Category Archives: The Features

These are our features. They come back either weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends, December 11-12

Photo courtesy of
‘Indian Scarves’
courtesy of ‘Rukasu1’

Max: The weather is set to warm up a bit this weekend but I will still be hibernating as much as possible.  I’ll be getting drunkfestive at a holiday party Friday night – hope nobody gets locked in the bathroom again this year!  I’ll be going to the Albus Cavus Gala at The Fridge Saturday night to support an amazing group of local artists and possibly buy some great artwork in their silent auction.  Funds raised will be used to pay for scholarships, supplies, instructors and space rental. Tickets are still available!  On Sunday I’ll be going to see the much anticipated Black Swan which I hear is excellent.  Even if it isn’t, Natalie Portman is super hot and I want to marry her.

John: By the time you read this I will be somewhere in the mountains near Crozet, Virginia on a deer hunt with Locavore Hunter Jack Landers (whose class I attended earlier this year) on a private guided hunt. Most of my weekend will be spent down in Charlottesville, but some of it will be back here. I’ll be longing for some brats and beer at Lyon Hall and doing a bit of Wassailing around in Alexandria on Saturday evening. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The Sword @ 9:30 Club 12/6/10

IMG_6558

I invited Martin Silbiger, the resident heavy metal expert over at Pinna Storm, to cover this show with me. The words are his, the photos are mine. Enjoy!

As a metal connoisseur, I’m always looking out for the perfect show to recommend to my open-minded, indie-rockin’, metal-curious friends. These recommendations can be dangerous, though. A band could be too cheesy, too evil, too grim and frostbitten, too noisy, or too serious. Metal singers make things even tougher; growly vocals are an instant turn-off for most people.

So, when I heard The Sword were coming to the 9:30 Club, I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to enlist new members for our metal army. The Sword play “retro metal” which would fit well on the radio alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The vocals are clean; the songs are rooted in sci-fi. But most importantly, this band knows how to write a killer riff that any music-lover can appreciate. Monday night’s show was a constant barrage of excellent guitar licks, played flawlessly and cranked up loud.

Continue reading →

Arlington, Food and Drink, We Love Food
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First Look: Bayou Bakery

PB300231

Sometimes I think that Courthouse is a dead zone for food. If I want actual chef-driven food I go to Ray’s, or I walk up to Clarendon. No longer! David Guas is here to save Courthouse and his new place Bayou Bakery is my new neighborhood gem for the area.

The New Orleans themed eat place serves up beingets, chicory coffee, and delicious sandwiches on fluffy hoagie rolls made from local ingredients. In the morning, people stop in for coffee and breakfast; Guas recommends the yogurt made from a Pennsylvania dairy topped with homemade granola. The lunch crowd rushes in for sandwiches and savory fare, sitting up front in booths and stand-alone tables. Settle down and sip some cider or hot chocolate in the back section with overstuffed chairs and couches and wireless internet. At night, Bayou turns into a date spot, with a good selection of beers and wines by the glass. Continue reading →

Entertainment, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Mojo

(l to r) Scot McKenzie as Mickey, Matt Dewberry as Sweets, Dylan Myers as Skinny, and Danny Gavigan (back) as Potts in Mojo at The Studio 2ndStage. Photo credit: Scott Suchman.

Frenetically fueled by pill-popped speed, The Studio 2ndStage’s production of British playwright Jez Butterworth’s Mojo hits the right tempo for a journey to rock-n-rolla gangland. These petty mobsters are simmering with ineptitude and obscenity while wielding cutlass and cake. In a 1950’s Britain fast overrun by squealing girls obsessed with rockstars, they are grasping at a chance to make it big. Unfortunately for them, it’s just not going to work out.

Butterworth’s play won the 1995 Olivier Award, and the frantic rhythm of the language is the real star here. Director Christopher Gallu has his ensemble cast embracing that jittery, junkie cadence with total commitment. While the accents may not always be spot on, the underlying backbone of the language is a joy – interjections and overlapping dialogue combined with playful postering that can turn to danger on a dime.

It feels like the love child of Guy Ritchie and David Mamet.

Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit, The Features
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Talkin’ Transit: Ridership Patterns

Photo courtesy of
‘Escalators sure are pretty’
courtesy of ‘Karon’

As some of you read, I’ve returned to riding Metro after a few months driving to work. The cost of parking is still such that taking Metro often makes more sense.

Apparently, though, it makes less and less sense for many people. The Washington Post reported that due to the increase in fares, bus ridership was down 7%, and while Metro ridership remained the same, Metro found that up to 3% of riders had moved their commute from the highest fare times.

In a way, this is exactly what’s needed to manage capacity. Market forces tend to balance out between supply and demand. Of course, it’s naive to think of a mass transit system in those terms.

