within my rights to take as long as I wish to ascertain that it is indeed safe for me to make the turn, or even not to turn. I am most certainly required to come to a complete stop before I turn on red, even if you never do so yourself.

Two, relating to my personality rather than traffic laws, the instant you honk at me in the above described situation, you guarantee that we’re going to be sitting through the entire light until it turns green. That thing might be on a 9 hour timer, but I am gonna keep you waiting there behind me even if I have to call in sick for my job and pee into an old coke bottle so I can wait it out. You got me, sparky? You, your type-A ‘personality’ (and I use the term loosely) and whatever unfortunate individuals are passengers in your feckless deathmobile will all be cooling your heels behind me till I am sure it’s well and truly green.

That is all.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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missed connections – tequila girl

You: Young woman, late twenties, outside the entrance to the Mayflower Hotel. Black business suit and heels. Black wheeled suitcase, black laptop bag over your shoulder with a Texas flag luggage tag. In your other hand: A mostly empty bottle of Patron.

Me: Young woman, late twenties, walking past the entrance to the Mayflower Hotel. Also wearing all black. Wondering what the tequila was for. Who drank it with you? What was the occasion? Did you drink it by yourself? How did you manage to look so UN-hungover? Were you celebrating the end of your suck-ass job, like I would be later that evening with the very same libation?

So much in common, so many unanswered questions. Perhaps we would be friends.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Snack Time

DC Snacks

Think fast DC. It’s 2:00 in the morning on a Saturday night. You just polished off 10 beers with your friends at Lucky Bar. While your goal was to meet some hottie, well, it just didn’t happen, even with those extremely thick beer goggles you have on. Your friends are in the same boat that you are so you say, “Adios amigos,” and go your separate ways. You stumble home, plop down on your couch, but there’s only one problem. You somehow forgot to eat dinner and you’re starving! What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?!

Well if you’re like me, you have no food in your house. Your fridge contains butter, expired salad dressing, and some ketchup. You could go to 7 Eleven and get one of their day old hotdogs that have been rolling around on the torture rack all day long. But an even better alternative is to get on your computer and go to DC Snacks.com.

From ice cream to frozen pizza, condoms to cigarettes, DC Snacks has a little bit for everyone. They accept orders from 8pm to 2am (Sun-Wed) and 8pm to 4am (Th-Sat), and judging from their customer testimonials they do a good job.

I don’t know about you, but I miss the days of Kozmo.com. You could order almost anything from their site (magazines, movies, food, beverages, etc) and have it delivered to your door for free. Why leave the house? Sadly they were a victim of the dotcom implosion.

I just found out about DC Snacks a few days ago so I haven’t tried them out yet, but hey, Saturday is only a couple of days away and Lucky Bar is calling my name.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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A Wall Goes Down

Wall Gone

By the Metro escalators at the Union Station 1st St NE entrance, for several months now, a large enclosure of wood panels has blocked the gap between the escalators and the entrance to Amtrak HQ. This week I noticed that the walls are finally gone, and once again foot traffic is free to pass through the gap to get to the down-bound Metro escalator without squeezing in with the opposing traffic on the other side of the entrance.

What I’m wondering is, why was that area closed off for so long? Call me unobservant, but I really don’t see much visible change in the floor or walls which were walled up, other than a shinier floor and some duct tape over the grout. Surely all that work wasn’t just to lay down some wiring and polish the granite? Union Station Metro-goers, what do you think?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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DC Media Makers Meets Tonight at RFD

DC Media Makers will meet tonight for their monthly social night at RFD near Gallery Place. This is a great group of folks, dedicated to videoblogging, podcasting and other Internet media-related topics.

DC Media Makers meets every other Thursday, alternating between the type of social gathering that is happening tonight and then meeting for discussion and education again two weeks later.

From their website:

Join us as we Media Makers expand our social frontier & try a new place downtown at At R.F.D (Regional Food and Drink). All videobloggers, videoblogger wannabees, and media moguls of every stripe welcome to this informal networking event.

