By 
‘butterfly food’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’
Another weekend come and gone; fortunately this time the thunderstorms held off until Sunday night. Grip your cup of coffee a little closer and hang on to it a little longer. Continue reading
Category Archives: The Features
By Dan Rowinski
We are louder: Caps usher Rangers out of the playoffs in Game 5
‘Washington Capitals home opener 2009 – 8’
courtesy of ‘Garyisajoke’
Karl Alzner got a tweet this morning from a Rangers fan forecasting a repeat of history and certain Caps demise.
So, Josh Bennett (@JoshBenn80), how are you feeling right about now?
For the first time in the Bruce Boudreau era, the Caps have close out a playoff series in less than seven games. Did anyone think that was possible?
It happened
Washington took care of business against the Rangers in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Stanley Cup Playoffs quarterfinals 3-1 to take the series four games to one. The Caps now await the winners of the Buffalo/Philadelphia, Boston/Montreal series’ or the Tampa Bay/Pittsburgh series to see who they play next.
If Buffalo (the No. 7 seed) upsets the Flyers, then the Caps get the Sabres in the semifinals. If Philly comes back and wins, the Caps could play any team from the No. 6 Canadiens (currently tied at two games apiece heading into Game 5 in Boston Saturday night), No.5 Lightning or No. 4 Pittsburgh. Really, whatever is the lowest seed heading into the next round and the Sabres, with a three games to two advantage, look like they could be it.
“There is going to be a little bit of relief. I mean, we are completely different team this year and the whole circumstance is different,” Alzner said. “It is nice to get a round out of the way because I got a tweet, I think this morning, saying something about ‘are you guys ready to choke again and lose.’ I was like, ‘hopefully we will show you’ and now that that is done I am pretty happy about that.”
By He Loves DC: A Q&A with Christian Hunt
Photo courtesy of Christian Hunt
Once a month, on Saturday nights, Christian Hunt can’t be missed. He’s the guy in the bright red suit hosting the Capital City Showcase at the DC Arts Center in Adams Morgan. Hunt is a District native. He was born at Georgetown Hospital and raised in Glover Park.
“It’s funny because there are so many transients here that I’m like a white squirrel, because I was born and raised in DC, still live in DC, and root for all the DC sports teams, though I pretend the Redskins don’t exist. As cheesy as it sounds, DC is my home and it always will be,” Hunt said.
Hunt took a few minutes to give We Love DC the low-down on why he thinks his hometown is “the most beautiful city in the world.” He might have lived in Boston during his college years but according to Hunt, the District is far from being a tourist trap.
Rachel: So tell me about this Capital City Showcase. It’s an evening that showcases a variety of local performance artists. How did the project get started?
Christian: I’ve been performing since I was 10 years old. Whether it was doing plays, playing piano, or singing in chorus, I was always on stage. At the end of college, I started dabbling in stand-up comedy, but when I started working I put it all on the shelf. So after years of not performing at all, I started to get the itch again. I remember being up late and watching infomercials for The Midnight Special, which was a variety show from the 1970’s that featured the best acts of the time. And I thought to myself “Why doesn’t something like this exist anymore?”
I also grew up watching the old DC20 channel, which featured local programming, like all of the kids shows hosted by Captain 20 (if you grew up here you know what I’m talking about). And again I thought “Why is there no real local programming anymore?” So I figured it would be really cool to fill both of those voids with a live variety show that featured all of talent that DC has to offer. And The Capital City Showcase was born.
By Patrick Pho
We Love Arts: Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind Returns To Woolly
Photo Colin Hovde
Apparently We Love DC loves the Neo-Futurists. Fellow theatre writers Jenn and Don have also seen, “Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind” during past visits to the area. The Chicago-based theatre troupe have been performing versions of the show for over 21 years with shows both in their home theatre (called The Neo-Futurarium) in Chicago and on the road.
Luckily our coverage of the show isn’t excessive, because no two TMLMTBGB shows are the same. The premise of the show is to perform 30 “plays” in 60 minutes. After each performance an audience member rolls dice to determine how many plays from the current list of 30 will be retired forever and replaced with newly written material.
The performances are chaotic, spontaneous, and audience driven- but it’s not Improv. The skits will invoke feelings of happiness, confusion, or outrage- but it’s not drama. What occurs on stage is performance art that’s somewhat unclassifiable.
On the scale of Orange Juice to Orange Crush- it’s Sunny D.
