Yearly Archives: 2011

We Love Weekends, WTF?!
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We Love Weekends: The Ark Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Hippo hanging around after lunch’
courtesy of ‘afagen’

Who’s got the saw? And how many feet in a cubit anyway?

Well it looks like the internal domain name the We Love DC team uses to communicate amongst themselves should have been sandbagged – it floated away in the night and our ability to coordinate anything along with it. So instead of our usual Weekends feature here’s a picture of a hippo.

We miss you Happy. For reals. Peace.

Anyway, we’re re-assembling our excretion into a coherent gathering and hopefully will be back on track soon. We haven’t forgotten you!

The Daily Feed
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DC Shorts Festival starts tonight!

DC Shorts Film Festival

Probably my favorite thing about short films is that they cater well to those of us with shortened attention spans. Tonight begins the DC Shorts Film Festival, which runs until September 18th, and the Festival staff have an awesome film picker, so that you can make sure to catch the show you want to see, or find films that look interesting.

Tickets run $12 + fees for each showcase ahead of the event, and $25 + fees for each party, or you can get any of a number of packages, or a complete All Access pass for $125 + fees. If you buy on-site, each showcase is $15.

Dupont Circle, Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Hank’s Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle Expands

Photo courtesy of
‘A Summer Night Delight’
courtesy of ‘LaTur’

Hank’s Oyster Bar just got a whole lot bigger and better. The restaurant in Dupont Circle recently renovated and doubled its capacity to 68 seats inside, 40 seats on the outdoor patio and a private dining room upstairs. Plus, the new lounge space next door is offering longer late night service until 2 AM on Sundays through Thursdays and until 3 AM on Fridays and Saturdays.

If you go to check out the new space, I recommend trying some of the new bar snacks such as their seafood ceviche and the housemade pretzels with beer cheese sauce. Since oysters are the name of the game, try Hank’s own variety, the Hayden’s Reef Oyster, named after the son of chef/owner, Jamie Leeds. The meaty oysters were developed with the help of Bruce Wood of Dragon Creek in Montross, Virginia and have a good, slightly sweet flavor. And before the restaurant’s menu changes with the new season approaching, try their getaway cocktail with a homemade cinnamon clove syrup. Park yourself on the patio or the bar for a few hours and take in the beautiful new space.

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of
‘A Barbie Girl In A Barbie World’
courtesy of ‘[F]oxymoron’

The things you can see, when you’re walking around the city, can be fascinating. You could run into people doing interesting things; you could see the sky change into fascinating colors; you could even see the little details on the street. Yes, living in the city is many things, but lacking fascinating sights is not one of them.

The picture above by [F]oxymoron certainly falls into the little details category. It’s just some random trash littering the street. Yet chance has arranged it in such a way as to make it look as if the street has eyes. Or, better yet, that a person is emerging from the pavement below the photographer’s feet. It’s certainly a perspective that 99% of people will miss, but we were lucky enough to have someone there to see and capture it. And everyone, keep your own eyes open for things like this; be sure to enjoy them as much as I do.

The Daily Feed
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Nats drop Strasburg’s return 7-3 to the Dodgers

Photo courtesy of
‘the lord is come’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

“Wait and See” is a mantra that Nationals Fans have been familiar with since last August, when newly minted Nationals Hero Stephen Strasburg went first on the disabled list, and then underwent Tommy John surgery to replace the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching arm. As the storm clouds, remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, pummeled the DC area all day, the scheduled debut was less than certain.

“Wait and See,” the team said, along with the meteorologists and amateur weathermen alike. At 4:30pm, the rain began to taper off, and by 5:30pm the tarp was draining into left field as we all awaited the word of the weather and the start of the game. Manager Davey Johnson had said in the pre-game conference that in the case of a rain delay, Strasburg wouldn’t be coming out, and instead we’d have the MLB debut of Brad Peacock instead.  The storm held off, passing just West of the District line as each wave of the storm came through.

 

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News, The Daily Feed
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Post says: Bikeshare coming to the Mall

Photo courtesy of
‘Capital Bikeshare on the Mall’
courtesy of ‘Mr. T in DC’

Good news, DC! It looks like the Park Service and Capital Bikeshare have struck a deal to add stations to the Mall. While there are several big questions outstanding still, including location and who will pickup the $23,000 annual maintenance on a bikeshare dock. It looks like the District may pickup the $50,000 in costs per dock, though.

The addition of new Bikeshare stations down on the Mall, a frequent destination of tourists and locals alike, would be a welcome development in a fight that had the District and the Park Service at odds.

