Category Archives: The Daily Feed

Business and Money, Talkin' Transit, Technology, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Metro & Google?

subway.png

When I saw this morning on Google Maps that New York City’s Subway system was finally part of Google Transit, I got mighty curious: What’s Metro doing to work on this? So, I asked WMATA’s Lisa Farbstein what was going on. Metro’s response, via Lisa, was “We have been working with Google, however a formal agreement has yet to be finalized.”

It would be so delightful if I could point people at Google Maps to do the routing, as anyone who’s ever used the Metro Public Transit Mapping Tool would know. C’mon Metro, if New York can do it, we can too, yeah?

The Daily Feed
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Paying to Park at DC USA

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

Have you been to the new DC USA shopping mall in Columbia Heights? While it is an orgy of suburban big box stores, I have to admit that I am a frequent patron.

From the Target that wants to serve booze to the Staples for all my home office needs, I shop there often. But even though I also often drive there, I refuse to park in the DC USA parking lot.

Hard to enter and exit, and without a grace period for store patrons, I would rather street park or use the Bling Bling Giant and grab needed foodstuffs for a free two hour park.

What do you do?

Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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Work Starts on Union Station Bike Center

Union Station Construction

The Union Station driveway by 1st St NE (directly above the Metro station) has been fenced off and is ready to be dug up for the upcoming Union Station Bicycle Center, a futuristic-looking glass-and-steel dome beside the Metro with secure bike racks, changing rooms, and storage lockers for DC bicyclists. DDOT expects to have the Center finished by next spring. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed, We Love Arts
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Congratulations Chimamanda Adichie!

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Wisconsin Book Festival by talatu-carmen

Our heartiest congratulations to the DC area’s only MacArthur Genius this year, Chimamanda Adichie! Adichie is a novelist living in Columbia MD, writing about her native Nigeria. Her latest, Half of a Yellow Sun, is set against the backdrop of the late 1960s Civil War in Nigeria, when the Igbo people seceded and formed Biafra. The MacArthur Genius grants are a $500,000 award, with no strings whatsoever, given annually to the people determined by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The are but three criteria for the grant: “exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”

Congratulations Chimamanda!

There were also two Baltimore-based winners this year, both at Johns Hopkins: Peter Pronovost, critical care physician, and Adam Riess, astronomer and cosmographer.

The Daily Feed
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Tire Changing in Grant Circle

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

Let’s say you get a flat tire as you head northbound on New Hampshire Avenue NW. Where might you stop to change it?

Did the intersection with Grant Circle ever come to mind? Or did this fool just loose his mind when he left his wheel-less car there?

Either way, I had half the mind to help if only to clear a fool off the road.

Entertainment, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Really DC50, Did You Need To Go There?


Really?
Originally uploaded by tbridge

I was walking through Barracks Row today and spotted this ad for bodice-ripper show Gossip Girl on the CW. I recognize the glare makes it hard to see it, but that’s a black guy(1) giving that white girl a hickey, emblazoned with the text, courtesy of the Boston Globe, “Every Parent’s Nightmare.”

Okay, the show has a lot of drinking and some sexual content, but did you really need to go all 1950’s-in-Georgia on us?

Continue reading →

Entertainment, Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Cupcakes and brass bands


Cupcake fez
Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

On Friday afternoon, a friend announced on Twitter that she’d had a bad day and wanted a margarita. Within 10 minutes, we had plans to meet up for post-work margaritas and fajitas, followed by a trip downtown to catch She-Ha at the Improv. So we finished our dinner and headed into town, in a TT with the top down, no less, on a perfect late-summer night. Upon arriving at the Improv, however, we discovered that there was only one ticket left for She-Ha, which did not suit the two of us.
Continue reading →

The Daily Feed, The District
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Not So Car-Free Today


12th Street Corridor
Originally uploaded by maxedaperture

One of the big drawbacks of my job is that I can’t rely on Metro or the Bus to handle every place I need to go. So, for me, despite my desire to be car-free, I just can’t make it happen. And, judging by the traffic reports this morning, I’m far from alone. Hopefully, though, many were able to take public transit this morning, or carpool with friends to make it all work out.

