Monthly Archives: July 2009

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Nine DC Farmers Markets Now Take EBT

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Hoffmann’

This is the kind of program I think everyone can get behind. The Mayor’s Office announced this week that nine DC Farmers’ Markets now accept Food Stamps through wireless EBT terminals, allowing those accepting assistance to purchase farm-fresh produce. Participants in the District’s Double Dollars program will receive $2 for each subsidy dollar spent at the H Street Farmers Market, as well, thanks to a $20,000 grant from the Wholesome Wave Foundation. I’m all for expanding local access to the fresh and healthy produce at farmers markets.

The Daily Feed
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Fojol Bros. Oppressed By THE MAN!

One of the Fojol Bros, Being Oppressed

One of the Fojol Bros, Being Oppressed

All the Fojol Bros. wanted was to bring Merlindian cuisine to the hungry masses at Farragut Square. The line was long, but the Brothers worked tirelessly, slinging biryani to grateful customers. But OH NO, DC parking enforcement came and shut them down, disappointing countless office drones before they could get their curry. What? Where’s the Merlindian Diplomatic Immunity? What is our society coming to when a couple of Merlindian kids with a dream can’t serve paneer out of a truck in our nation’s capital? I THOUGHT THIS WAS A FREE SOCIETY!

Phonecam journalism courtesy of a concerned (and hungry!) bystanderMatthew Snyder. Click image to view the oppression in all its naan-squashing infamy.

The Daily Feed
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Southwest a possibility for DCA

Photo courtesy of
‘Clouds and Landing’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

The AP is reporting that Southwest has put in a non-binding bid on struggling airline Frontier Air, which could bring Southwest to Reagan National Airport if a sale eventually went though. Don’t feel free to move about the country just yet, however. The bid’s non-binding so that Southwest can get a chance to get more information from Frontier and there’s already another bid on the table.  Even if they eventually acquire the struggling airline there’s no certainty they’d keep all the routes or locations.

One can hope, however, and Southwest would be my personal second choice for an addition to DCA. JetBlue would be my first.

Food and Drink, The Features, We Love Drinks
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We Love Drinks: Herbs, Flowers & Spice

"Eros" cocktail, Zaytinya

“Eros cocktail, Zaytinya” by Jenn Larsen on Flickr

Summer always puts me in mind to garden. I have a little herb garden with oregano, rosemary and lavender that always needs pruning, some roses that need constant watch from black spot, peonies dusty with blight – wait a minute. Gardening in DC is hard work, our weather vacillating between wet and humid to dry and droughty. Isn’t there an easier way to enjoy herbs and flowers than order flowers online?

Why yes. Drink them!

I love nothing better than to cook with fresh herbs and spices, and I’ve been known to throw some edible flowers into my salad, so I am loving the growing spread of these ingredients in cocktails. We’re both lucky and spoiled to be enjoying a cocktail renaissance here in DC. Time was a decent drink meant liquor + mixer, maybe with a garnish. Not anymore. Bartenders are approaching cocktails like, well, a chef would. The explosion of housemade syrups and infusions enable mixologists to make some potent magic.

But as with gardening, not everyone has a green thumb. It’s not enough to just toss some herbage in a martini glass and hey pesto! it’s a delicious cocktail. Just like that time I put too much adobe sauce in my sweet potato puree and set my guests throats on fire (um, sorry about that!). You have to know how flavors work together and how much power that pepper’s going to pop onto your tongue.

So here are my current favorites highlighting the trifecta of herbs, flowers and spice, with a few misses along the way.

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Thievery Opening for McCartney


Thievery Corporation by maxedaperture

Thanks to Thievery Corporation’s Facebook page and the Going Out Gurus, it looks like one of DC’s best groups will be DJing a set before the Paul McCartney concert at FedEx Field on Saturday.  I love Thievery and all, but does anyone else think this is a strange combination, much like mixing beer and Altoids?  Who knows, maybe Moby will open for Springsteen some day.  Stranger things have happened.

Music, The Daily Feed
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Friday Night Jams

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Tomorrow night, local band Lorelei will be hitting the main stage at the Black Cat with openers Shortstack and The Moderate. If you’ve been tapped into the local music scene for a while, you might remember Lorelei when they first debuted in the 90s. They split up, moved away, put out a new album, and now are back putting on some live shows.

In this lineup, however, I would say that the don’t-miss band is Shortstack, also hailing from DC. “Commotion” is a kooky, upbeat, country-tinged track, and their bio starts with the sentence “Adrian Carroll, Burleigh Seaver, Mike Pahn, and Scott Gursky are thieves.” I can dig it.