Continue reading →

Entertainment, Fun & Games, Music, We Love Music
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The Winning Ticket: George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic

GeorgeClintonF

As a way to say thanks to our loyal readers, We Love DC will be giving away a pair of tickets to a 9:30 Club concert to one lucky reader each week. Check back here every Wednesday morning at 9am to find out what tickets we’re giving away and leave a comment for your chance to be the lucky winner!

This week we are raffling off a pair of tickets to see George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic invade the 9:30 Club on Saturday, December 11th. George and his band of renegades live to get funky; they have been cranking out their intergalactic P-funk for 4 decades! Their concerts are epic marathon jam sessions that simply must be seen to fully comprehend. Experiencing at least one performance by these ambassadors of funk should be on every music fan’s bucket list. All you P-Funk virgins out there – here’s your chance to find out what Parliament/Funkadelic is all about! To the funk veterans who may be reading this – you already know, so win those tickets!

For your chance to win these tickets simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address between 9am and 4pm today. One entry per email address, please. If today doesn’t turn out to be your lucky day, check back here each Wednesday for a chance to win tickets to other great concerts. Tickets for this concert are also available through Ticketfly.

For the rules of this giveaway…
Continue reading →

Downtown, Entertainment, Special Events, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: The Nutcracker

Students of The Washington School of Ballet in Septime Webre's The Nutcracker. Photo by Stephen Baranovics (2009).

I’ve always thought of The Nutcracker as the gateway drug for ballet. It hooks you when you’re young, all candy confection and delicacy, with just enough undercurrent of budding sensuality and danger to appeal. Once smitten by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her tasty treats, it’s only a matter of time before The Red Shoes are dancing you unwillingly to the train tracks, or the Black Swan is bewitching you to your doom.

Okay, that’s a bit much! But I was reared on the filmed version of Baryshnikov’s magical American Ballet Theatre production, before I knew the sad backstory of Gelsey Kirkland, before my beloved ballet teacher damned my dreams of being a baby ballerina with the exasperated sigh, “She simply has no turnout.” I can still hum Tchaikovsky’s score almost in entirety. So yes, even a lovely children’s dream ballet like The Nutcracker can bring me to tears.

Septime Webre’s version for the Washington Ballet and its school, playing at the Warner Theater now through December 26, is a local holiday tradition that I experienced for the first time this year. The audience was a mix of nostalgic adults like me, and children brought to experience that heady gateway drug. The visual aspect of the production is perfect – the traditional story of Clara and her Nutcracker Prince, their battle against the wicked Rat King and their trip to the fairy kingdom, lovingly portrayed against the backdrop of Victorian Washington with relatively uncomplicated choreography well executed by a multigenerational cast of talented dancers. It’s a great introduction to the joys of ballet.

Except for one flaw. A flaw that breaks my heart, for what is says about the future of live performance and an art form that struggles to survive in economic distress.

Taped music. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed, We Love Food
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Cleveland Park’s Ardeo+Bardeo Gets A Facelift

ArdeoBardeo

Ashok Bajaj is one of my favorite restaurateurs in DC, and his more casual neighborhood spot of Ardeo/Bardeo has always been one of my choice picks within his delicious empire. So when I heard that the Cleveland Park eat place and wine bar were merging to get a new look, I was excited to see what it was all about.

Last night, Ashley and I attended a media unveiling of the new merged space “Ardeo+Bardeo”. The most noticeable change is the GIANT zinc bar floating in the middle of the space. For visuals, POP has a good peek into the space. What was once a wall is now a gorgeously-lit bar space with 24 seats, and the walls are decorated with blown-up black and white photographs from the early 1900s.

The concrete floors keep the feel modern, and an addition of a woodfire pizza grill makes flatbreads possible (I recommend the olive, onion and goat cheese flatbread, delicious). Small plates and savory snacks are priced between $3-$15 and entrées are offered between $12-$25. Check out the new Ardeo+Bardeo at 3311 Connecticut Ave, right down the block from the Cleveland Park metro station.

Mythbusting DC, The Features
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DC Mythbusting: A Bus By Any Other Name

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

Welcome to another edition of DC Mythbusting.  This week we’re looking into the Metrobus system.  The rail system is easy enough to understand– it is organized by color, with five lines in total.  But there are over 300 bus routes serving the DC area, so the color system wouldn’t work (though I would love to ride the Burnt Sienna line or the Dandelion line).  So how are the Metrobus routes named?  Why do some have a letter and a number, some a number and a letter,  and others just have a number?  Read on for the answer!

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The Features
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We Love Arts: Wife Swappers

Clockwise from top: Mac (Michael Miyazaki), Shirl (Lucrezia Blozia), Karen (Judith Baicich), and Jake (Tony Greenberg). All photos by MV Jantzen.

