Category Archives: The Features

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

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed, We Love Drinks
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Friday Happy Hour: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier

Photo courtesy of
‘Weihenstephaner’
courtesy of ‘yto’

Welcome to the Friday Happy Hour, your single drink primer for the weekend.

I’ve been trying to come up with some sort of seasonal or circumstantial justification for recommending the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, but I really can’t.  The best thing I can think of is that you might die tomorrow and it would be a real shame if you went to your grave without trying this beer. The Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is a wheat beer hailing from the Weihenstephan brewery of Bavaria (supposedly the oldest in the world). It’s consistently rated as the best hefewizen in the world and packs an enormous amount of complexity and flavor.  It bears notes of lemon and clove with strong overtones of banana from the acids produced by the particular style of yeast used during the fermentation process.  It’s sweet and refreshing, with a medium body and lingering finish.  Typically, you’d drink this style of beer during warmer weather, but it’s definitely worth having today.  You can find it at Little Miss Whiskey’s Golden Dollar on H St., or at Total Wine and More.

The Daily Feed, Tourism
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Curling Expo At Hilton Garden Inn All Weekend

Photo courtesy of
‘Dave Levy Curls’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

The drama of Curling is gripping the nation, as it is wont to do during the Winter Olympics. Some clever minds over at the Hilton Garden Inn in McPherson Square saw the opportunity to tap into the adopted cult sports quadrennial success around the games and throw some support towards USA Curling. With four modified-length sheets and an array of stones, the basement ballrooms of the 14th St facility are ripe for you throw around all the fantastic curling terminology you’d like.

Tom Bridge captured the moment via some outstanding photographs, and I’m proud to say that I took a 1-0 victory over DCist in the first ever, unofficial, DC Blog Bonspiel.

This is just the start of our curling coverage this weekend, as we’ll be heading out to Potomac Curling Club tomorrow for their open house. However, if you find yourself with your family downtown this weekend, the ice here at the Hilton Garden Inn is open for the public to take their hand at an end. It will be open starting at 6 p.m. this evening until 9 p.m., as well as tomorrow and Sunday.

Need to brush up on your Curling lingo? I posted a little bit of a primer over on my own blog last weekend.

Dave Levy, among other things, is We Love DC’s Senior Curling Correspondent (yes, We Love DC now has a Senior Curling Correspondent). He usually writes about media and journalism over at State of the Fourth Estate.

Entertainment, Music, We Love Music
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We Love Music: Tortoise @ The Black Cat 2/16/10

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courtesy of Tortoise

Indie-rock elder statesmen Tortoise played the Black Cat on Tuesday night and treated the modest-sized crowd to a set that was representative of their career modus operandi. Somehow their set managed to be simultaneously laid-back and intense in a way that was as mind-boggling as it was enjoyable. Covering the lion’s share of their latest album “Beacons Of Ancestorship” Tortoise once again displayed their utter mastery of genre collision and band member inter-play.

A lot of articles online hail Tortoise as the “godfathers of Post-Rock” and while I don’t particularly agree* I do recognize and enjoy the sea-change impact that they had on indie rock in the mid-1990’s. No one on the indie landscape does quite what Tortoise does in practice or in sound. They are the ultimate instrument playing genre colliders. Tortoise does with instruments what DJs can only dream of doing with an arsenal of samplers; Tortoise swallows difficult genres (Jazz, Krautrock, Prog-Rock, Dub, Punk, the list goes on…) and reconstitutes them into insane progressive mash-ups that evoke their influences in brilliant, discordant, and challenging ways. The fact that they can do all that and still lay down a deeply enjoyable jam is Tortoise’s own special brand of genius.
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Monumental, The District, The Features
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Monumental: Mount St. Fenty

Photo courtesy of
‘glacial dome’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Rising high above the streets of DC, seen here with a height on par with the Capitol Building, is Mount St. Fenty.  The monument, in which is carved the sorrow of all District residents, was erected in the early part of 2010 by the District’s Department of Transportation on the orders of the Mayor.  While the initial monument was created as part of what should have been the art installation equivalent of a flash mob, on orders of the Mayor, the monument would stand for months to come as testament to the powers of the mother nature.

The ad-hoc architectural construction of Mount St. Fenty is a bold statement in contravention to traditional artforms, favoring chaos and confusion over structure and focus.  The confusing form has been the topic of much discussion over the past few days, and the Mayor himself has expressed incredulity at its reception.  If the avant garde nature of Mount St. Fenty is its most obvious feature, the Kafkaesque drama that it carries with it as undercurrent is its most long-lasting.  The neighborhoods are rife with frustration as the Mount is causing all manner of parking difficulty throughout the city, leaving residents with flat tires, flared tempers and a sharp increase in the alcoholism rate.

