By Wayan
Do you remember last week when we witnessed Hummers mating? Were you shocked that anyone would need not just one, but two Hummers in their life?
Well hold on to your CAFE because now we have another insult to the atmosphere: the stretch Hummer!
I don’t know about you, but I find this a monstrosity that should be taken out back and shot before it global warms us any more.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Tom Bridge
Booze and Teenage Stupidity is what’s to blame for the deaths of four girls from Northern Virginia. Couple of ’em got drunk, and drove right in front of a semi, which promptly killed pretty much everyone in the car. Turned the guy who drove the truck, a Special Forces Vet, into a mess, much as you’d expect. Why? Because right after graduation, they wanted to get trashed to celebrate.
The news has been maudlin, as you might expect, over the loss of four young lives. I’m just amazed at all the people that aren’t more disappointed to find out they threw their lives away to get hammered and drive drunk. Quite frankly, that’s Darwin in action, no matter what the news will say.
I fully expect to get a lot of negative comments, possibly from people talking about the kids themselves and how they knew them personally. I’m sure they were good people. They just threw their lives away in pursuit of some booze. Pity, isn’t it?
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Carl Weaver
Watch out where you park your car on Sunday. If you don’t want your hooptie hauled by Arlington’s finest, best heed this traffic warning:
The Arlington County Police Department will close two streets on Sunday, June 17, 2007, for the Columbia Pike Blues Festival. Listed below are the streets that will be affected.
From 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.:
- Walter Reed Drive will be closed from Columbia Pike to S. 9th Street.
- S. 9th Road will be closed from S. Garfield Street to Walter Reed Drive.
In addition, motorists should be on the lookout for temporary “No Parking” signs in the area. Illegally parked vehicles may be ticketed or towed. If your vehicle is towed from a public street, call 703-228-4252.
The festival runs from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. For more information visit www.columbiapikepartnership.com.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By brownpau
Running some errands which required me to walk from Georgetown to Dupont Circle and back again (because the whole Metro to Foggy Bottom to Metro Center to Dupont route is just too circuitous to bother, even without considering the walk between Georgetown and Foggy Bottom) I was pleasantly surprised to discover “Rose Park,” a path between P and M Streets that runs atop the west slope of the Rock Creek Parkway, bordered by grassy fields and playgrounds. Not only does the Rose Park path make for a pleasantly idyllic meander, I found it a startlingly quick shortcut to get between the Dupont Circle area and lower Georgetown on foot while avoiding downtown noise and traffic.
Coming from Dupont Circle, you can find the entry to Rose Park by walking west on 21st P Street NW about five blocks till you cross the bridge over the Parkway, just after Florida Ave. After crossing the onramp, the asphalted path is clearly visible cutting southwest across a flat green field.
Coming from Georgetown, you can turn left onto Rose Park from M Street NW after 28th, through the trees just short of the bridge to Downtown/Foggy Bottom.
The area on Google Maps. Rose Park is, of course, just a tiny, tiny segment of the whole Rock Creek Park experience. I invite readers to leave comments as to where else we car-less, walk-loving DC residents can go along the Park grounds for bucolic, easily reachable shortcuts and hikes.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Carl Weaver
I asked our waitress at the Ballston Rock Bottom Brewery if she knew anything about canonization of saints in the Catholic Church. She said she didn’t, although we agreed that probably death was involved and we were pretty sure that the person had to perform some sort of miracle.
Later on, Mary assisted my lovely wife and me with the mysterious disappearance of my wife’s Mug Club card – that precious card on which they tally up the number of beers you have had and give you such prizes as pint glasses, hats and a free trip to a liver specialist after 300 beers. I am getting there but still have a few more to go.
Then Mary did the impossible. She looked up my wife’s information in the computer, added one beer to the total and presented her with a new card. There was a blinding light and a choir of angels as the new card, in spirit the same as the old one freshly raised from its grave, slipped into my wife’s wallet. So let it be written. So let it be done.
Thanks, Mary, for a wonderful experience this evening at Rock Bottom Brewery. And although you won’t need it, I’ll put in a good word for you with the Big G, should I reach the pearly gates before you do.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Wayan
DC police are out in force today with Click It or Ticket, their program to get motorists to buckle their seat belts when driving.
I watched this MPD officer stop both the Porche and the Honda at an 18th and M street intersection in one stop light.
While the buckle up lesson learned was not cheap or quick for either driver, let this post be your fast and free DC Metblogs warning: click it or ticket.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Max
I was minding my own business, chowing down at Chipotle on Connecticut, when all of a sudden a crazy-eyed, old man burst through the door shouting, “Great Scott! Marty is going before congress in the year 2021 to ask for Parkinson’s research money! I must travel to the future to prevent Jenna Bush from being elected and vetoing the stem cell bill! Quick! Someone give me a bottle of vodka, and I’ll need your leftover meals for the flux capacitor!”