The Daily Feed
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Improvapalooza 2009

Photo courtesy of
‘WIT Tag’
courtesy of ‘creativedc’

The Washington Improv Theater is holding Improvapalooza 2009, starting tonight and running through Saturday. Think of it like a multi-day music festival, only instead of jangly music over questionable sound systems, you get a different improv show every 15 minutes. A one-day pass is $10, and the pass for the full festival is $20. It’s at Source, so go enjoy U Street and then get your unscripted comedy on.

The Daily Feed
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Python alert. No, really.

Photo courtesy of
‘Mason Neck – Blue Racer Snake – 5-9-09’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’

I walked past a guy yesterday as he was on the phone and all I heard him say was “Yeah, you know that I’d make Maryland farther away if I could.” It seemed like a somewhat dismissive sentiment at the time (though I do wish the WaPo food reviews weren’t so Rockville-centric) but given the snake emergency I’m starting to think he had a point.

Christian Pitillo of Gaithersburg is apparently a sub-par pet-sitter, as a 3 to 4 foot golden burmese python managed to get away under his supervision. Wildlife officials say the snake isn’t big enough to be dangerous and is unlikely to survive the winter if it’s not reclaimed, so you can probably sleep easy so long as you don’t tend to travel with mice in your pockets. Perhaps you should, though – Pitillo is offering a $100 rewards to anyone who finds the snake.

The Daily Feed
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Today’s History Lesson: The Bonus Army

Photo courtesy of
‘Carriers Setting Out on Their Daily Rounds’
courtesy of ‘Smithsonian Institution’

I must have been sick the day they talked about the Bonus Army in history class. 77 years ago, an enormous group of WWI veterans set up what basically amounts to a refugee camp in the Anacostia Flats and staged a months-long protest pertaining to service bonuses that were originally supposed to mature 20 years later, but then the Depression hit and vets started borrowing against them, and it turned into a big budgetary hullabaloo (seriously, go read the Wikipedia article I linked, it’s fascinating). The reason I bring this up now is because June 28th was the 77th anniversary of the day when President Hoover got so fed up with the Bonus Army that he actually deployed the standing United States Army against its own veterans to forcibly remove them from the capital.

There’s more to the story, of course- President Roosevelt managed to talk most of them into signing up for the Civilian Conservation Corps to support themselves during the Depression, which was great until a hurricane hit the bridge they were working on and wiped out hundreds of Bonus Army vets. Congress sucked it up, overrode Roosevelt’s veto, and paid out the bonuses early. But the other result of the whole messy business was a little thing you may know as the G.I. Bill.

The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Smoky Trains and Erratic Buses: A WMATA Morning Commute Story

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Orange and Blue Line riders heading for work this morning probably had a heck of a time thanks to the smoke incident at McPherson Square, caused by a collector shoe (which conducts electricity from the third rail to power the train) falling off, sparking a fire under the train. (Thanks to The Post’s Get There blog for the info.)

My wife was on Metro at the time, and had a heck of a trip with all WMATA had to offer, with trains AND buses providing much in the way of epic, continuous fail all through the journey. After the jump, a bulleted list of stuff she ran into along the way:

Continue reading →

The Features
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We Love Weekends: August 1-2

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

No, I’m not sure how we’ve found ourselves at the start of August, either. But, here we are. Several of our writers are on vacation this week, so it’s a light weekend here at We Love DC. Tell us what you’re planning in the comments!

Jenn: I’m in an incredibly chill mood this week. No bad vibes allowed. While I’m riding this wave of good humor through the weekend, maybe I’ll take in some art! The Freer’s got an exhibit of Whistler’s works on paper called “Texture of Night” – studies of moonlit nights which are strangely hypnotic. Kathleen Ewing’s new gallery space in Cleveland Park sounds like an afternoon house party (actually, I think her house is the gallery now), visit between 12-5pm and enjoy ice tea, cookies and her dog Teddy while enjoying easily the best collection of photographs around. You could enjoy a light dinner at Palena’s bar afterwards. Maybe a stroll through the Bloomingdale neighborhood for the Pink Line Project‘s First on 1st quirky art and music walk, with a coffee stop at Big Bear Cafe. Or have brunch at Circa at Dupont followed by a browse through the Washington Printmakers Gallery – artist Julie Niskanen is giving a Sunday talk at 2pm. Sigh. All this culture. Maybe I should head over to H Street and hit some dive bars instead!

Shannon: I’ll be spending a good part of this weekend in the suburbs. It’s the last weekend of the Loudoun County Fair, which features a doughnut-eating competition, a “pig scramble” (it sounds like breakfast, but it’s not), and yes, even outhouse races. I’m not going to miss that. And I will definitely be heading out to Bethesda for the final days of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Restaurant Week, during which area restaurants offer fixed-price $12-15 lunches and $30 dinners. And assuming the weather cooperates, I’m planning on going for a long bike ride to prepare for the “brutal” 50 States Bike Ride, which has been scheduled for September 26th.