Plans to move the monument at this time are quite sketchy, as the Mayor has said that the weather will have to do the job itself, and that city funds are stretched to the limit to move the monument to its final location. The delay, though, will prove to be a campaign issue for the Mayor in this fall’s primaries.  Well, should anyone decide to run against Mayor Fenty.

Food and Drink, Interviews, People, The Features, We Love Drinks
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We Love Drinks: Chantal Tseng

Chantal Tseng at Tabard Inn. Photo courtesy Chantal Tseng/Tabard Inn.

Chantal Tseng at Tabard Inn. Photo courtesy Chantal Tseng/Tabard Inn.

We Love Drinks continues our series where we look behind the bar, profiling the many people – from mixologists to bartenders, sommeliers to publicans – who make your drinks experience happen.

It’s no secret that one of my favorite bars in the city is Tabard Inn. The creaky lounge – a Victorian Medievalist’s fantasy, with its eccentric patrons circling the fireplace – seems somehow out of time and place, a bit dreamy really. Thankfully its mixologist’s first reaction to the bar’s collection of quirky old ingredients wasn’t to throw them all away, but to find a way to incorporate and celebrate them. It makes perfect sense.

Because Chantal Tseng sees stories everywhere. Stories for cocktails, that is.

As she describes for me her foray into the great old stock of the hotel, I have a vision of her browsing through dusty bottles in search of new worlds to uncover – like some cocktail archeologist. “Wait, what’s that? Don’t get rid of it, that could be fun to play with…” Her enthusiasm pulls me along, for mixing drinks is obviously Chantal’s love, an artistic outlet fueled by the history behind a drink and the stories it weaves afterwards.

Take the tale she spins for Odette’s Curse. It begins with her standing in front of a painting of a man ice-skating. “In a silly pose,” she says, “like a dandy on ice.” Continue reading →

We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends, February 20-21

Photo courtesy of
‘China Town Arch’
courtesy of ‘rgb48’

Kirk: I’m leaving for the Olympics on Saturday, but I’m going to try to cram some weekend goodness in early, before I get out of town.  Tonight, I’m going to SOVA for some bluegrass, a bi-weekly, Thursday tradition that a friend introduced me to, recently.  Tomorrow, I’ll likely treat myself to a beer at the Saloon after work before finally going to Wisdom for the first time ever (I’m behind the times). Then it’s early to bed so I can be up for my 4am drive to BWI.

John: Friday night I’ll be sitting in early with No Second Troy at the 9:30 club for the Hotspur show. Then I promptly get in my car and trek down to Charlottesville for the “Hunting for Locavores” class all weekend. I’ll come back with new skills, a belly full of venison, and some great photos and experiences to share with you all.   Continue reading →

The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Georgia O’Keeffe Abstraction

Black Door with Red, 1954.

Black Door with Red, 1954.  Oil on Canvas, 48 x 48 in. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia.  Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 89.63 (CR1271). Copyright, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.” – Georgia O’Keeffe, 1976

When discussing abstract art of the 20th-century, the likes of Kandinsky and Matisse are often the works that most easily come to mind.  However, the newest exhibition at The Phillips Collection – Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction – suggests the need for a potential addition among the abstract ‘authority’.

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News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Wizards Conducting Fire Sale

Photo courtesy of
‘fire sale’
courtesy of ‘it290’

The shouts from the Phone Booth tonight went something like, “Everything must go! No players reserved! WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD!” and that resulted in the departure today of Antawn Jamison, as he was traded to the Cavaliers for Zydrunas Ilgauskas (whose name is just as fun to say as it is to spell!) and a first round draft pick.

That adds to the list of 2009/2010 Wizards who are no longer Wizards: Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, Brendan Haywood, Drew Gooden (even if he stayed just 3 days), and DeShawn Stevenson. If you add in Gilbert Arenas, who I think has seen last time in a Wizards uniforms, then you’ve got three of their five opening day starters who are gone, and several more reserves.

The addition of Ilgauskas as a big man in the middle for the Wizards is great, it’s just that there’s hardly anyone to throw the ball to at this point. You could say that the team has all the chemistry of an elementary school science textbook right now, and you’d probably be right. It’s going to be a rough, rough rest of the season for the Wiz.

Scribblings, Special Events, Technology, The Features
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Scribblings: Shane Harris

Photo courtesy of
‘Watch The Watcher’
courtesy of ‘kevinspencer’

Tomorrow at noon, the International Spy Museum is having a lunchtime discussion with journalist Shane Harris on his new book, The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State. In his new book, Harris tracks the government’s elusive quest to build a computer system that can sift huge amounts of electronic data for signs of terrorist activity. First proposed by national security adviser John Poindexter in 1983, reopened after the 9/11 attacks in a program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), and publicly banned by Congress in 2003, TIA was recreated as a classified program at the National Security Agency and is now a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s national security policy. Drawing on unprecedented access to the people who pioneered this high-tech spycraft, Harris contends that despite billions of dollars spent on this digital quest since the Reagan era, the government still can’t discern future threats in the vast data cloud, but can now spy on its citizens with an ease that was impossible and illegal just a few years ago.