This is not the feel-good show of the holiday season. If that’s your thing, maybe Ford’s Theater still has some seats for Christmas Carol.

Where Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem was about the banality of evil, playwright Justin Tanner’s Wife Swappers is devoted to the banality of perversion. The characters are not mass murderers – they’re rigidly, traditionally moralistic in any matters beyond group sex – but they’re still hard to empathize with, and watching them is more highway accident rubbernecking than connecting.

Wife Swappers tells a story that unfolds in a single evening in the home of Jake and Lorette, hosts to a recurring sex party attended by folks who are delighted to swap partners but are exceedingly uptight in pretty much every other way. When newcomer Karen wonders whether the boys ever touch each other during the lubetacular extravaganza the others recoil in horror and disgust. It’s a theme repeated several times in the work – these folks who wish they didn’t have to keep their alternative lifestyle on the down-low are completely unaware of the hypocrisy as they point their scorn and judgment at plenty of other marginalized groups.

Continue reading →

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

Photo courtesy of
‘projection-4’
courtesy of ‘dr_kim_veis [”o ]’

December’s increasingly short days and this week’s biting wind have forced many of us into hibernation mode. With the outside world so inhospitable these days, it’s time to look for inside activities to keep from going stir-crazy, and dr_kim_veis has shared his cure for the winter blues with us for today’s featured photo.

The image on the wall is a camera obscura projection, and it’s made using a technique that pre-dates photography. All you need to do it yourself is a window to mount a lens on and a spot for the image to show up. The end result lets you see the scenes and lights and colors of the outside world without ever leaving the comfort of that blanket you’re hiding under. The Internet is full of people who have experimented with techniques, and there’s a Flickr group devoted to sharing images from users’ work.

The projection itself can be a work of art, or, like our photographer, you can turn the camera lens on the scene and create an image like this one. When Samer featured a similar shot back in August, he talked a little bit about the technique needed to capture these images. But, like the camera obscura itself, half the fun is in the experience and experimentation. So take one of these cold dark evenings to see what you can put together. When you’re done, share your images with us in the We Love DC Flickr pool.

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Peter Hook presents “Unknown Pleasures” @ 9:30 Club 12/1/10

Last Wednesday Peter Hook and his nearly anonymous but capable backing band performed a complete set of Joy Division songs (including the full album “Unknown Pleasures”) at the 9:30 Club. This was one of the more unusual concerts of 2010; the music performed is over 30 years old and its original singer Ian Curtis has been dead nearly as long. Peter Hook was a co-founder and the bass player of Joy Division; so he has as much right to perform these songs as the other surviving members do; which they have been doing to a lesser extent in encores with their band Bad Lieutenant. But Hook was proposing an entire set performing basically as Joy Division. Who exactly would be singing these songs? And how the heck would they come close to matching Ian Curtis’ singular voice? Leading up to it, the whole prospect of this Peter Hook show felt audacious and just plain weird.

Continue reading →

Sports Fix
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Sports Fix: The Cold of Winter edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Washington Capitals Defenseman Mike Green’
courtesy of ‘marc.benton’

Capitals
Record: 18-8-2, 28 points
Last Two Weeks: 4-3
Place: Three-way Tie for the top of the East

The Caps are on top of the East, have just acquired a big piece of what’s missing in their arsenal, and are continuing to dominate many games. So why is this columnist a little bit down on the Caps? It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I think Dan Rowinski had something yesterday when he said that this was an erratic team with equally erratic coaching.

While early in the season, you can cope with some shakedown play, there’s a point at which you have to settle into your rhythms and start to push past the awkward stage. The Caps have yet to do that, and their losses to Dallas and Atlanta this week were indicative of a failure to play rough-and-tumble hockey up in front of the net. Here’s hoping they’ll be able to push past looking for the finesse goals and into the hard-charging hair-on-fire hockey we’re used to seeing. Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Features
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Week 12 Recap – Skins vs. Giants

Photo courtesy of
‘flag’
courtesy of ‘littlerottenrobin’

Everyone knew the Redskins had to play a perfect game in order to beat the Giants. That didn’t happen. The Skins had 6 turnovers in the 31-7 loss. The game may have been over in the 1st quarter much like it was against the Eagles. The Giants scored touchdowns on their first two drives while the Skins offense could not move the ball. Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw scorched the weak Skins run defense for a combined 200 yards and 4 touchdowns. Donovan McNabb struggled, throwing for 2 interceptions and losing a fumble. The loss puts the Skins record at 5-7 and may have ended their playoff hopes. Continue reading →

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Know Your (Jayson) Werth

Photo courtesy of
‘Jayson Werth’
courtesy of ‘pvsbond’

The word is out this afternoon that just days after the Nationals parted ways with first baseman Adam Dunn, the team has come to terms with former Philadelphia outfielder Jayson Werth.  The team is expected to announce the deal in a 5pm press conference.  While the details of the contract have yet to come to light, beyond it being a 7-year deal, this a huge bombshell to start off the Winter Meetings in Orlando.