Don: My darling wife and I are headed far, far outside the beltway for an art show in Virginia Beach this weekend so I’ll be unable to partake in any of our area’s activities. It’s too bad, because I have a soft spot for Tori Amos and the undead. Tori will be at DAR this Saturday and mid-day yesterday still showed pretty good seats available. Equally as weird but probably taking itself a little less seriously is Rorschack Theater’s “Living Dead in Denmark,” a look at what Elsinore would be like five years after the events of Hamlet. If there were zombies. How do you not want to go to that? Previews start tonight and run till opening on Sunday, which I’ll have to miss. Oh well, there’s always next weekend… Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Fire suppression efforts in NW harmed by low water pressure

Photo courtesy of
‘The Washington Times’
courtesy of ‘Bogotron’

NBC Washington has video of the house that caught fire and was pretty much destroyed on Chain Bridge Road. In the video a neighbor asserts that the fire started on a corner of the porch and might have been contained if not for a lack of water for fire crews to use. One hydrant was out of service and others lacked sufficient water pressure.

It’s been almost two years since this issue caught local attention with a fire in Adams Morgan and another at the Georgetown Library. At the same time where was news of huge numbers of out of service hydrants. Two years ago WASA claimed they were ahead of schedule on testing out-of-service hydrants and would start a five-year program of replacement.

Perhaps we’re just continuing a local tradition of a disaster following an award. Catoe gets a commendation for being a transit leader and we have a horrible metro crash shorly thereafter. Less than two weeks ago WASA received an award for their innovative use of technology in managing water hydrants and we subsequently discover that several don’t work well.

WASA and Mayor Fenty will surely be fielding some hard questions about why this problem persists two years later.

The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Get Ready for Lots of Track Work

Photo courtesy of
‘”Delays Continue.” on WMATA (U Street)’
courtesy of ‘technotheory’

Prepare yourselves for lots of waiting around this weekend if you’re taking Metro, no matter where you’re headed. WMATA tells us that there will be track work on ALL LINES this weekend. Fabulous.

On the Red Line (as if you weren’t already used to delays), there will be delays between Medical Center and Friendship Heights while some tracks are repaired. On Saturday and Sunday, every other train will terminate at Friendship Heights and turn around towards Glenmont, and trains will operate every 20 minutes between Shady Grove and Medical Center. Give yourself an additional 30 minutes.

On the Blue and Orange Lines, bridge maintenance will cause delays between Eastern Market and Stadium-Armory because trains will be sharing one track. Give yourself an additional 30 minutes.

On the Green and Yellow Lines, rail replacement will cause delays between Georgia Avenue and U Street stations because trains will be sharing one track. Give yourself an additional 30 minutes.

And finally, on the Blue and Yellow Lines, track maintenance will cause delays between Braddock Road and Van Dorn Street and Huntington stations because trains will be sharing one track. The Blue Line in particular will be operating only at certain stations, so part at Huntington if you want to avoid delays. Give yourself at least an additional 30 minutes to get where you’re going.

This might be a good weekend to take the bus instead.  Check out the bus map for routes, and find out when the next bus is coming to your stop via iPhone app, internet, or phone.  The Circulator has bus tracking, too!

The Daily Feed
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Cold War, Revisited

Photo courtesy of
‘KGB / FSB Headquarters’ courtesy of ‘rodc’

Need a lunchtime diversion? How about a history lesson…from the other side’s point of view?

Spymaster: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West
Thursday, 30 July; 12 noon – 1 pm at the International Spy Museum
Cost: FREE!

He was the youngest general in the history of the KGB, and his intelligence career spanned the better part of the Cold War. As deputy chief of the KGB station at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, he oversaw Moscow’s spy network in the United States, and as head of KGB foreign counter-intelligence, he directed the KGB’s most valuable clandestine agents inside the United States. In his memoir, Spymaster, KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin (Ret.) provides an unparalleled look at the inner workings of Moscow’s famed spy agency. Join Kalugin to hear firsthand how he became disillusioned with the Soviet system, about his falling out with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and what he thinks of recent intelligence-related incidents with Moscow ties, including the death of Russian intelligence defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

And if you can’t make it during lunchtime, check out the two “spycasts” (podcasts) that Oleg did for the Museum a couple of years back.

Co-sponsored by The OSS Society.

Getaways
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Getaways: Sky Meadows

Sky Meadows

Sky Meadows

Sky Meadows. The name itself makes me think of rolling pastures, wildflowers, birds, and butterflies, all under puffy white clouds and a deep blue sky. But maybe that’s because I’ve been there.

This humble Virginia state park is close to the city, just over an hour’s drive west from DC. A historic house and picnic tables are there, and you can catch fun programs ranging from Celtic music to astronomy nights to an annual strawberry festival. But I go there mostly to hike.

