Wayan’s DC Photos

In another victory for citizen journalism (I hope), the constant coverage of the Petworth Eyesore by the Prince of Petworth and me may have finally paid off with a front page article in the Washington Post: New Rowhouse Rooflines Raising Eyebrows in D.C.

Paul Schwartzman took up the challenge of Petworth’s stunningly bad roofline additions, “pop-ups”, that are blighting the neighborhood with visual pollution with deft and due diligence, even getting the Pertwoth Eyesore owner to comment:

Anthony Cornish, the developer who is converting the single-family home to a condominium, said he used siding for the third floor because “brick is more expensive.”

The property needed a wholesale alteration, he said, because he is constructing two duplexes and wants it to look like an apartment building.

As for aesthetics, Cornish said the building, when it is complete, will be far superior to the dilapidated, vacant property he bought last year for $425,000. “To each his own,” he said of those who object to such additions. “If they don’t like it, they should have gone and bought it themselves.”

If the neighbourhood knew he was going to deface our community with his “pop-up” which looks like its going to pop-off, I am sure we would have. For everyone who lives here says just this:

“It makes me so sick I want to scream,” said Avis Anderson, a neighborhood resident and a real estate broker

If you want to scream too, the Petworth Eyesore is at 4143 New Hampshire Avenue, at Upshur. Don’t worry, you will not miss it.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

“We used to practice in the subways, in lobbies and in halls,
even in the doorway, singing doo-wops to the walls…”

— The Persuasions, “Looking for an Echo”

I was running late, but I stopped anyway.

It’d taken longer to get the cats to the vet up in Seven Locks, then back home, and the speeding ticket I got didn’t help, either. I missed the train at Courthouse, so it was almost three by the time I got to Metro Center, and I rushed off the train, only to stop. To hell with the meeting.

Three older African-American gentlemen were singing doo-wop on the middle of the lower platform. I’d seen them before on the corner above the 13th & G exit at Metro Center, but this time they were inside the station. The way they’d positioned themselves, they were able to take advantage of Metro’s ridiculously awful acoustics, pushing their crystal clear motown sound into a small space right under the red line platform, a perfect theatrical space for their vocalizations.

There was an appreciative audience of about 20 on the platform, waiting for the orange line train back to Vienna, standing and nodding their heads. I crossed by the men, and on hearing their tight harmonies, I stopped, and I listened. I remembered the piece from the Washington Post about Joshua Bell and his violin, and I relished their voices, even though I was getting later by the second, it didn’t matter.

Thanks guys for reminding me why I love DC, again.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

One of my favorite public Washington webcams is the NPS DC Air Quality Webcam installed in the Netherlands Carillon, facing towards the National Mall. It’s on a 15 minute refresh schedule, which gives you ninety-six unique images for every 24 hour period, so I wrote up a little script to fetch the webcam image every fifteen minutes from Monday to Friday, then combined the fetched images at the end of the week to make this little time lapse:

Turned out okay, though the final FLV from Google Video took a fairly large bit rate hit — I didn’t have jaggies like that in the original MP4 export. I’m looking forward to do more time lapses as the seasons change; anyone have suggestions for other such DC webcams I can fetch image sequences from on an automated schedule?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

You know you’re somewhere between performing on the street with an open guitar case and signing a Quincy Jones recording deal when you’re playing at the miniature stage at the Potbelly Sandwich Works on Connecticut Avenue in Dupont Circle. Blink and you’ll miss it, the stage is so small, and if you’re over six feet tall you’ll have to crouch up there like an elderly woman with osteoporosis. Your music will be piped all throughout the restaurant, and if you’re lucky someone might actually look up towards the rafters and realize where the music is coming from. I have to say, it sure was nice listening to some acoustic Sade today while I ate my Italian on wheat.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It was a sad day for me when the Washington Post reported that the AMC Loews Dupont 5 Theater would be closing its doors for good on January 13, 2008. You see that’s my neighborhood theater and it takes me less than 10 minutes to walk there, so despite the uncomfortable seats, small screening rooms, and unfriendly staff, I’m truly going to miss it.

