Yearly Archives: 2011

News, The Daily Feed
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Tune Inn has kitchen fire

The Tune Inn

News is coming from Capitol Hill this morning that Hill-favorite The Tune Inn has suffered a kitchen fire that sparked massive response from DC Fire & EMS this morning on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Reports from some outlets are just coming in, and I suspect The Hill Is Home will have the best coverage as we work through the day.

The Tune Inn has been DC’s representative on the Best Bars in America for a number of years running.

Update: 9:45 I just got back from The Tune Inn, where the fire engines have all departed, and the cleanup has begun. According to the staff I spoke with, the damage is confined to the kitchen and the second level. The whole kitchen will need to be replaced after a grease fire destroyed much of the kitchen.  The bar area remained untouched thanks in part to the quick reflexes of the morning staff, who slammed the door shut when the fire broke out.  According to staff, the night spot should open again “in a few weeks”.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nats mount historic rally, beat Mariners 6-5 in the 9th

Photo courtesy of
‘Bang! Zoom!’
courtesy of ‘John C Abell’

The biggest deficit that the Nationals have ever overcome in the 9th inning, going into tonight’s game, was 2 runs. Tonight they battled back from 4 runs behind, and with two outs in the ninth inning, mounted a 5-run rally capped by a monster home run off the bat of rookie Wilson Ramos into the left field stands.

After being limited to just a single run against the Mariners’ Doug Fister, the Nationals came into the ninth inning down 5-1.  Jayson Werth, now sporting just a soul patch, having earlier shaved his beard, confounded Justin Smoak with a hard hit ball to first.  It deflected right off the glove of Smoak and Werth was at 2nd with no one out. Roger Bernadina drew a 7-pitch walk, the Nats were suddenly threatening.  Ryan Zimmerman grounded into a 6-4-3 double play just three pitches later, and it looked very much like Brandon League would be getting himself out of another jam.  Jerry Hairston Jr., who entered the game when Laynce Nix aggravated his right Achilles tendon, struck a single up the middle, plating Werth for the first run of the ninth.

The Nationals were now threatening in earnest, having been limited to just three more batters than the minimum by Fister through eight full.  Morse made strong contact off a slide from League, and hit it into the Mariners’ closer, ricocheting the ball back toward the 3rd base-line, and injuring League.  With the trainers coming out, it looked like the Mariners might add injury to insult.  With two down in the 9th, the Nationals had the tying run at the plate in Danny Espinosa, ratching the crowd of 21,502 into action.  Hungry for a rally, Espinosa hit the very first pitch from Danny Pauley up the middle, scoring Hairston, making it 5-3.  Wilson Ramos came to the plate as the winning run, and he just pounded an 84-mph changeup from Pauley into the left field seats to bring the house down on the Mariners.

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Sports Fix
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A Look inside the Nationals Win Streak

Photo courtesy of
‘189/365’
courtesy of ‘Danilo.Lewis|Fotography’

The winning streak that ended on Sunday was the Nationals’ longest since 2009, and is tied for the second longest since their return to Washington. As I said on Sunday, streaks are difficult things, and they take you out of the big picture, and you start to live for the microcosm of the streak and not for the reality of the season.  I pulled a lot of the numbers for the streak, and for the season as a whole, and the conclusions are pretty interesting.

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Entertainment, Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Ryan Bingham at the 9:30 Club

Ryan Bingham at the 9:30 Club
Photo by Rachel Levitin

It’s been said countless different ways, but according to folks who’ve lived around these parts, the District is “a northern city with southern charm.” As a daughter of two midwesterner’s, I never knew whether or not the whole “D.C. as a northern city with southern charm thing” was true or not. Then, I saw Texan singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham at the 9:30 Club. In the span of 24 hour hours, I found myself splitting my time between a colossal audience at the Verizon Center for Glee Live and a rock club turned honky tonk show at 9:30 Club for Bingham on June 10. Bingham brought the south with him. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Worse than the dance-off

Photo courtesy of
‘it’s cocktail hour somewhere’
courtesy of ‘ekelly80’

Another day, another speech restriction. This time it’s upholding a restriction against anti-abortion protester Patrick Mahoney and his desire to do chalk writing on the pavement outside the White House.

If you want my opinion – and even if you don’t – this is a worse decision than the Oberwetter case that inspired the Jefferson Memorial dance protests. They’re both based on the same justifications that Kevin told you about here – a content-neutral restriction and a compelling government interest. It certainly seems to me, though, that it’s kinda cruddy to lump in washable chalk with spray painting something or taking a hammer to it.

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Entertainment, Fun & Games, Music
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The Winning Ticket (Extra): The Coathangers

We’ve got a bonus ticket giveaway this week courtesy of Red Palace. Up for grabs are two tickets to see The Coathangers play there TONIGHT! The Coathangers are an all girl, post-punk band from Georgia who are establishing quite a name for themselves based on their crazed personae, the chaos-quotient of their music, and their riotous live shows. Check out this Youtube video for a taste of their sexy/scary riot grrl routine and enter to win these tickets if you like what you see/hear.