For those who did make an effort to leave their wheels at home today, check out the Car-Free Festival on F St NW between 7th and 9th streets over by the National Gallery. You can’t miss the big balloon arches, and you can check out the new rent-shared bicycles that we love to hate so much.

The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Monday Morning on Metro

Another fun Monday morning for transit, and by “fun” I mean “not fun” — and on Car Free Day too!

At around 8:20 AM, a train with mechanical difficulties caused delays on the Orange Line in the direction of New Carrolton. Around the same time a switch problem backed up the Shady Grove-bound Red Line. Trains were holding for 10-15 minutes (an eternity in transit terms) at stations from Farragut North upward, and platforms packed quickly with rush hour crowds. Right now a “situation that has now been resolved” (earlier, a “sick customer”) at Rosslyn has left residual delays on the Blue and Orange Lines, which are still slowed by the earlier rush hour backup.

To Metro’s credit, once the switch malfunction between Farragut North and Metro Center was resolved, the Red Line got back into a smooth flow pretty quickly, and we had no problems transferring to an Orange Line train afterward.

To cap it off, a friend informs me that MARC trains on the Penn Line were delayed by a conductor suffering a heart attack and needing evac at Bowie State station.

Did the delays hit you on your morning Metro ride? Leave a comment.

Special Events, The Daily Feed
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Books books books

Photo courtesy of erin m

Wheaton at the Library of Congress, courtesy of erin m

For some reason the fall is when a plethora of book-related festivals and events burst out everywhere in the area, and one of the early leaders is coming to a close over the next five days: the Jewish Literary Festival at the 16th street JCC. I think the most interesting item on deck is Andrea Askowitz’s talk on Sunday about her amusingly named book, My Miserable, Lonely Lesbian Pregnancy.

Okay, maybe I have a curious definition of amusing. And my opinion might be colored by the fact that Askowitz is a professor from my alma mater. And because brunch is included in the price.

But there’s a schedule of other events running between now and the close on Wednesday. None of the remaining events are free but at $9 for the non-brunch events they’re not going to break the bank either.

The Daily Feed
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Lost Mix CD

Lost CD

Remember back in the day when we made mix tapes? I guess now the young people make mix CDs. When I was young, making a mix tape involved actually playing the song and recording it at the same time, and because it was such a laborious process, you really only did it for whomever you were dating at the time or were dating until two days ago.

You chose the music carefully to suit the occasion and had sit through every line by Foreigner, Marshall Tucker, ZZ Topp, The Commodores and Boz Scaggs. Who isn’t emotionally charged by such songs as “Lido Shuffle” or “Brick House?”

Nowadays, I reckon all you do is drag and drop, burn it and it’s done. No fuss, and it all happens in the background. It seems like such a cheapened form of emotional expression. That’s what makes it so disposable, I suppose, and why someone was not more careful with the CD above, found in the parking lot of my office. After all, you can always go back to that special someone and ask him or her to burn you another copy, because you, like, lost the first one. If you made this CD for someone, I am sorry to report the implications of your beloved losing such a thing.

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed, The District
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Deadbeat Lerners Still Haven’t Paid the Rent

Foul Ball

Okay. See. If you or I did this? We’d be on the street a long time ago. But we’re now six months after the start of the baseball season at brand new Nationals Park, and the Lerner Family still hasn’t paid the team’s rent.

Folks, this is ri-goddamned-diculous.

They owe the city $3.5M for the occupation of the ballpark and they haven’t paid a red cent anywhere. They haven’t even done the courteous thing and put the rent in escrow, near as I can find. Chance are, it’s over something monumentally stupid like Ted Lerner’s chair rocking ever so slightly in his multi-million dollar owner’s suite.

Pay up, Ted. Pay up. You owe this city its due.

Business and Money, Crime & Punishment, The Daily Feed, We Love Arts
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It’s actually okay, Mr Trump

Photo courtesy of NCinDC

enter here for the money, courtesy of NCinDC

Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts muddied the water a bit yesterday in the Reliable Source column and perpetuated an old misunderstanding. They close their article about Edwina Rogers and her practice of wrapping small gifts with dollar bills by saying “While uncut currency is legal tender (you can cut around the bills), slicing them in half (as Rogers does in the clip) is technically considered defacement.” Well, sure, and so is writing in the margins of your paperback so you can get back to the saucy parts later. Unfortunately they’re hinting at the common belief that using those penny mushing machines and other “money art” constitutes committing a federal offense and might somehow get you in trouble.