I parted with my carnitas burrito, but there was no way I was giving up my guacamole. A guy has his priorities.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Carl Weaver
Another broken meter, another broken heart. This meter has hardened its heart and refuses to take more money. We all must learn that another’s inability to receive love should not impact our ability and desire to give it, as much as it hurts to not have it returned. The love is there, regardless.
Broken – won’t take more than it arbitrarily decides on a given day. My dollars pile up as it takes a quarter here, a quarter there. The coffers of my heart overflow with love, money and sadness.
Yours always,
Money Man
To the person who left this note and parked in the spot despite the many other available spots with working meters: Did your note, detailing the sorrow you felt actually save you from getting a ticket? Please let us know because if it means saving a buck or two I can write letters like that all day long.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Don
No, not in the sense of, say, Metro being on time and stuff. No, I speak of the MetroPerforms! events happening at differing metro stations around town. All the currently scheduled performances are in the District and run through September.
Today kicks off the series at 4:30pm at Dupont Station entrance at Q street with some hand dancing which will continue through to 6:30pm. If you’ve never heard of it, well, that’s two of us. Here’s some video of what is apparently a DC-area unique form of swing dancing.
Auditions are about to begin if you or someone you know would like to be a performer in PG or Montgomery county.
The auditions in Prince George’s County will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 16, at the Mt. Rainier Artists Loft community room, 3311 Rhode Island Ave., Mt. Rainier, MD. Interested individuals should send an email to vrussell@artspg.org to schedule an audition time.
Montgomery County will hold auditions from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, June 29, at Silver Plaza on Ellsworth Drive in downtown Silver Spring. The auditions will be open to the public and performers will have three minutes on stage to impress a panel of judges.
More information at the MetroPerforms! press release. Performances at stations in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties will likely begin in July.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Carl Weaver
I have been doing some work for a company in Bethesda a few days a week and have really been charmed by the downtown area around Wisconsin Ave. and Old Georgetown Road.
Tastee Diner quickly became my number one breakfast joint for the days I get there early enough to partake. This is a diner like we had in New England, complete with the charm of wood paneling and cooks who banter with the customers. Nothing fancy like the fake Arlington “diners,” whose menus are pricy and the smokers permeate the air with stench. Nope, Tastee Diner has an affordable set of offerings on the menu. It’s not always fast in delivery but it’s consistently good and has grits and jukeboxes.
Grits are almost a necessity if I am going to consistently have breakfast somewhere. Maybe it’s a holdover from my years spent in the real south but I just love grits with my eggs in the morning.
Check it out: old-school jukeboxes like we had at every truck stop when I was a kid. I wasn’t much in the mood for Elvis or The Four Tops the day I took that picture but I hope to return and jam during breakfast playing some good, old-fashioned music. Let’s face it – all music goes with grits, from opera to country to funk.
Bethesda fans out there – what are your favorite things about the town?
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Wayan
Check out the bling bling iPod covers in my hood! Nutting like a Jackson to say cash-money to your Petworth honey.
I don’t know if Junior here is old enough to have a honey, but he was sure proud of his money this morning. Flashing his iPod cover at me as I walked by, he had a convertible currency spring in his step.
He’s only lucky that I had a fresh Franklin in my pocket, thanks to my Kenyan per diem payout. Otherwise, I would transfer his iPod cover into my 1900 M Street NW lunch money!
Still, I give him props, both for the idea and for flashing it to random strangers on his way across town.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Don
On my drive into work this morning I was listening to NPR when they played a recording from the Story Corps project. This one was by Jim McFarland and you can read it here. You can hear him read it himself by clicking the listen button on the same page.
What struck me about it was something that for him, I suspect, was a minor detail. “”When we got to D.C.,” McFarland recalled, “we would get out of an integrated car and we’d go into an all-colored car.” Then a resident of New York City, now a resident of Atlanta, I wonder if he thought much about this transition point being in D.C.
Hearing his story, however, I think about it. The location where this family had to make the switch from an integrated car into one where they were segregated based on the color of their skin was here in our nation’s capital.
I don’t know for sure about the arrangement of the city in the middle 50s, less than two decades before I was born. I presume the location where he came into and changed trains was Union Station. While getting out of one car and into the segregated one he would have been less than a mile (as the crow flies) from the National Archive, where these words are on display. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
It’s both inspiring and sobering to realize that it wasn’t so long ago.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Carl Weaver
We all know that there’s a relationship between the Pentagon area and water torture, water boarding and all that other stuff that was once in the news but has since been eclipsed by talk of American Idol. Here’s a new twist on that old, tired theme.