The trend in theaters has been moving from smaller venues to giant megaplexes – places where big groups of noisy people can go and see the latest blockbuster movies and sit in luxurious stadium style seating. With the Dupont Theater leaving, the only other choice (that I know of) for seeing whacky foreign films will be at the E Street Cinema, which is a great theater but not the easiest to get to.

When I asked my friends if they’d heard about the theater closing their reaction was either, “What?! No way! That sucks and is so not fair,” to “Eh, who cares. That place was a dump.”

What’s your reaction?

Photo by cyaneyed

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

DPW Eviction Clean-up

Remember last week’s shocking Columbia Heights Tenant Eviction?

No matter if you were shocked or not about people being evicted in Washington DC, (I wasn’t), I think we can all be shocked at the amount of possessions casually tossed on the sidewalk and into the street.

My photo doesn’t really do it justice, but Prince of Petworth has a photo that does.

And his readers report that DPW:

“sent 4 street sweepers, two dump trucks, a bull dozer, a dumpster loader and a crew of about 25. From 10 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., the city was cleaning up the street.”

They also say it was the home of a lady who passed away a few years ago and the grandson squatted in the house till it was taken from the family.

So sad.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Centerfield

Originally uploaded by philliefan_99.

Yesterday’s trip to RFK was, hopefully, the last one I’ll ever make for a baseball game. The field has been deteriorating through August and September, and the threadbare grass of the outfield forced the groundskeepers to move the Nats’ curly W from dead center, where the grass is all dead, to left-center where a vestige of green remains. The symbolism of the dilapidated grass as metaphor for crumbling stadium shouldn’t be lost on anyone. RFK was a terrible place to watch a game, and judging from the players, a terrible place to play the game, too. So, it was with a great deal of joy that we wished RFK goodbye.

The house, while not as packed as on Opening Day 2005, a respectable 40,000 or so were there to wish the team into the off-season, though there are still a few more games on the road remaining. The biggest cheers of the day came with the introduction of Frank Howard of the Senators, and the biggest boos when Teddy Roosevelt was gypped in the President’s Race (despite the valorous attempts to the contrary by the Nats Bullpen), and the loudest applause came when three long banners were unveiled in left center by fans, proclaiming “Short Still Stinks,” a reference to Senators owner Bob Short who moved the team to Texas in 1971.

The Nats won, though, 5-3 in hold your breath fashion. Cordero looked rough in the 9th, not quite as lights out as he was in seasons past. I was really hoping to see more of Maxwell, as his late-season callup has been full of surprises, but I suspect we’ll see him more next season. Here’s to an off-season full of good trades and pickups.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

Good morning random Foggy Bottom resident. This is how you’ll find you car this morning – covered in Epoch Times newspapers.

I don’t think that the papers are a specific sign to you, its just the GW student body’s way of saying that school is back in session.

If you live in Foggy Bottom, you’re used to sights like this on a Saturday already. The visualization of a long, Friday night drunk-a-thon in odd street litter the following day.

Enjoy, and please, do recycle.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I may have questioned before as to where my tax dollars were exactly going. Well this summer I found out when they started repaving S street. What used to be like driving on the surface of the moon is now one sleek, smooth, stretch of pavement. Thanks, DC! Now when winter comes, please take care of your shiny new street by plowing the snow instead of letting it turn into a giant sheet of ice. Then I’ll really be impressed!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

I can understand the State Department wanting to keep a low profile, what with its shoddy Bush-led foreign policy. And I can even appreciate it not wanted to broadcast its location too far and wide.

But I have to say this crosses the line: erasing your name from the sign out front.

While they might fool a few folks by scrubbing off the white paint on the 23rd Street sign’s letters, there’s no mistaking the third largest federal building in DC. Not even re-naming it the Harry S. Truman Building will hide the block of ugly.

Nor will it stop visitors from being confused on which entrance they need or deter taxi drivers from going for one more zone, 23rd being one block past Zone 1.

Its only gonna make me want to call in my favorite sign-maker.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Petworth Eyesore Photoset

Just when I didn’t think it could get any worse, the Petworth Eyesore took it to the next level.

Just take a close look at the front door. What was once a beautiful, arched two-door entrance is now a poor in-filled single door.

I really don’t know how much worse the builders can make this house. Its already a remodel job from hell, what with the ill-fitting addition and broken windows.