The Treasury addresses this directly themselves on their website.

This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the U.S. Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.

So feel free to keep making those little folding paper dolls with your $100 bills, so long as you don’t try to spend them later.

Business and Money, Media, The Daily Feed
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Watch your credit for free

Photo courtesy of christaki
Love…, courtesy of christaki
I’ve got mixed feelings about Michelle Singletary’s personal finance column in the Post; we just don’t see eye to eye on a number of basic positions. I take back every under-my-breath grumble I ever did over her articles, however, after her recent one talking about the TransUnion class action settlement and what it can do for you. If you’re not aware of it – and you’re not, based on the miniscule number of eligible people who have signed up – the proposed benefit to you 6 to 9 months of free credit monitoring, depending on if you opt yourself out of a possible cash payment.

Personally I went for the 9 months. While there might be a shot at a noticable amount of money if the number of signups stays so crappy, it’ll take about 2 years to pay out anyway. I’d rather have the monitoring in that time. It’s not something I’d pay for myself but for free just having the ability to lock my report is worth it. If you also need help saving for the future and specially your children future, visit thechildrensisa.com they will for sure help you get your finances in order and besides that they will help you save for the future.

If you can’t be bothered to read Singletary’s article you can just go straight to the List Class Action website and sign up directly. If you don’t do it by the 24th you miss your chance.

Arlington, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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New Parking Stand


New parking stand
Originally uploaded by tbridge

You might’ve seen the new parking stands at the Courthouse parking lot, featuring space numbers, credit card machines, and time tags that you leave on your dashboard, but these machines are spreading rapidly. They showed up on Fairfax Drive near the new power substation recently, and are all marked with the “Coming Soon” text. The new boxes will transition all the meters on the street to 4 hour max meters. Many meters on the street are currently 12 hour meters, which means that they’re friendly to people who work in the surrounding area. Oh well, guess it’s just four hours for you, now!

The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Don’t be Stingy with the N’s, Pal

I can't find the entrace

I don’t know which would be worse – not knowing how to spell “entrance” or else misspelling it and thus being the butt of jokes from your coworkers. This sign was posted by a construction area between me and my lunch, causing me to go seek out the front entrace. It was quite a journey. If only markers came with auto-correct.

The Daily Feed
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Bye Bye Memory Stick

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

This would be the view down a sidewalk grate on K Street. Somewhere down there is a USB memory stick with my presentation to the World Bank.

Yes it is that kind of day.

In the midst of my misfortune, I wonder what else has been lost down the grates of DC: rings, watches, keys?

Do share if only to comerserate in your despair.

All Politics is Local, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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On Chris Cooley’s Wang

By now, I’m certain, all of DC has seen Chris Cooley’s wang (SFW) as he was foolish enough to put it on his own blog on Saturday. By Sunday, everyone was chuckling at Cooley’s silliness. However, the best part of all this is the response from Cooley, in a post entitled “We’re Dumb”:

“All apologies from the website. We are very sorry that we showed a penis on our website all day yesterday. That was by no means our intention and we did not want to offend anyone. The picture wouldn’t have been up for so long, but we were in the middle of winning a big game. Once again, this was a complete accident and we regret not reviewing the post more closely. Thanks.”

Sorry about the penis. But we won! Go team!

History, The Daily Feed, The District, The Mall
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Flickr Find: Bartholdi Fountain


Bartholdi Fountain
Originally uploaded by NCinDC

It’s just about lunchtime here today, and I’ve taken a jaunt over to Capitol Hill to just stop and stare at the Capitol in awe. I’m also hard at work on the Monumental feature for Friday. This photo by NC in DC of Bartholdi Fountain near the Botanical Gardens is a great inspiration. We’re starting to see the beautiful Fall weather that makes DC something truly special, so get a walk in this afternoon on these beautiful streets. See something unique and special. Better yet, click the photo above to read the historical information about the Bartholdi Fountain.