For the rules of this giveaway…
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History, The Daily Feed
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Smithsonian Snapshot: Good Humor Truck

Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History

This week’s Smithsonian Snapshot helps us to herald in the start of summer. Good Humor, the well-known “ice cream on a stick,” was created by candy-maker Harry Burt in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1920.

His first candy invention was the Jolly Boy Sucker, a lollipop on a stick. While working in his ice cream parlor, Burt created his own recipe for a smooth chocolate coating that would be compatible with ice cream. His daughter Ruth performed the first taste test. Although it tasted good, Ruth thought it was too messy to eat. To solve this problem, Burt took the advice of his son, Harry Jr., who suggested freezing wooden sticks used for the Jolly Boy Sucker into the ice cream as handles. He named his new creation the Good Humor bar, capitalizing on the belief that a person’s “humor” or outlook on life was related to the humor of the palate. Burt immediately sent the patent to Washington, D.C.

From the beginning, Good Humor bars were peddled in gleaming white trucks by salesmen in white uniforms. By the mid-1930s, Good Humor bars were sold throughout most of the country. The pictured 1938 Chevrolet truck is believed to have operated in the Boston area.

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo


‘tiny eyes are watching you’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

For me, the only thing more fascinating than interesting pictures, are interesting pictures of very small things. Macrophotography, or close-up photography of small objects, can reveal a world of amazing detail. Really, such photography is limited only by the tools of the photographer.

Take the above picture from philliefan99. Clearly the four eyes of the spider are visible, along with their unique size and shape. You’re even capable of seeing the individual hairs on the legs and body of the creepy crawly. Would you notice such details if this were to scurry onto your leg right now?

The Features
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First Look: Fiola

fiola 001
The weekends in DC can be an interesting phenomenon. Once the work crowd leaves on Friday afternoon, downtown can seem tired and desolate without the weekday foodie crowd. I almost thought I saw that at Fiola on Saturday, then I realized I was there at an off hour. Once it was closer to dinner, couples and parties kept coming in.

The restaurant is the a brain child of Fabio Trabocchi, who a few years ago worked the kitchen at Maestro in the Ritz Carlton Tyson.

They’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Welcome back to DC, Fabio.

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Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Earth @ Ottobar, 6/17/11

IMG_1523
all photos by author.

I almost did not go to this concert. A big deadline at my day job had me completely exhausted and the thought of a round-trip drive to Baltimore weighed heavily on me all afternoon. The tiredness and sense of drive-dread continued into the early evening. In fact at about 8:30, I posted this on twitter: “My day job killed me today. Trying to dig deep to make the drive to B’More for the EARTH concert but…#AllSignsPointToNo”.

Then a response tweet from MetalChris of DC Heavy Metal intervened a few seconds later to gave me the motivation I needed to drag my weary self out to my car. “You can do it man! I’ll be up there too, how often does Earth come around ya know?” Little did I know that my drive up would soon be extended by an extra hour thanks to some single lane action on 295N. By the time I got to Baltimore I was in pretty bad shape and felt like I was about to pass out.

The opening band didn’t help me feel any better. O Paon is a single woman playing guitar loops and singing so quietly that the bouncers were making audience members leave the room if they talked. Normally I would applaud this kind of enforcement, but I soon found myself and MetalChris being chastised for simply saying hello. Did I mention that O Paon’s music did nothing for me? Normally I try to be an enlightened listener, open to just about anything; but the tiredness, the crappy drive, and the fascist bouncer did not put me in a happy receptive place for O Paon’s Quebecoise mewling.

But I wasn’t there for this French-language, musical stage version of Jodie Foster’s film “Nell”; I was there to hear Dylan Carlson’s legendary instrumental metal band EARTH shake some internal organs. So after some conversation in the other room, we all returned to the main room and took up places for one of the best shows of the year.

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The Daily Feed
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DDOT expands ParkMobile pay by phone parking program

Photo courtesy of
‘Obey…the 2-hour parking’
courtesy of ‘Hoffmann’

With the pilot program completed, and a winner chosen, DDOT announced this afternoon that pay-by-phone parking is now available in a large portion of Northwest DC, with more meters and multispace areas coming in the near future. By the end of July, every metered and multispace metered space in DC will support the ParkMobile service, allowing drivers to pay for parking with credit cards with a simple phone call.

The currently available areas are mostly north of I Street NW, west of 9th Street NW, south of T Street NW, and east of Wisconsin Avenue NW. Click through for a bit more of a map, and a link to a geotagged map. Continue reading →

News, Technology, The Daily Feed
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Can please get a .dc domain now?

Photo courtesy of
‘MicroLink Modem 56K’
courtesy of ‘Markusram’

Late yesterday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the concept of the generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) which will open up a fairly wide landscape of domain suffixes like .com and .org to new members.  While the number of Top Level Domains have expanded in recent years, the .dc suffix is still entirely unclaimed.