The Daily Feed
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A Davis-Bacon surprise at CityCenter DC

Photo courtesy of
‘Danger’
courtesy of ‘Jarrod Bruner’

Many thanks to Helder Gil on Twitter, who pointed out this editorial from last week that concerns the construction at the CityCenter DC site between New York Avenue and H Street in the middle of downtown. The site was the focus of a ruling recently that has possibly put the District in a very difficult position of reimbursing developers for millions of dollars of labor charges.

At question here is the Davis-Bacon Act signed into law in 1931 by President Hoover. The law states that buildings, and other projects, constructed by the federal government as public works, are governed by certain rules, including wage rates that are no less than the prevailing rate of pay for that job elsewhere in the city. The Department of Labor ruled that the CityCenter DC project was subject to these rules because, though the development is being paid for by private developers, and financed outside of the city, because the land is leased to the owners for 99 years, one administrator at the DOL has declared that enough to apply to the developers.

You’d think that this sort of thing would come out of the pockets of the developers (in this case, according to the developers, that could be $20M), but according to the ruling official, Nancy Leppink, it’s the city’s responsibility to reimburse the developers to the tune of $20M for the difference in wages.

More interesting is the result that this might have at the Walter Reed development site, which the city owns and would likely lease to developers. At stake could be another $20M in potential revenue in taxes on the businesses in that space, which could be jeopardized by this ruling.

Food and Drink, Foodie Roundup, The Features, We Love Food
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We Love Food: DC Eats for September

Photo courtesy of
‘Autumn of my Life’
courtesy of ‘LaTur’

Summer may be over, but good food goes on. You can eat your sad feelings about colder weather and fewer hours of daylight coming at some of these events happening this month in the city.
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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Metro’s New Map, and a Survey

Metro Map

Part of Metro’s new Map

Metro’s iconic map is at a turning point. The new Silver Line that’s being constructed out to Dulles Airport presents a challenge for the transit system’s existing map, as it would push outward the boundaries on the system past the edge of the page. As part of the upcoming changes, Metro has released a draft map (that we’ve excerpted from above) and a survey to go with it.

The heart of the changes, for now at least, have to do with changes in the green line (to more correctly display its geography), and the orange and yellow line service extensions that operate during Metro’s rush hours.  The yellow line now shows a dashed line (though a striped line is also proposed in the survey) down to Springfield, and up to Greenbelt, and the orange line has a dashed section out to Largo.  Mysterious and ghostly is how they’ve chosen to draw the Silver Line outward through Tysons to Dulles for now, largely postponing the question of where the map’s new boundaries will be.

Greater Greater Washington’s David Alpert has dissected the map with regard to the site’s mapping contest, and has a series of great recommendations and observations. Definitely give it a look.  Also, Metro’s Barbara Richardson spoke with the Post’s chat group this morning at 10am, and that chat will likely be instructive with regards to what Metro was considering with regard to the map.

Personally, I think the new map is a welcome improvement in a number of ways: it highlights the increased service to Fort Totten on the yellow line and differentiates between the extended yellow line service to Greenbelt in a manner that’s elegant, and also does the same for the orange line out to Largo. It also thickens the orange/blue line between Rosslyn and Stadium-Armory to allow for a silver line when the time comes for it to actually run. This is a ground-work laying map that will hopefully serve us until 2013 when the new map, and new line, debut service out to Tysons.

Special Events, Sports Fix, The Features
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We Love Sports: The Wounded Warrior Amputee Celebrity Softball Game

“Not many people get an opportunity to actually come down on the field,” 21-year-old Josh Wege said after his pre-game warm up at Nationals Park with ball and glove in tote. “Well … they actually get to come on the field but to actually play a game on this field, this is incredible.”

It’s true. More often than not, the people playing ball on a Major League field are professional players employed by Major League Baseball. On Sunday, though, the giant state-of-art sandlot located in Washington’s Navy Yard neighborhood hosted the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team in an exhibition game against a group of D.C. celebrities. Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nats get to Dodgers’ Kuroda for 5, win 7-2.

Photo courtesy of
‘Lannan delivers’
courtesy of ‘afagen’

The Nationals’ offense exploded for four runs in the first inning on the overcast Labor Day afternoon, all on home runs, to give John Lannan a lead to work with against the Dodgers. While Lannan would at times struggle against their lineup, he still went 5 1/3 IP of 1-run baseball. Lannan would strand 5 trolley-dodgers on the base-paths, strike out four and walk two to earn his 9th win.

The Nats tore through Hiroki Kuroda today, getting to him for 5 runs on 8 hits, with four home runs, but Kuroda also put up a season-best 9 strikeouts against the Nationals today. The Dodgers’ bullpen added three more Ks for an even dozen against the Nats, four by Danny Espinosa, who’s in a bit of a slump of late.

 

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Nats Can’t Find Offensive Groove in 6-3 Loss to New York

Photo courtesy of
‘Wind up of the first pitch’
courtesy of ‘BrianMKA’

It’s time for the young talent to get their chance. That’s what Nationals Manager Davey Johnson has said and continues to say about the upcoming crop of homegrown pitching. It’s September. Therefore, based on previous trends of calling up the younger guys to play ball in the big leagues, Johnson is correct.  With that said, right-handed starter Livan Hernandez made his final start of the 2011 season Sunday. Washington lost 6-3 versus the New York Mets.

Hernandez was informed by Johnson on Friday that we would not start again in 2011. The team would like to get a look at Stephen Strasburg and other pitching prospects during the final three weeks  And, although the outcome was not desirable, Hernandez approached his final appearance as a professional. Continue reading →

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Back to (Drinking) School at EatBar

Photo courtesy of
‘Eat Bar’
courtesy of ‘voteprime’

Arlington, VA’s EatBar wants to help you go “back to school” this month to learn more about just the kind of thing that might end a character up on an after-school special: Alcohol. They are presenting a series of three “lessons” this week on beer, wine, and spirits.

On Tuesday, the team from Left Hand Brewing will be on hand to discuss their brewing process and give out free Left Hand glassware with every purchase. They will be pouring their Milk Stout, Polestar Pilsner, and 400 Pound Monkey IPA. Wine is the focus on Wednesday, when Pacific Northwest winery Owen Roe stop buy for a tasting and brief lesson in oenology.

Thursday evening, stop by to hear about a local distillery that has been making spirits in Virginia since Prohibition. The master distiller of A. Smith Bowman in Fredericksburg will discuss his small-batch and single-barrel bourbons and Virginia gin while students enjoy tastes and special cocktails made from the ingredients.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Milone debuts with a bang, Nats win in the 9th over Mets 8-7

Photo courtesy of
‘home away from home’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

The Nats added another chapter to the Ryan Zimmerman, “Mr. Walkoff” legend book tonight, as he brought the game back from a deficit in their last at-bat yet again this season. The bloop single off Mets closer Bobby Parnell with the bases loaded in the 9th was his 14th game-winning plate appearance of his six-year career. The Nats have now won 20 games in their last at-bat, and 10 in sudden death situations.

The major league debut of Tom Milone on a comfortable September night in Washington was something of a preview for Nats fans. Milone, whose 12-6 year at Syracuse came with 155 strikeouts and just 16 walks, is a fearless medium-velocity pitcher with pinpoint command. What the fans will be talking about, though, isn’t how he wasn’t afraid to come in on the hands of the righties, it’s about what he did with his bat.

Milone jacked the first pitch he saw in the 2nd inning into the Nationals’ bullpen for a 3-run homer. This wasn’t a barely-clears-the-fence job, either, it was a bona fide legitimate home run that had all of Nats Park standing up. Soon as he made contact, that ball was clearly out. He became the 27th player in MLB history to hit the first pitch he faced for a home run, and the 8th pitcher. The last pitcher to do it was the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright in May of 2006.

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Food and Drink, The Daily Feed, We Love Drinks
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Friday Happy Hour: Long Drinks for a Long Weekend

Photo courtesy of
‘01497-07Crop’
courtesy of ‘furcafe’
A long drink, a term with which you might not be familiar, is a bartender’s term for a cocktail which is longer on non-alcoholic mixer than it is on base spirit. You may already know some long drinks as highballs, a slightly younger name which refers to a long drink made with just a single base spirit and a single mixer, often with a fruit garnish. A gin and tonic is a highball, but a Tom Collins (containing not only gin and soda but sugar and lemon juice) is a long drink. The Tom Collins, by the way, gave its name to the archetypical tall glass in which these drinks are served. A highball glass is usually synonymous with a Collins glass (and vice versa).

Cocktails follow formulas, and the combination of a single base spirit and a particular mixer often lends its name to some other concoction made with the same mixer and a different base spirit. The Tom Collins, for instance, begat the Vodka Collins. You could ask a bartender for a Whiskey Collins, and while he or she might look at you funny they’d know exactly what you mean without having to stop to think. Some names have lost popularity over time (Mamie Taylor, anyone?), but others are still current and show up in all sorts of interesting combinations. The Mojito, by the way, is also a long drink; replace the rum with gin and it becomes a Southside; add lemon to that and it turns into a Major Bailey. Formulas! They’re magic!
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