By Capital Chefs: John Critchley of Urbana (Part 2)
‘Shellfish stew at Urbana’
courtesy of ‘bonappetitfoodie’
With spring finally in the air, chef John Critchley’s shellfish stew with coconut and lime is great for this time of year. The coconut milk and lime keep it light, but it still has a rich and creamy broth. For all you seafood wary cooks, this isn’t a difficult recipe to make, so it’s good for taking the plunge into cooking with shellfish. The flavors are great and it’s a dish that will definitely impress your friends.
Click through to find the full recipe after the jump.
Continue reading
Capital Chefs: John Critchley of Urbana (Part 1)
‘John Critchley of Urbana’
courtesy of ‘bonappetitfoodie’
Like many chefs, John Critchley, the new executive chef of Urbana, is cooking because he says, “I don’t know anything else.” Cooking, albeit his full-time job, doesn’t even feel like work sometimes. John started working in a kitchen in his freshman year of high school where he learned that many times your kitchen staff becomes like a family.
“I try to promote that same feeling in my kitchens now,” he says. “You spend 60 hours a week working with each other so it becomes a family. It becomes what you grow to love doing.”
While working in the kitchen creates a family of sorts, he does admit that it’s a challenge to balance everyone’s different cultures, attitudes and work habits. However, John strives to bring his team together and says that he likes seeing people reach their goals because it helps the development of his team in the kitchen. “I want to see my line cooks move up to sous chef. I want to see that they’re motivated to improve,” he says.
By fedward
It’s Tourist Season: Share the Love
All photos by the author
A couple years ago the Social Chair and I were sitting at a bar when the couple next to us asked us a question. They said they’d overheard our conversation with the bartender and were looking for a restaurant recommendation, since they were visiting from out of town and wanted to try something other than their usual haunts. We got to talking about where they were from (“Outside Toronto”), and we mentioned that we were leaving in a week to go visit family and friends both in and outside Toronto. It was at this point in a conversation with a Canadian that I would usually get to play my trump card, since my sister lives in a town even most Ontario natives haven’t heard of. But when we told them the name of the town (West Montrose), they got a little wide-eyed. And then they asked, “which house?”
It turned out that these strangers, from “Outside Toronto,” had almost bought that very house, and after they didn’t buy it their friends did. Their friends, in fact, were the couple who sold the house to my sister and brother-in-law (and since my sister’s family is moving to The Hague, it’s for sale again). In this city you never know who you might meet.
Judging by what I’ve seen on Twitter, and a stale rant that has been making the rounds again (which I won’t dignify by linking here), tourist season has fallen hard on some of you (the fact that it arrives at the same time as allergy season also doesn’t help, I’m sure). But I ask your patience as I make this heartfelt plea: please be nice to tourists.
We Love Weekends, April 23-24
‘2011: 002’
courtesy of ‘::FiZ::’
Dave: It’s a really jampacked Easter Weekend for me. First off, I’m starting Friday with my first alumni softball game of the season, playing under the Monument before heading over to the Exchange for a pitcher and some tater tots. I won’t be there for long, because I have to get out to Ragtime out in Courthouse where my band is presenting an epic tribute to Hootie and the Blowfish’sCracked Rear View. We’ll play other stuff, too. Promise. I’m getting on a plane to go join my family for the rest of the weekend, but rest assured that if I were to stay in town, I’d have Screwtop’s Easter Brunch as one of my top priorities.
Tom: Springtime, at long last! Easter is this weekend, and while I’d normally be singing with the Falls Church Presbyterian Church choir, I may just be an observer at the Basilica in Brookland, where a good friend is singing as part of Holy Week services. As for Easter Brunch, with the teeming hordes descending upon all of my favorite establishments, I’m thinking I’ll just hit Eastern Market this week for some eggs and really great bacon and maybe a local chicken to roast on Sunday night. We’re planning a little themed shindig for Game of Thrones‘ second night. Saturday, catch me in the garden getting ready for next weekend’s Garden Guild monastery plant sale. I’ve got beds to prepare for some lovely blueberry bushes. Continue reading
By Patrick Pho
We Love Arts: Art
Photo by Scott Suchman
If you could take the premise Yasmina Reza’s “Art” and turn it into an episode of Seinfeld, it would have been a classic.
Just imagine George Costanza marching into Jerry’s apartment to see a blank white 5’ x 4’ canvas…
Jerry: George! Behold my latest acquisition!
George: What is it?
Jerry: It’s an Antrios!
George: Antrios?
Jerry: Antrios!
George: Never heard of him.
Jerry: Well he’s a classic- and this painting will be as well! I got it at such a steal!
George: How much?
Jerry: $200,000. What do you think?
George: I am speechless. I am without speech.