RFD is located at 810 7th St NW in Chinatown, between H and I streets. Take the Metro to gallery place and take the 7th and H exit to Chinatown. It’s half a block up 7th on the left, just after Fado and before the Goethe Institute

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Metrobus Madness

So has anyone determined yet what type of extra training the Metrobus drivers are going to have to complete because of the recent accidents and fatalities since the beginning of the year?

This subject came to mind just this morning as I was driving along M Street and bus #4322 (DC license plate number B37176) ran a red light, turned on its left signal, careened into the right lane and then returned to the center lane. The swerving was apparently to avoid a large mass of air particles. Nothing else was in the way.

Whatever the extra training might or might not entail, I think this driver could certainly benefit from it. Granted, I did not see a collision, but that is more likely due to chance than strategy in this case.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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MC Rove?!

rove.pngWell, if your collection wasn’t complete without a velvet Karl Rove, then you clearly need to see the video from last night’s Press Correspondent’s Dinner, featuring the cast of Who’s Line is it Anyway, and MC Rove. Now, Yahoo video sucks, because you can’t just link to the player for whatever reason, so, read the story on the correspondent’s dinner, and then it’s on the left hand side. It’s actually pretty funny, if you’re willing to laugh only at the dancing involved.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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I Miss WMATA Escalator Etiquette

This is the escalator scene at the Austin Convention Center during SEPG 2007, everyone standing on the left.

I never realized how fierce we maintain a stand-to-the-right rule on Metrorail, or how much I enjoy the ability to tackle stairs at my own frantic pace, until this sight confronted me every day this week.

The first day I would barge past folks without even an “excuse me” but by today I just wait for the moving stairs to take me to the next floor.

I have learned that this is not DC, and these flyovers are not getting out of my way no matter how much I bitch on the up or the down escalator.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Street Level Exodus?

Does anyone know what’s going on in Clarendon above Highland? It seems that every storefront between Orpheus Records and the Kabob Bazaar is now shut, and the whole area looks like a scene out of a bad union-strike movie set in West Virginia rather than just blocks away from some of the hottest nightlife in the region. What’s with all the empty storefronts? Is this gentrification in process, or are the landlords asking for too much money? With about a dozen spots empty in the two blocks between the Clarendon Ballroom and the Metro, Arlington’s got to be losing out on some serious revenue if those places stay empty much longer.

What’s going on?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Arlington’s $10 Compost Bins

Spring has sprung and that means it’s time to get those bulbs, seeds and saplings in the ground. That garden’s not going to tend itself, as my father might remind me if I were still 15 and playing the Dead Kennedys as loud as I could. Back then I didn’t know composting from Jello Biafra‘s left nut but now that I am a middle-aged guy living out here in the ‘burbs my ears perk up when someone speaks of such yard care wonders.

Arlington County has made compost bins available to residents for the low sum of $10. Is this a bargain? Hell yeah. Have you seen the prices compost bins go for from some of those fancy-pants gardening catalogs? $10 is more than a great deal for your pocketbook; it’s a wonderful way to help the environment, reduce your ecological footprint and get those worms making some great castings.

Even for this particular product, the Presto Compost Bin, $10 is way lower than prices on some of the web sites I came across. This is a low-tech composting system, just slightly fancier than the way nature does it all on its own.

The bin is simply a piece of flat plastic with a bunch of holes drilled in it. Nothing fancy, nothing complex. Throw your vegetable-based kitchen scraps, yard waste and even crushed eggshells in there, layer on something good and nitrogen-rich and pretty soon you will have some of the most beautiful black soil you can imagine. The worms will love it and you will too.

Here are some more details:

This compost bin has an adjustable capacity – up to 3 ft. in diameter, or 17.6 cubic ft.
Compost bin is constructed of 50 mil thick plastic (minimum 50% post consumer waste) with natural ultra violet inhibitors to prevent degradation by light
Excellent ventilation for aeration
Helps retain heat and moisture
Easy to assemble; lightweight

Go give yourself and your garden the gift of compost. You will never look at food scraps or worm castings the same way again.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs