Monthly Archives: July 2008

Talkin' Transit, The District, Travel
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Going “Clear” at Dulles

Security lines suck. There is just no other way to describe it. Imagine any other location where you are dragging luggage behind you, trying to juggle papers, and then have to take your shoes off to get somewhere. If Metro started enforcing rules like that, there would be a riot in most of DC.

The biggest problem with TSA security is how long it takes. (I’m going to ignore the “gigantic” problems for now – I’ll hold my TSA ranting for later.) Arriving at an airport is a crap shoot – you could fly through security, or you could wait an hour for a single lane. And, as a frequent traveler, that drives me crazy. It’s a lot of time I could be using doing something useful – like blogging.

So, after seeing the Clear Lanes expand in to Dulles, and then working my way towards the $128.00 fee (most of which is paid by my company), I decided to take the plunge and find out how much faster this new system is.   Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Foggy Bottom Update

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

Walking by the Foggy Bottom metro station this morning, I see WMATA has a response to the escalator hassles: a Metrorail guide directing those that enter to walk down the right side of the stopped escalator.

Question is: Does it help?

.

The Daily Feed
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Booze at Columbia Heights Target?

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

Now this is an odd place for an Alcohol Beverage Control board hearing notice – the new Target store in Columbia Heights.

I guess there are a few folks who want to go drunk shopping too. And for those that wonder, We Love DC suggests there is only one shopping beverage of choice: beer + lime + ice.

Petworth
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A Schooling for The House

The House Strip Club and E.L. Haynes Public Charter School

The House Strip Club and E.L. Haynes Public Charter School

The E.L. Haynes Public Charter School at 3600 Georgia Avenue NW, currently serves Pre-K to 5th grade students in the Petworth neighborhood. They hope to add a grade each year until they are serving students through grade twelve.

From this angle, you can see their new five-story school soaring over the existing Georgia Avenue businesses. You may also see a slight problem with the school. Its soaring over not-so-school-friendly local businesses like The House strip club and too many liquor stores.

You can also expect to see a dispute or two soon enough with horny teenagers looking to sneak a peek, or at least a sip of the adult-only entertainment that surrounds the school. Who do you think will win? Businesses that have been on the block for decades, or protective parents trying to keep innocence from being lost?

In the battle that everyone knows will soon come despite rumored promises of neutrality by the school, I’ll be betting on the parents, especially now that I have a prospective student on the way.

Kids beat tits every day of the week.

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Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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What Car Talk knows that WMATA doesn’t

Paulo’s video of the elevator debacle yesterday reminded me of a Car Talk puzzler from a few years ago that made me think about WMATA and their seemingly endless escalator problems. Sadly my thoughts haven’t changed much since I heard this in 2004…

The puzzler, which Tom and Ray credit to Irving Biggio, goes like this: “In our fair city of London, England– not far from the real Cambridge—many of the Underground, or subway, stations have three escalators.

It’s always the case that two of them are up escalators, and one is a down escalator. It doesn’t matter which way the rush hour crowds are moving, or if more people are arriving or leaving, or the time of day: There are always two that go up, and one that goes down. The same is true for underground stations out in the suburbs.

Why?”

some tips and a link to the answer after the jump. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Interviews, Music
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District Mixtape: Bottles/Cans

Bottles/Cans

Bottles/Cans

Bottles/Cans are performing at the Black Cat Tuesday night. We caught up with them between their stops in Minneapolis and New York to talk about making music here in Washington – even when it means falling through a stage.

A live recording of Bottles/Cans’ song “Everybody Knows,” is introduced by letting the crowd know that “This one is pretty rowdy.” Rowdy is a good general introduction to Bottles/Cans music – swaggering, southern influenced, and steeped in a bit of jazz and blues (and maybe a bit of PBR as well).
Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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That took 11 days longer than I expected

Photo courtesy of badjonni

A legal challenge has been officially filed today that challenges the District’s ban on self-loading pistols and requirement that weapons be stored unloaded or trigger locked. The petitioners are Mr Heller himself as well as two others. WaPo quotes AG Nickels as saying “This is going to be a long fight.” Sadly he lacks the integrity to admit “and that’s highly deliberate on our part.”