A quick interview with the author after the jump. Continue reading →

The Features
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Behind the Design: Blue Duck Tavern

Photo courtesy of
‘Rocking Chairs – Blue Duck Tavern’
courtesy of ‘prettylovelythings’

Author’s Note:  So often we move through space too quickly – trying to get from one place to the next, without ever taking the time to stop and look around.  Behind the Design is a new series that hopes to encourage an appreciation for the places we forget to take a moment and truly experience.

Located in the West End and tucked within the Park Hyatt, Blue Duck Tavern has become a staple among the DC foodie scene.  With a farm-to-table menu that includes a variety of delights – even worthy of a Presidential date night, Blue Duck Tavern deems to be deserving of all its food-related accolades.  However, often taking a back seat to the well-deserving menu is the other half of this award-winning duo:  Blue Duck Tavern’s interior. Continue reading →

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit

Snow covers trains at Metro's Brentwood Yard (courtesy of WMATA)

Snow covers trains at Metro's Brentwood Yard (courtesy of WMATA)

Snow. You remember it, surely? Anywhere between two and four feet over the last week. It crippled our roads and sidewalks, and it’s left several small mountains in most of our neighborhoods. I’m sure you aren’t surprised that it also crippled Metro.

The bus system has to rely on local municipalities to clear snow from the roads. Many snow emergency routes were cleared fairly quickly, but the conditions on secondary streets varied wildly, leaving many buses running on altered routes, even today.

The subway system was also hard hit. Above ground service had to be shut down, and only fully came back online on Friday afternoon. By that point, the Federal government had reopened to one of the worst commutes (by car or by rail) that I’ve seen in 22 years here. So what happened and why, and what should Metro be doing differently in a storm?
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Entertainment, People, Special Events, Sports Fix
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Capitals Hockey, 2010 Vancouver Games, and You

Photo courtesy of
‘Hockey Helmet from 1980 Olympics’
courtesy of ‘Mr. T in DC’

As you read this, Olympic hockey has begun for the 2010 games in Vancouver. So what does it have to do with DC?

For Caps fans, everything. Think of these next two weeks as less an NHL break and more of an intermission show that has the makings of an epic Game 7 Stanley Cup Final every night during the playoff round. The Capitals have five players in the tournament, scattered across three national teams. And depending on how they do and where they place, the Caps may have quite the motivator when these players return the first week in March.

Tomas Fleischmann: Czech Republic (CZE) In the middle of a breakthrough season with 17 goals and 41 points through 48 games, “Flash” will most likely end up on the second line working with the likes of Martin Havlat, Tomas Plekanec, or Jaromir Jagr. However, with several capable forwards on the Czech team this year, Fleischmann will have no problems slipping into a groove on any of the scoring lines. The Czech team is not expected to medal this Olympics, but if goalie Tomas Vokoun stands on his head and gets into a zone, they have a good shot at a medal upset. Continue reading →

Mythbusting DC, The Features
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DC Mythbusting: Daytime Population

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘flipperman75’

Now that the snow is melting and the city is returning to normal, let’s focus on a non-snow topic for a change.  Last Friday’s commute from hell showed us all that the city’s transportation network wasn’t quite ready for the influx of commuters going to work. That got me thinking– how many people commute into DC, and how does that compare with other cities?  And does the population of the District really double during the day?

Once again, the Census provides all these answers– so keep in mind this data is almost a decade old, but until we fill out and return our Census forms this spring, it’s the best we can do. The Census tells us that in 2000, 572,059 people lived in the District (and because DC is such an awesome city, more people are moving here– the population was estimated at 588,373 in 2008).  On top of that, over 400,000 more people commute into the District from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania on any given weekday.  That leaves DC’s daytime population in 2000 at 982,853– 172% of its nighttime population.

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Featured Photo
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Feature Photo

Photo courtesy of
‘Bender! On the orange line!’
courtesy of ‘Karon’

There’s a lot of snow out there. Lots and lots of snow. And there’s lots and lots of snow pictures in our pool. No, really, go look. Since everyone and their brother is doing snow, I thought we’d take a look at what wasn’t covered in snow.

Karon rode Metro for the 15 minutes it was running last week and stumbled across everyone’s favorite “alcoholic, whore-mongering, chain-smoking gambler” robot: Bender from Futurama!

But what was Bender doing riding our lowly Orange line? Was he here to make sweet love to the Metro fare card machines? Maybe he’s decided he needed a new form of transportation and is studying our advanced 6000-series rail cars?