These poor, innocent water bottles were squeezed into displays in a Pentagon City vending machine. Yes, folks. Right here in America, before our eyes and nobody does anything. And we call this the land of the free.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Wayan
This is the future of Dr Dremo’s in Arlington: tall dark condos.
Out with the cool and funky bar that might look like either a junkyard or abandoned building and in with cold and impersonal high rise of property value pimps.
Yes I will miss the home of the Psycotronic Film Society and a few too many good times in Northern Virgina when it is gone.
No one will celebrate yet another condo construction project. Especially at the expense of a damn good tap house.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Wayan
Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of an invitation to the Egyptian Embassy.
There it was all dark suits and gold accents as we attempted small talk under high ceilings, debating politics, making business.
Interestingly, while Egypt is very Muslim, Egyptians go to great lengths to show they are progressive, or at least tolerant. The wine was good (free) and there was not a burka in sight.
Nor was a loo. After an extended hunt, including a tour of the kitchen, a toilet was found, under the stairs, behind two doors.
Business in Egypt is only marginally less confusing.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By brownpau
Someone left a smelly box on a counter at the Postal Museum Post Office, prompting an evacuation while bomb and hazmat teams checked out the package. Turned out it was two cans of old spinach and a used diaper. So, this of course raises two questions: which of you jokers thought it would be a good idea to send that, and did the smell reach up to Capitol City Brewing Company?
Or was this someone trying out his own version of Postal Experiments? Didn’t work, dude.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Carl Weaver
The DC Media Makers are meeting this evening at the Cleveland Park Library to discuss online media, social media making, collaborative projects and citizen journalism. Most of the folks who attend the meetings are there to work with online video but other types of podcasters, bloggers, web folks of all stripes and even uninitiated netizens are welcome to come, share, meet and learn.
DC Media Makers is devoted to promoting web 2.0 media literacy and production skills. Everyone is welcome, from pros to novices. If you want to learn about video on the web, or want to share your existing knowledge, this is the group for you.
When: 6:30-8:30, Thursday, June 14th
Where: 2nd level stacks, Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Metro: Cleveland Park stop, Red Line, (library located just south of the metro stop)
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Don
My darling girlfriend commented to me yesterday that she couldn’t believe none of us were writing about the 54 million dollar pants lawsuit. I told her – as I am telling you – that I can’t speak for the other authors, but the reason I haven’t mentioned it is because I couldn’t possibly care less about the whole thing.
It’s painfully obvious that it’s being driven by someone who is somewhere between socially twisted and overtly disturbed and to me that just makes it more sad than anything else. If you’re interested in the whole affair there’s been no shortage of coverage over at DCist and the WaPo’s Marc Fisher has written about it numerous times. Really, you’d be better served looking at his entire feed history – there’s more links than I care to dig up.
Most depressing, and the reason that I have avoiding talking about it, is that I have no doubt that this one little aberration is going to be fodder for the grinding of thousands of axes. Tort reform proponents and opponents will be all over it and use whatever result comes out of it as evidence that they Are Right. Worse yet, they’ll generate a metric frak-ton of words explaining in painstaking detail why they are right and it offends my sensibilities when someone passes up the 1,000,000 horses in order to use the one zebra to make their point about hoofprints.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Wayan
How hot is it in Washington DC today? Hot enough for a shave and a haircut?
While the lad here is too young to get a shave, he is losing his fade for a summer buzz cut. I was in Fusion Day Spa too, for my own summer-close trim.
Its just too hot to have long hair in a DC summer!
Which brings me to today’s question: do you get shorn in the summer? And if not, why not? Outside those that need long hair for their glam-fashion jobs, I don’t understand why people keep long hair in the summer.
Its too humid to do anything with it and if you wash long hair, it will take hours to dry. Worse, you sweat way more with long hair than short, and the stink stays in long hair too.
Summers are made for short hair.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
By Tom Bridge
Councilman Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) was acquitted on all charges late yesterday, his lawyer’s defense of his May 2006 arrest for drunken driving complete. Barry was also acquitted of misuse of temporary tags and driving an unregistered vehicle.
Afterwards, Barry was heard to have said “This was an effort by the government to embarrass me and break my spirit.” No, it had nothing to do with the smell of alcohol, or the failure to abide by the officers’ request. Nope, nothing to do with that.
So, the other big question was, who was in the car with him? He says he won’t reveal who it was, but if you examine the criteria (black, female legislator from Oklahoma), there are just a few options. Anastasia Pittman, Judy Eason Mcintyre, or Constance Johnson… wonder why none would come to his aid?
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