Next time you hear about the city having trouble coming up with the money for something, you can think of this malarkey.

happiness is a warm gun, courtesy of badjonni

The Daily Feed
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Use your bike… with cars to protect you.


Use your bike
Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

I haven’t been able to track down any information about who organized this demonstration, but I was chatting with a coworker today when we heard the sound of music and chanting passing by our window.

From the fourth floor, we couldn’t quite make out who was organizing this demonstration, but the signs were largely split into the practical, “Bikes don’t run on gas!” vs. the whimsical, “Cars don’t dance!”

Pro-bike rallies are neato and all, but when I pointed out the series of slow-moving petroleum-powered cars guarding the left flank of the march from passing motorists, my coworker said, “That’s what’s known as ‘irony.'”

Anyone know who these marchers are?

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Good deals and dopey decisions

Photo courtesy of Me

There’s a 50% off deal going on at online vendor Fathead’s website where you can get the Nationals logo in a 4-foot by 3 foot removable wall-sticker when you buy some other full-priced Fathead thing. (Okay, you can get any MLB logo but why would you want any of the others?) Their website has kind of a cool feature where you can see what the Nats logo your selected MLB logo will look like in a bedroom, office, game room or den. It’s just a little auto-compositing where they overlay it on a stock image, but it’s still nifty.

Well, the tech is nifty. The selection of images for sample bedrooms is a little less than brilliant, however, since the kid sitting in the room and looking up at the logo is wearing an A’s sweatshirt. I can only imagine he’s looking up there and thinking “Wait, who? I’ve never seen any of those games on tv…”

Poor stock photo choices, screen captured from Fathead

Foggy Bottom, Talkin' Transit, WMATA, WTF?!
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Foggy Bottom Metro Escalator Mess

Big mess at Foggy Bottom this morning. Watch this video:

Foggy Bottom is the singularly worst-designed Metro station I’ve used in the system: only one exit, twin escalators going up together from platform to mezzanine, and just a single escalator going down to the platform, no stairs, traffic bottlenecks all over the place. The situation was made worse this morning when only one of three mezzanine-to-street-level escalators was working — going down. The middle escalator was closed for repairs, and the escalator going up was open but off, serving as stairs. I’ve seen it like that before, but throw in a rush hour crowd in a time of “high” fuel crisis ridership, and you get a foot traffic disaster.

I didn’t even bother joining the line; it was faster to go back in, double back to Farragut West, and walk from there. When I got back to Foggy Bottom to get some video of people emerging from the system, a few daring riders had resorted to running up against the down escalator — to cheers from the crowd, surprisingly.

WMATA, This is intolerable. You have reached a new level of EPIC ESCALATOR FAIL this morning — even worse than on epic multifail day.

Update: I was on TV today for this video: Fox 5 News Edge story, featuring a quick interview with me outside Foggy Bottom station this afternoon. Washington Post’s “Get There” blog also covers the story: No Way Up at Foggy Bottom, and Clearing Out Foggy Bottom.

News, The Daily Feed
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Thunderstorm Timelapse

A line of thunderstorms swept over the Metro area around 1PM this afternoon; we got home from church just as the darkening sky let loose its first drops of rain. While it stormed, I ran wget on the ABC 7/News Channel 8 webcam and got this time lapse video. Watch for the two bolts of lightning.

The storms caused a few injuries today, and capsized boats at the Aquapalooza festival on the Potomac.

The Daily Feed
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Florida Avenue Cafe Dropoff

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

This would be the backdoor moat at the famous Florida Avenue Grill.

Now I’m not sure why there’s a five foot deep moat – dine and dash catcher? rat deterrent? summer swimming hole? – but its there, and I bet after today’s rain, waist deep with water too.

Good luck digging that out on Monday!