Turns out, he’s just a costume for the woman that’s toting him around. She made him for Katsucon, which was held over the weekend. Anyone go? What’d you think?

Entertainment, The Features
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What It Takes To Be An American President In NatsTown

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It takes more than the promise of hope and change to become an American President in NatsTown. Over 40 guys and gals reported to Nationals Park Saturday afternoon as “presidential candidates” for the 2010 Racing Presidents. Their goal — prove they’ve got the stamina, strength, and charisma to be an acting Racing President from April to September.

DC isn’t the first or only baseball town to have a mascot run a race in between innings down the warning track. In fact, baseball mascot races are part of what make the teams that have the races even more fun to watch!

Milwaukee beat every other team to it in the 1990’s when they created “The Sausage Race”. And yes – it is what it sounds like – four types of sausage, one prize … the glory of winning an in-between inning novelty racing game from inside a giant physics problem of a costume.

The Sausage Race became an instant fan favorite before the bottom of the sixth inning at every home game for the Brewers at Miller Park. The mascots are now known as “Klement’s Racing Sausages” (Klement’s Sausage Company is located in Milwaukee and provides the Brewers with their products). To top it off, there are five of them: Brett Wurst (a bratwurst), Stosh (a Polish sausage), Guido (an Italian sausage), Frankie Furter (a hot dog), and Cinco (a chorizo). Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Features
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Sports Fix: Gearing Up

Photo courtesy of
‘Center Ice’
courtesy of ‘Ghost_Bear’

With the 2010 Vancouver Olympics kicking off Friday night and continuing throughout the weekend, it’s kind of hard to recall the significant happenings that have occurred over the last two weeks in DC sports.

Capitals
Record: 41-13
Last Two Weeks: 4-3
Place:1st in the Eastern Conference

The Caps continued their winning streak with spectacular W’s against both the Penguins and the Rangers, but were stopped at 14 wins on February 10th by the Montreal Canadians in a 5-6 squeaker in OT.

Since their loss to the Canadians, the Caps have lost their last 3 games heading into the two week break for the Olympic games. They still lead the Eastern Conference with 90 points, and their next game will be away versus the Sabres on March 3.

Despite this minor downturn, Mr. Ovechkin is still the NHL’s leading offensive player in both goals (42) and overall points (89). And Alexandar Semin is on a super hot streak, sniping goals left and right, and racking up 5 goals and 4 assists in the last 4 games. Continue reading →

The Features
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Why I Love DC: Samantha

Photo courtesy of
‘(heart) D.C.’
courtesy of ‘rockcreek’

I can’t tell you why I picked DC.  People ask me this question all the time when they first meet me and I just don’t have a ‘real’ answer.  Was it because of the political scene? Nope, I was about to enter a Masters program for Interior Design.  Was it because I had family here?  That would be another negative.  I got it; it must be because of the weather, right?  I am glad to say once again that weather was not the reason why I wanted to move to DC (perhaps on some subliminal level I foresaw the impending snow storms of 2009/2010).  The best answer that I can offer you is that I believe it was just a feeling that brought me here – a feeling that has since developed into a full-blown love affair.

That’s right everyone — I totally, utterly, completely, whole-heartedly love DC.   Continue reading →

The Features, Where We Live
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Where We Live: Snowed In Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘Braving the Snowmageddon’
courtesy of ‘theqspeaks’

Here at Where We Live,  our focus is on neighborhoods and communities where people live, work, and play.  But recently, there’s not been a whole lot of leaving the house, so this week’s feature is focusing on the best places to be snowed in.  Sure, this may be the worst winter in history, but if you’re basing your next move on where you’d prefer to be snowed in, here are some ideas.

Best Neighborhood to Drink Away the Storm: Adams Morgan is the place to be if you don’t want to be snowed in your home.  With several bars within walking distance staying open during the storm, you’ll be able to drink away your sorrows.  On Friday night during Snowmageddon, the streets were empty but the bars were open and offering pretty amazing deals!

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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Kastles: Now With More Williams!


Venus Williams by Max Cook

As if having the world’s #1 women’s tennis player on our team wasn’t enough, the Washington Kastles have added the #5 player as well.  That’s right, both Serena and Venus Williams will be playing for the Kastles this season almost assuring another successful run at the World TeamTennis Championship.  With arguably the best sibling duo in tennis history, the Kastles roster now boasts a combined 61 Grand Slam titles.

In other exciting news for Kastles fans, coach Murphy Jensen will be back again to see if lighting can strike twice.  “It takes world-class talent to win championships and there are no more accomplished athletes than Serena and Venus,” said Murphy, “Last summer was truly a dream season for us, and come July 5, the dream continues in DC.”

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