To give you Werth’s details at Nats Park, in 2010, Werth hit .419 at Nats Park, and slugged .806 for a monstrous OPS of 1.306, the best of any ballpark not named Coors Field.  Now, granted, some of that has to be given to our terrible pitching, but it’s still impressive to see someone take to a place like that.

Asking around this morning, everyone I talked with seemed to like Jayson, and one of my fellow fans went as far as to say that if you don’t like Jayson Werth, chances are you probably just don’t like people.  Looks like Ryan Zimmerman has an upgrade behind him in the lineup!

Update: According to sources, the deal is worth $126M over 7 years, or approximately, the gross domestic product of Kiribati.

Sports Fix, The Features
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Capitals snooze and lose in Hannan’s first game at Verizon

Photo courtesy of
‘DSC_7599a’
courtesy of ‘bhrome’

Perhaps this is not what Scott Hannan had in mind for his first couple games in as a Capital.

Get traded to a first place powerhouse, an offensive juggernaut that could deeply use another top-four defenseman and … lose. That has been the case so far in the Hannan-era. The Capitals have scored two goals in his two games and have lost to Dallas and Atlanta, showing little spark in the process.

On Saturday Washington was dropped 3-1 by Atlanta, the second straight time (after a 5-0 embarrassment in Atlanta Nov. 19) they have lost to their division rival and third time of the season. Hannan was not around for the first four meetings against the Atlanta yet the Capitals’ shiny new defenseman (at least to them) had little to say about the outcome. Hannan played 17 shifts for 14:33 of ice time registering one hit and one blocked shot while posting a plus/minus ratio of -1.

“We had some energy there in the first but it just didn’t seem like we could bury our chances and they buried theirs when they got they got the chance,” Hannan said. Continue reading →

Getaways, The Features
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Getaways: The Amtrak Adventure


All Photos by Rachel Levitin

I have a confession to make. I have always wanted to pull a Jack Keroac and hit the open road and take an adventure in homage of the classic American novel “On The Road” published in 1957. Feel free to blame this on the Literary junkie inside me but it just always seemed like a good idea. You know, the whole getting caught up in the amber of the moment thing (Kurt Vonnegut pun intended)? I always liked the sound of that. The way I figure it, each and every day is a good excuse for an adventure.

This past Thanksgiving I had to make a decision — spend Thanksgiving with a friend in Philadelphia or chock up the dough to spend Thanksgiving at home with my family in Chicago. Suffice it to say, I would have been perfectly fine with an impromptu trip to Philly. The only other time I’ve ever been there was last summer for one hour while my friends and I ate some hoagies and then turned the car back around toward D.C. The reality of the situation is that my heart wanted to spend some time in the Windy City, so it was an easy choice.

My final decision led me to book a 23-hour Amtrak train ride from Union Station in Washington, D.C. to Union Station in Chicago, Ill. Why? It was double the price to fly so I decided to pass on getting close and personal with TSA. Continue reading →

Entertainment, Music, The Features, We Love Music
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We Love Music: The TFDI Tour featuring Tony Lucca, Jay Nash, and Matt Duke


Photo by Rachel Levitin

Wednesday night’s performance by Tony Lucca, Jay Nash, and Matt Duke on the Virginia stop of their TFDI Tour at Jammin’ Java was an example of the theory that less is more. The stage was set with three microphones, three guitars, and three of the most talented one-man bands I’ve ever seen live.

When combined, the TFDI (aka “Totally F*ckin’ Doin’ It) Team of Lucca, Nash, and Duke produce a sound comparable to Crosby, Stills, and Nash with a touch of The Band on guitar and some Motown soul in their vocals. The harmonies produced by both their instruments and their vocal chords were enough to pique any music theory majors’ interest and leave an Average Joe listener’s jaw dropped all at the same time.

And to think – this musical tour de force started out as a side project for a trio of guys looking for something creative to dabble with in their spare time.

Continue reading →

Food and Drink, The Features, The Hill
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First Look: Ba Bay

Photo courtesy of
‘Ba Bay, Sunday Night’
courtesy of ‘Madame Meow’

Ever since Locanda abruptly closed last summer, I’ve been anxious to see what would open up in its place. I would walk by the giant picture window every few weeks and there Locanda would sit, fully made up for service knowing full well it wouldn’t be serving anyone anytime soon. It was like a shrine to pasta plates of time gone by.

And then just as unexpectedly as it closed, one day a year later the ghost place settings were gone and work was in progress for a new restaurant. Enter: Ba Bay.

Continue reading →