It could be a boon for the District to pickup the .dc gTLD to use for area businesses to highlight their work in the District, either to DC residents, or as proof they are a locally operating business. I know that we would happily pay for welove.dc, and I suspect that the various tour companies that operate tours to the area would make the investment if it was tied to some sort of competitive advantage.

It would be incredibly important for the DC OCTO to move quickly, though, as I suspect that they won’t be the only ones looking to be the registrar for that gTLD, and to lose control of that resource would be a pretty significant failure. Let’s get on it, OCTO, we’ll help you if we can.

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Yeasayer @ 9:30 Club, 6/16/2011

Yeasayer: 9:30 Club, 6/16/2011 [2]
All photos by author

It’s been a year since Yeasayer last visited the 930 Club, in promotion of their latest album Odd Blood. Since then, word spread about their solid live show, and tickets for Thursday night’s show sold out months in advance. They came to DC as part of a short tour to road-test some new songs for their next album – another batch of funky, 80s-pop-influenced tracks with catchy melodies and weird instrumentation. Also new: their fantastic lighting setup, involving huge LCD displays that illuminated the entire club.

By the end of the show, I realized that only a couple Yeasayer tracks really do it for me – even “Ambling Alps” is wearing thin after hearing it a million times last summer. Yet their show was undeniably professional, and their visual appeal kept me interested even during the less exciting songs. Plus, as an experimental pop band, each song was different enough from the last, and short enough that I never got bored of watching them.

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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The White House on Zillow, only $262M!

Photo courtesy of
‘Hi Honey. I’m home!’
courtesy of ‘cruffo’

When you consider that the winning campaign in the 2008 Presidential Election spent about $800M or so to achieve victory, Zillow’s prediction concerning 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at $262M of value seems a bit off. Now, the 16 bedrooms and 35 bathrooms, not to mention an attached garage, make it a pretty nice house, not to mention all of the security features that it contains, many of which aren’t listed in the property detail.

At 55,000 square feet, it does cut a stunning profile, and there’s central air and heat, so you’ve got that going for you. I hear the owner’s in a load of debt, so they could probably turn it into some quick cash if you threw a bunch of money at them.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nationals drop game to Orioles 7-4, end streak at 8

Photo courtesy of
‘Moon over Nationals Park’
courtesy of ‘BrianMKA’

Streaks are hard things.

Streaks take you out of seeing the Big Picture, and they change your focus to the tiny reality of the streak.  Streaks of either kind aren’t microcosms, they’re localized disruptions of the normal. As a good friend said Sunday, “Losing streaks are the result of talent, while winning streaks are the result of luck.”

The Nationals came into Sunday’s game riding as high as they’ve been all season, winners of eight straight and 10 of their last 13. They didn’t hardly look like the same team on the field on Sunday. Maybe they indulged a bit too much at Saturday night’s Dream Foundation Gala, but the Nats just couldn’t get it going. 3 errors, and some rough plate appearances were their undoing, and they dropped the game, and the streak, in a 7-3 loss in front of 35,439.

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The Daily Feed
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Nationals enjoy the catbird seat, win eighth straight over O’s 4-2

Photo courtesy of
‘reach for the prize’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

The Nationals picked up their eighth straight victory on Saturday afternoon against the struggling Orioles and climbed to within a win of a .500 record.  They did it today on the bats of Michael Morse and Ryan Zimmerman, each of whom had a towering shot.  Zimmerman struck in the bottom of the first with a tape measure blast to left field that tied the game at one, and Morse struck a two-run shot, his thirteenth, in the sixth, putting the Nats ahead for good.

Jordan Zimmermann, despite struggling a bit in the first few innings, put together 6 1/3 IP of 2-run ball, and picked up his 5th win. His record is now 5-6, and his ERA dropped just slightly to 3.08. Drew Storen saved his 17th game of the season, facing just three batters in the 9th. Henry Rodriguez came in to pitch 1.2 IP in the 6th and 7th, and pitched the Nationals out of a nasty jam in the sixth.  Rodriguez sent Adam Jones down on just three pitches, two 83-mph sliders sandwiching a 101-mph fastball. As Mark Zuckerman said, “That’s just not fair.”

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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nats rack up 8 in 7th straight win, beat Orioles 8-4

Jayson Werth makes contact

Photos by Patrick Pho, special to We Love DC

Oh, for a real crosstown rivalry.

The Nationals came into the Battle of the Beltways (or whatever they’re calling it this year) on a tear, having won six straight, and having just swept the formerly hot Cardinals. Tonight, they put their best starter on the mound against a slumping Baltimore team, and the damnedest thing happened.  The Orioles ganged up for a dozen hits off Marquis, but only plated four runs. They’d pick up another half dozen against the Nationals’ bullpen, but couldn’t strike again, while the Nationals picked up 8 runs on just 10 hits, striking for 7 runs on 6 hits in the fifth and sixth innings.

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