It’s so bad that we all give directions by it, “Take a right at the eyesore. Yeah, trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.” Even the neighbors are moving out!

And it’s at the end of my block.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Now this is some cold-ass eviction. This is the street outside 2918 Sherman Avenue NW last night in Columbia Heights.

That mess on the street isn’t garbage, it’s the combined possessions of the tenants, or now ex-tenants, of what was their communal rooming house. Neighbours say that a contractor came by yesterday and had his workers toss the residents’ belongings out the building’s windows, with no regard for the lives destroyed or the street trashed.

And so we now see the result. Chaos and sadness for the former occupants, a hazard for city dwellers, and a lawsuit waiting to happen because the building owner couldn’t follow DC eviction rules or even decent street etiquette.

Good luck to the tenants, that shit ain’t right.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I see many shots of DC that are just that – shots of DC. The monuments, museums, and protests are all great things, and after all it’s easy to shoot what’s in your neighborhood. However I’m really impressed when I see a photo taken in our city that is timeless and that could have been taken anywhere, like this shot from chip py the photo guy. The photo’s title, “Man on Escalator”, tells you everything you need to know. It doesn’t matter what year, which city, which escalator, or even which man, it’s just a superbly exposed black and white photo of a guy living his life and going about his business.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

Can I get a date check? Is it not September 19th? Four days and counting after the ANSWER anti-war protest march.

Isn’t it about time that these obnoxious yellow fliers are removed by the earnst protesters who blanketed our city with them?

I’ll even pay the postage to send every single old poster back to the ANSWER HQ, by COD of course.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

The ingrate on the right is Senator Max Baucus, the lone Democrat to vote no on the bill. Personally that doesn’t mean much to me, but what does stick in my craw is that when he’s here in DC – according to Mark Plotkin – he resides in Georgetown. It burns my ass that he spends his nights in our city and then goes home or gets himself an absentee ballot for Montana and casts his votes for congressional representation.

I’m happy to say that Jim Webb did the right thing and voted yes, and saddened to say that John Warner did not. Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland voted yes, as did both Senators in Delaware and Pennsylvania – good neighbors.

Kudos to Robert Bennett, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter and George Voinovich who voted across the party line to support the right of DC residents to have a say in their own governance.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, doing his best Scrooge impression, ended this term’s hope for a legislator for the District of Columbia, as today’s procedural vote for cloture failed 57-42. 60 votes in the affirmative were required to end debate on the floor and get the bill passed through the Senate and sent to committee for resolution before being sent to President Bush, who had promised a veto for the Bill. Looks like DC will have to wait for a change of administration in order to get their right to vote.

It’s a tough thing to see this come so close, only to be ripped out by a mere procedural vote’s failure. This is one of those times where I sit back and can’t decide whether to laugh or to start drinking. DC’s got more people than Wyoming, yet Wyoming gets a vote in the House and two in the Senate, while we get just a delegate with no right to vote. It’s so frustrating to see such a well-spoken and intelligent woman not get the vote in the House that she rightfully deserves, and to see DC deprived of proper representation, all because it might be a firm Democratic stronghold seat.

Look. We’re Americans here in DC. We are, I promise. If you get born at GW Hospital, you’re an American the same as if you’re born in Fairfield, California or Ely, Minnesota. We pay our taxes, but we don’t get a legislator to lobby for our funding. We don’t get a vote on major issues, we don’t get a spot in committee, we’re pretty much boned.

And today, when it looked like we had it set, we were shut down. Damn Congress, you always leave me walking away muttering under my breath, wondering what possible subset of jackasses and morons brought you here to our town.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

When I was shopping for condos in late 2003, I had two options. Either buy a brand new place that required no work but more money up front, or buy a cheaper place that needed some remodeling done. Unfortunately I chose the latter option, but in hindsight I should have gone with the first option. Remodeling is NOT fun. But by hiring the queenslander renovations bulimba services you will avoid the headache and ensure a quality work will be done This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs Continue reading →

That’s what I need, passport photos. As I am standing here in the passport line crowd control of M Street NW, waiting to renew my US passport.

But where can I get passport photographs in Washington DC? Who knows the passport agency rules on how to shoot and crop photographs? Who uses the right paper stock for the prints?

I wish there was a store around here that took quality passport photos. If only there was a sign…

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs