According to the WMATA Site and DC Alerts, the Pentagon Metro Station and Bus Terminal is closed to investigate a potential Hazmat situation:

The Pentagon station is closed to investigate a potential hazmat situation. Hazmat experts are responding to the scene. No trains are permitted to go through the station. Trains are turning back at Arlington Cemetery and Pentagon City.

The Pentagon Bus Transit Center is also temporarily closed. Free bus shuttle service is being established to take Bus Transit Center customers Pentagon City to catch their buses there.

I so love living in this town sometimes…

[Update] via DC Alerts:
The Pentagon METRO Station has been cleared for re-opening. It was determined that cleaning solvents triggered the chemical sensors. The station will be under normal operating conditions momentarily.

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Abdelhaleem Ashqar has been certified as a candidate in the upcoming Palestinian elections to choose a successor to Yasser Arafat.

What does this have to do with DC?

Ashqar will be campaigning from Alexandria, VA, where he’s currently under house arrest on racketeering charges.

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Major League Baseball’s owners have voted to approve the move of the Expos to Washington, DC for the 2005 season, over the objection of Orioles’ owner (and chief sour-grapes consumer) Peter Angelos. Full Season ticket packages are currently on sale, and single-game and partial-season packages are expected to go on sale early in the new year.

RFK’s already under renovation for the start of the season in April. Spring training tickets haven’t been announced, but with other teams beginning to announce their ticket information for the Grapefruit and Cactus league games, it’s just a matter of time. Hooray for baseball!

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We’re up for a Weblog Award! Get out that voting mouse pointer and get to work! You can vote once a day until December 12th. No reason we shouldn’t finish in the top five!

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The City Council, in a pitched debate, approved the initial steps toward a new baseball-only stadium in Southeast along the Anacostia Riverfront yesterday. The council voted 6-4 in favor of the new stadium, but a final vote in mid-December will keep the Mayor on his toes. It’s a half billion dollar package that was necessary to appease enough of the council with local funding for libraries and schools.

Here’s hoping the Nationals don’t Suck.

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If you don’t have the money to market your museum, how do you drive attendance? Close it.

The City Museum of Washington has closed after 15 months of operation due to lack of funding and low attendance.

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Matt Drudge (yes, I’ve taken my grain of salt) is reporting a brawl at the unveiling of the DC Nationals’ new logo. Apparently the Green candidate for mayor tried to break up the event and instead found himself on the receiving end of some whupass.

[Update] The Post now has it as well:

The gathering was preceded by a brief protest of the deal Williams brokered with MLB to bring baseball to Washington. District resident Adam Eidinger, 31, stormed to the podium on stage and yelled, “This is a bad deal, people,” before the microphone was turned off. Eidinger remained on-stage yelling before several officials — including District Councilman Harold Brazil (D-At Large) — wrestled him off-stage. He was led to a back hall by security, where police spoke with him.

“I said free speech,” Eidinger said after being escorted away from the event. “It’s a half-baked deal, a rip off. They know it.”

All in all, a good day for DC Baseball!

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The long awaited Metro Station at New York Avenue will open tomorrow, and the Washington Post has some photos available for viewing.

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DC Cabbies are striking today to protest proposed changes to the way taxis are regulated in the District.

Oh, there’s an industry that’ll be missed. You mean I won’t be able to flag down a crappy old Crown Vic driven by a guy who doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know anything about DC geography and who as a worse sense of direction than I do? What ever shall I do?

(I guess I’ve just been spoiled after a week of London cabbies.)

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Last night, on our way back from St. Martin-in-the-Fields here in London, we met with a Tube situation that many DC residents like ourselves were certainly used to: The Central (Red) Line was delayed, crammed full of people, and uninhabitable by man or beast.

We cabbed it home instead.

And unlike DC, our cabbie knew where he was going, didn’t charge an arm and a leg, and actually spoke decent English.

It’s a shame that London cabbies can’t be as universal as Red Line disasters.

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So, the City Paper has pretty much declared war on the Sunday Source this past weeek. They ran an article called 15 minutes of fume, mocking the 15 minute craft projects that Sunday Source frequently has. Let the hostilities commence!

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So I went up to Tom Tom for an Inside Source event. Because the Dupont Metro station is still closed due to the train accident, I made the decision to drive. Once in Adams Morgan, however, it took me 30 minutes, some industrial lubricant and a shoehorn to finally get parked somewhere within a couple of blocks or ten of the location.

How the hell do you park in Adams Morgan without going crazy?!

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Via DCFoodies, check out the listing for the Scotch Whiskey Festival (scroll down). On second thought, all the relevant details about the festival (except the $75 admission fee) are available at DCFoodies, and just go to the TasteDC page for a a whole list of interesting food-related events in the area.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

In a hideous Metro accident this afternoon, two trains collided head on in a station on the Red Line:

When the car pulled into the station and stopped, the conductor began screaming for people to get off the train, and the passengers started running, according to Harnice.

Clingerman said in a matter of seconds a second train hit their train head-on and went on top of the first train, sending debris flying.

I’m so glad we just gave Metro more money, now they can use it to crash more trains!

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I couldn’t have asked for better weather this morning as I left the house to vote. Crisp and autumnal, with bright sunshine over the horizon. The line stretched the length of the football field and track next to the school, around 300 feet or so. I arrived on at the corner of 29th and the parking lot at 7:05am this morning. I would estimate between two and four hundred people in the line ahead of me, had I thought ahead, I might have counted bodies, but I was busy deciding who would get my vote.

I was given the option of taking the Democratic and Republican sample ballot from some party flacks that were handing them out, but I passed. I did, however, buy a cup of coffee from the PTA of the Abingdon School who were selling coffee and pastry at the end of the lot.

An election official came by and told us we’d have about a 70 minute wait to vote from where we were standing. Would that her prediction were true! I waited with a jubilant Red Sox Fan and a young couple who were late for work, each glad to be there, but none glad to wait for what turned out to be 90 minutes.

Though tempted to drop trou as Sean Suggested, I kept clothed, held my nose, and voted. I voted in position 167 (on the A-K roster, the shorter of the lines) at 8:38am this morning. We vote in Arlington County on WINvote touch screens. My request for a paper ballot was denied. So I voted on the touchscreen, tapped in my write-in for the president, and hoped. Who knows if it will get counted?

Thankfully, traffic was light on the 395 into DC, so I was only 30 minutes late for work.

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For those of us who trek out to Wegman’s every now and again via the Dulles Toll Road, you can now use that EZ Pass that you got for going up 495 without having to stop every six feet to pay a new toll, instead of having to stock up on quarters.

Of course, there are all manner of rumors that exist around EZ Pass, that they monitor you using GPS, that they check your speed via GPS, that they have to turn the data over to the Highway Patrol…

But it sure is better than waiting in line to pay a toll, only to find out you have no change.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Did you know that DC has a glass school? With classes? I sure didn’t.

But now I think I might want to take one. :D

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As anyone who’s ridden Metro in the last weeks can attest, it seems like half the elevators and escalators on the system are plagued by out of service notices, shuttle services that don’t work, and buses with bad lifts. It’s no surprise that Metro is one of the worst in the country in this regard, but no one seems to care. I’m betting dollars to donuts, no one at Metro will even read the damning Post article on it. 2 1/2 hours to go from Reston to Union Station? Ridiculous.

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The fall foliage is about to peak at high elevations, everybody! So get in your car and head out to Skyline Drive or someplace to look.

Or, you can be like me and just admire the leaves along the George Washington Parkway every morning on the way to work.

But while you’re out, be sure to keep an eye out. It’s deer mating season, and horny deer are out doing stupid, hormone-addled things, like running out in front of cars to check out that cute doe on the other side of the highway.

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For my friend Mike’s birthday, we were all invited for Laser Tag. I didn’t realize that, well, Laser Tag places still exists, that they were so expensive, and they were so gosh darned fun! As sports go, it’s no racquetball or squash, no ultimate frisbee or kickball, but it sure makes for a bit of a workout, shooting with no bullets, firing away at phantom lights scampering through blacklight.

Heckuva good time, it was. Worth a shot.

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