These hikes are different from the classics in Shenandoah, such as Old Rag and White Oak Canyon. Their pretty, pastoral scenery gives them a gentler feel, and the trails meander in shorter, easier loops. To be fair, the beginnings are steep, but they rise up toward the sky through meadows of waving grasses and wildflowers. And they pass strategically placed benches that let you sit and look out at the farmlands, ponds, and softly curved mountains.

I’m going to recommend you go to Sky Meadows on a Saturday, and here’s why. Then you can make your trip a loop that includes picking up lunch at a delicious bakery on the way (it’s closed on Sundays) and ending with wine at sunset on a patio with a view (it’s open late on Saturdays). Continue reading →

Crime & Punishment, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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What’s Next, Metro?

Photo courtesy of
‘No Tresspassing by Order of Metro Transit’
courtesy of ‘Wayan Vota’

DCist pointed out this afternoon that WMATA buried the lede in their latest press release, which states:

In the most recent incident, a Metrobus operator refused to allow a customer to exit the bus after a verbal dispute. He was arrested by Metro Transit Police on Saturday, July 25, and charged with kidnapping. The bus operator is on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of an investigation. Metro officials will determine an appropriate level of discipline once the investigation is complete.

First it was sleeping on the job, or reading a book, or texting, and now we’ve seen WMATA employees go from light misdemeanors straight into felony charges. I was sitting here thinking just now that what we really need to see from WMATA drivers, in order to pine for reading, texting and sleeping, is something along the line of kidnapping, or assaulting an off-duty police officer or maybe even light bank robbery. Perhaps what we’re missing is an appreciation for the difficulty of light rule-breaking?

The Daily Feed
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How about a dress rehearsal at Friday’s Mystics game?

Photo courtesy of
‘kiss’
courtesy of ‘quigley_brown’

Carnal Nation reports that there’s a nationwide GLBT effort to stage a kiss-in on August 15th. You can find information on the Whys of the matter at SitIn4Equality but if you’re interested in a little protest smooching in our area you should check out this facebook group for the Washington DC event.

Scheduled for 2:00 to 2:05pm this might be the shortest protest I’m aware of. It certainly sounds like more fun than listening to some clown with a bullhorn.

All Politics is Local, The Daily Feed
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Kwame Brown Live-tweets Budget Gap Hearing

Kwame Brown

Usually we get the best DC Council livetweets from Mike “Loose Lips” DeBonis, but today, we’re getting them right from Councilman Kwame Brown, who tweeted during today’s budget meeting as the council worked through the last of the $50M imbalance:

  • Sales tax increase rejected
  • Parking tax increase still barely hanging on
  • If you smoke. Your (sic) paying more. Increase tax likely.
  • Small cigar tax look very likely
  • Job traing for DC residents still in budget. Good possibly of increase. Time to help those in the most need.
  • 2 automobile tax died rightfully so! Families deserve to not be taxed for having 2 cars.
  • I’m very proud of how Chairman Gray has conducted the budget reduction processes.
  • Do you want you property taxes raised? Even if it cost 50 to 100 extra dollars?
  • Would you mind paying more for a glass of wine?

The answer to the questions at the end is, “That Depends,” both on how the money is collected, what it’s used for, and whether this is temporary or permanent. It’s nice to see some of this as it happens.

Special Events, The Features, We Love Arts
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Wolf Trap Opera: Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria

It’s a July evening and at Wolf Trap’s colonial-era barns, Claudio Monteverdi’s 1640 opera Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (The Return of Ulysses) is being performed. Despite the historicity of the place, the opera and its performance by the Wolf Trap Opera company has a decidedly contemporary feel. Everything the modern viewer loves — romance, deceit, unmitigated anger, sex, violence, slapstick comedy and shameless sexual puns — is right there in this evocative and entertaining Ulysses.

Before the opera began, large blinking eyes stared out at the audience, projected on a backdrop of metal screens. This eerie display is soon revealed as a manifestation of a larger theme in the play. As the prologue commences, Human Frailty personified takes the stage lamenting his suffering. He lifts his hands, displaying his palms which are each marked with what looks like the Egyptian Eye of Horus. He clenches his open palm closed, as blind Love, blind Fortune and Time frolic behind him, asserting their control. Sight, and the lack thereof, perception and deception all have important roles in the work as it unfolds. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Saving time on the web

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If you were interested in reading The Hill’s “50 most beautiful” but just didn’t have time for all 50, fear not – their website offers you the option of the top 40, cutting down those extra 10 that pushed it over from reasonable and into screwing-off-at-work snoozeville.

It’s actually not the top 40 – it’s what’s left after they take out the top ten. I’d have called that the bottom forty but [choose your punchline].

1) the Senate is still a little touchy about certain language after that Larry Craig thing
2) this is Congressional math, after all.
3) in honor of new arrival Al Franken from Minnesota they’re going with the Lake Wobegon “and all the children are above average” concept.