By Tom Bridge
Talkin’ Transit: Parking Edition
‘281|365’
courtesy of ‘Danilo.Lewis|Fotography’
I hate parking meters. I think they’re an awful concept. Not because they make you pay for what you use, but rather how they make you pay for it: with change. As rates have increased in the downtown core to $2/hr, it means that you need to carry with you rolls and rolls of quarters if you’re going to do any parking in the core that isn’t in a garage.
We started to see pay-by-phone metering last year, with a number of trials in Dupont Circle and in Foggy Bottom with a pair of services that work on a zone-based system. Call a number, enter a credit card (the first time) and then enter the zone where you’re parked. Bam, you’re good for as long as you’re within the limit for the zone. If you only intend to stay for 50 minutes, that’s all you pay for, instead of the potential for overpaying at a traditional coin meter. It’s a revolution.
Eat for Good Causes: Charity Events Roundup
‘Rows of Desserts’
courtesy of ‘bonappetitfoodie’
You like eating to begin with. That much we know already. But it doesn’t hurt when you can eat good food and support a good cause at the same time.
After the jump, here are three upcoming charity events that incorporate some good food and good causes.
Continue reading
By Jenn Larsen
We Love Arts: The New Electric Ballroom
(l to r) Nancy Robinette, Jennifer Mendenhall, and Sybil Lines in The New Electric Ballroom by Enda Walsh. Directed by Matt Torney. Photo: Carol Pratt.
Countless poets have asked the question – is love worth the risk of a broken heart? Are fleeting moments of a racing pulse and desire’s first flush worth facing the possibility of loss and loneliness?
To those questions, Irish playwright Enda Walsh adds – is it better to just stay safe inside? In The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, playing now in repertory at Studio Theatre, “inside” is both the literal confines of a fixed space and the “inside” of one’s own mind and heart. “Inside” is both as safe and confining as the womb, the physical space as limited as the mental world is limitless. The choice of staying in or going out is of vital concern, stamping the characters with an equal dose of longing and repulsion.
Whereas The Walworth Farce deals with how this choice impacts three men and the woman who comes into their space, The New Electric Ballroom turns that question over to three women and the man who enters. “And enter then” is a phrase constantly repeated here, a reminder that no matter how safely we bind ourselves against risk, it always finds a way to seep in to our carefully constructed lives. Just as in The Walworth Farce, the three women in The New Electric Ballroom have constructed a daily world of stories, re-enacting the past where two elder sisters first met and lost love. The stories here are also a warning of the risk of the outside.
The results are not as physically violent, but the women are just as scarred, the desperate longing to escape from the demeaning cycle of small-town gossip driving them deeper into their minds. Continue reading
By We Love Music: Spectrum @ SONAR, 4/14/11
all photos by author.
On Thursday night I trekked up to Baltimore to see Spectrum perform on the side stage at SONAR. After witnessing their transcendent show at the Velvet Lounge last year, how could I resist this opportunity to see them again? Based on the strength of their previous show (and my soul-crushing fear of being alone), I talked a friend into coming along for the ride. To get him to tag along, I really talked this show up; an easy task considering how impressive Spectrum was last year. Unfortunately due to problems both technical and olfactory, this experience was very different than last year. Instead of seeing an easy contender for show of the year, we watched as the band plowed through a glitch-riddled set while pinching our noses and breathing through our shirt collars.
By Tom Bridge
Featured Photo
‘Entrance Fare’
courtesy of ‘Collin David Anderson’
Not every great photograph is crisp and perfect, in clean focus and with smooth grain. This shot, from inside the Foggy Bottom Metro this weekend, captures the motion of this protestor as he leapt to the top of the faregate, and, from the description, into the waiting arms of MPD. What I love about this photo is that you’re seeing what’s about to happen, as well what is happening. That’s a hard capture as a photographer, to get the viewer to see what’s next, as well as frame the moment.
I love the clean lines in the background, the curving squares of the Metro ceiling stretching onward into infinity. The Do Not Enter lights of the faregates express clearly the transgression in progress.
Wonderful job, Collin David Anderson.
By We Love Music: Acid Mothers Temple @ Red Palace, 4/14/11
All photos courtesy of Acid Mothers Temple
On Thursday night, I cruised down to the Red Palace to catch an offbeat show. When I first heard about a self-described “guitar freak-out” psychedelic rock collective from Japan, named Acid Mothers Temple, I knew they’d be up my alley. I love noisy bands that can bring a ton of energy to a venue. I love going to shows that push the boundaries of music, that are truly an experience unlike any other.
A handful of people got that experience at the show, but I felt like I was missing something. It was weird and offbeat, but it wasn’t the transcendent event I hoped it would be. In my head, I imagined a bunch of guys nodding in rhythm, hanging on every note the guitarists would bless us with. The band gave us a few moments like this, but for the most part I just didn’t find them that intriguing.
I enjoyed openers Shilpa Ray a bit more – they were an unusual four-piece, with Shilpa playing harmonium jams while alternating between singing, yelling and growling. Their songs worked well, and I could feel the intensity when the band hit their groove.
Continue reading
By Dave Levy
Patriots’ Day, Morning Baseball and the Senators
‘[Nick Altrock, Washington AL (baseball)] (LOC)’
courtesy of ‘The Library of Congress’
Someone will point out after this is posted that the Washington Senators – whether the Twins or Rangers versions – are not the same club as the existing team that plays in the National League down by the Navy Yard. Regardless, they are a still chapter of Washington’s turbulent baseball history, and I found a cool tidbit worth sharing in relation to the Senators and the unique Boston Red Sox tradition surrounding Patriots’ Day.
In the state of Massachusetts (as well as Maine and, for some reason, Wisconsin), today is a civic holiday by the name of Patriots’ Day. The day recognizes the start of the Revolutionary War, which started in the Boston suburbs of Concord and Lexington a few centuries ago. As part of the celebration, the city of Boston completely shuts down for two events: the running of the Boston Marathon (this year is the 115th) and the only MLB game of the year that is scheduled to start before noon.
By We Love Music: Cake at 9:30 Club 4/14/11
all photos by Andrew Markowitz.
Who doesn’t love Cake?
No, not the dessert (although everyone loves it, too), I’m talking about the band who has spawned such hits as “The Distance”, “Never There”, and “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”. These are songs that I think most everyone knows and everyone can sing along to. And when Cake opened up a three night set at 9:30 Club on Thursday night, that’s exactly what the entire crowd did.
No one opened up for Cake that night; as lead singer John McCrea later explained “We’re opening up for ourselves.” Before the band came out a small tree was brought out to the front of the stage and I can’t say I’d ever seen anything like that before. Shortly after 8PM, the show started by a recorded speech that would be similar to what you’d hear from a stewardess before taking off for a flight. The recording instructed audience members to turn off all electronics including cell phones and cameras. I had a good laugh as I looked around the 9:30 Club and saw people actually pulling out their phones and cameras and shutting them down in all seriousness. C’mon, didn’t you realize what band you were coming to see?
Weekend Flashback, 4/16-4/17
‘Wat Thai D.C. Nang Songkran’
courtesy of ‘jeffmorg’
Tornadoes. Sun. Drinking on patios. Rain falling sideways. Did this weekend give anyone else weather whiplash? Here it is, Monday morning, and I’m still feeling a little disoriented. Time to look at some photos while the caffeine hits the ol’ bloodstream… Continue reading
By Tom Bridge
Nats’ bats crack Brewers, win 8-4
‘2ND’
courtesy of ‘MissChatter’
What a difference a year makes. On April 18th, 2010, Jason Marquis didn’t get a single batter out before he was sent to the showers having surrendered 7 runs in the first inning. On April 17th, 2011, Marquis wasn’t invincible, but he certainly was good against the streaking Brewers. Marquis went 7+ and threw 100 pitches in his win today, and continued the Nats streak of starters going more than 5 innings, which they’ve done in every game so far this season. The bats awoke in the fifth and sixth innings for the Nationals, and that was enough to bring the team back to .500 for the season in an 8-4 victory.
By What’s next for the Wizards?
‘Wizards v Jazz – 01.17.11’
courtesy of ‘MudflapDC’
The 2010-11 Washington Wizards season, which ended Wednesday night with a 100-93 loss at Cleveland, will largely be remembered for the sparkling play of rookie point guard John Wall, who averaged 16.4 points and and 8.3 assists per game and would be a shoo-in for Rookie of the Year if it weren’t for the stunning emergence of Blake Griffin. Apart from that, however, most of the positives of this past season could only be seen on paper, rather than on the court.
To wit, in December, General Manager Ernie Grunfeld traded Gilbert Arenas and his horrendous contract to the Orlando Magic for the slightly less odious commitment made to Rashard Lewis. Two months later, with the NBA’s trade deadline approaching, Grunfeld swung a deal with the Atlanta Hawks that brought Mike Bibby and two promising young players to D.C. in the persons of Jordan Crawford and Mo Evans. Grunfeld then became even more fortunate when Bibby became so desperate to play for a contending team (eventually settling in Miami with the Heat) that he passed on all of the $6.2 million the Wizards would have owed him in 2011-12. Continue reading