Media, Monumental, The Daily Feed
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WaPo guest blogs Monumental

Well, not really. Tom’s second in our ongoing feature on the monuments in our city goes live at 2p today (see the first – about Farragut Square – here), but today’s Washington Post Weekend section contains a story called 10 memorable memorials. They’re some interesting picks, and worth suffering through the bad interface on the website to look at… though only barely. 4 lines at a time, really? More curious than the painful web layout is that the print edition uses different photos for the Kermit and Victims of Communism monuments.

On the other hand, reading it online can allow you to compare some of WaPo’s shots with what’s available on Flickr. Most notable is how different an impression you get from the Post’s close-up shot of the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism than this wide shot by user kimberlyfaye. I also like Aaron Webb’s shot of George Mason chatting with this fellow, apparently in town for a lumberjack blogger convention. (I kid, Mike – love the tuque! But no matter what, don’t miss andertho’s shot of the Titanic memorial, which puts WaPo’s to shame.

Other quick searches here, here, here, here, and here, plus shots of multiple versions from around the world of the Spitir of Haida Gwaii here.

All Politics is Local, Monumental, Penn Quarter, The District
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Monumental: GAR Stephenson Memorial

Monumental: Stephenson GAR Monument

While the Grand Army of the Republic might seem like something out of a bad pulp science fiction story, it’s also something that’s fairly real to American History. The monument to it, and its founder, stand just off Pennsylvania Avenue in Penn Quarter. The Grand Army was a fraternal organization established in 1866 for retired soldiers of the Union Army, and stood in existence until 1956, when its last member died. It was super-ceded by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, founded in 1881 to preserve the mission of the original organization.

The GAR was one of the more powerful political organizations in the late 19th century, helping to establish Old Soldiers’ Homes, which would later become the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. In addition, their organization was partly responsible for establishing the Memorial Day Holiday at the end of May, as part of their Decoration Day campaign.

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Last Minute: Systems Administrator Day


Gigabit
Originally uploaded by Ben Stanfield

Today’s the day to do a little something nice for that nerd in the dark office staring at the computer screen all day. It’s System Administrator Appreciation Day, and to show a token of your appreciation for the guys and gals who keep your computer running, your blackberry going, your voicemail operating, and take care of all the other electronic things you don’t know how to use, you can head out to the Brickskeller and buy a round for the geeks gathered there for System Administrator Day.

As part of their Grand Opening Week Festivities, HacDC is organizing the Friday night event, from 8:30PM until 2 AM.

Entertainment, Music, Night Life, We Love Arts
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Great Noise Ensemble at Capital Fringe

GNE@Hirshhorn
great noise ensemble uploaded by hirshhorn

I want to like the Great Noise Ensemble. I really do. They are a plucky bunch of kids, fighting the good fight of aesthetic diversity, they play that post-minimalist, rock/chamber fusion that’s all the rage with the kids, they’ve won WAMMIES two years in a row, and they have a creation story that a Marvel hero could envy. Even more so, this town needs some new blood in its New (Concert) Music Scene, and an outfit that tries to play varied, forward-looking repertoire would be a great addition to the community.

GNE performed Wednesday evening at the Harmon Center for the arts, the ensemble’s second performance in as many years at the Capital Fringe festival, another young, forward-looking organization that is growing in leaps and bounds. The concert, entitled ‘Carnal Node: Sex Noise and Lies in the Internet Age’ showed off the good and the bad about this group: Rhetoric surpassing event, ambition surpassing execution, but all with a promise of better things to come.

The program title sets up a rather specific theme for the show, but only one of the pieces seems to bear much relation to it— rather than telling us anything new about relationships, or technology, or lying, the program as was rather more interested in placing GNE firmly in the rock-derived, post-minimal camp exemplified by the many-tentacled corporate entity known as Bang on a Can; indeed one work had been commissioned and first performed by BOAC through the ‘People’s Commissioning Fund.’ The instrumentation varied from electric bass, guitar, drums and brass to soprano and an ‘extended pierrot,‘ but all the work played with rhythm and phrasing in a manner more akin to Talking Heads than to Mozart, searching for that sweet spot between ‘concert music’ and ‘popular music.’
Continue reading →