The 44th Annual Roll Call Congressional Baseball Game is tonight at RFK Stadium, pitting legislators from the Republican and Democratic parties against one another in a true battle for dominance in the House. Last year’s MVP was Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) and he is coming back for another shot after going 3 for 3 with 2 RBI in last year’s game. Tickets cost $8 and all proceeds are going to charity. So, Metro on over and check out your Congressmen and Senators fight for dominance on the diamond!

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Smoke free DC because I value my health. I swim, bike, and run daily not always because I like it, no I do it for my health (and the looks the girlies give me), my health that you injure when you light up next to me. Lets not be overpaid tobacco lawyers here, smoking = cancer. That and smoke knows no boundaries, no zones, no separate seating. Ever see a pee/no pee swimming pool?

Smoke free DC because the stink of cigarettes is repulsive. It gets in your hair, on your clothes, under your skin, and down your lungs. A night out and you have to wash everything

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Proving that DC’s City Council can be as infantile as any high school student government, Carol Schwartz introduced an alcohol ban at last night’s City Council, extending the smoking ban to it’s least likely next step.

The problem here is thus: alcohol, when administered properly and responsibly, affects only the person it’s served to. Smoking, when administered properly and responsibly, affects everyone within a 10 foot radius of the smoker. Honestly, it’s the only tobacco product that I have a problem with in a social setting. Dip, packets, snuff, that’s all fine by me, because it affects only the person partaking. You don’t leave a room filled with dippers smelling like smoke, or with lungs full of carcinogens.

Just because I want to go have a beer, it doesn’t mean I want to smell like your fucking ashtray, mmmkay? Carol, lighten up, maybe even quit smoking (or drinking, or driving, or sex, per your bill) and you can understand all that.

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Fresh off the intense discussion earlier in the week regarding the “No Car” lifestyle, it seems that Fairfax County planners want you not to have a car in the burbs either:

In a place where cars and growth have always gone together, the county wants to offer incentives to the residents and workers in the planned MetroWest development at the Vienna station to not even own a car — let alone drive one.

They’re working with Pulte Homes (the builder) to reduce the number of car trips from the residents of a new development that we’ve discussed before, Metro West. Included are financial incentives, and penalties, related to the number of car trips. But, this isn’t enough for local anti-growth folks, who consider the community of nearly 6,000 people to be too much for Vienna, a sleepy bedroom community at the end of the Metro line. They want to sink the community before it gets any further along in the development process.

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You know, I’m sure that car theft is a serious business. I sure know I wouldn’t want anyone stealing my wheels. It’s a real pain to deal with insurance companies, the police, all of that jazz. Except of course, when you’re the Police Chief. That’s right, Chief Ramsey’s own black Crown Vic was stolen from outside his house in Southwest this weekend.

He becomes one of roughly 20,000 car theft victims expected in the district in 2005. So, if you see someone tooling around downtown or the burbs in a black Crown Vic, license plate AL-6072, let the Chief know, will ya?

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From too many late nights at work, if you hear the street cleaner going down I (Eye) Street at 15th Street, it’s Monday night around 11:30pm and you need to leave the office already.

From too many drink-a-thons happy hours, if you are on the patio of Fox and Hounds or Trio Restaurant and you see the trash truck come by to empty the street trash bins at the corner of 17th and Q Streets NW, its around 10:30pm and you’re drunk, guaranteed.

From too many brain cells killed by both, if you’re standing on the east side of 16th Street, waiting to cross what should be Lamont Street but is the entrance to the Parks & Rec Department headquarters, and you look at the walk sign

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You: Street preacher, ragged white t-shirt, jeans, shrill voice, obnoxious megaphone. Screaming damnation and brimstone at the metro-bound commuters. Your rhetoric was smooth and polished like a stone worn under water; your steely eyes boring a hole in me from a distance.

Me: Metro-bound pedestrian without a care in the world, nice pants, messenger bag, iPod. My ears could just barely make you out underneath the cone of silence that is my Bose Headphones. Instead of your ranting, I got Mozart’s Requiem, movement six, Confutatis. Its brilliant fear-inspiring sonority far outweighs your meek shouting.

You can come hear it Friday night at 8 at The Falls Church (Episcopal) on Broad Street. Tickets are available at the door: $25 for general admission, $20 for students with ID.

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If you live in a city long enough you can literally travel through your past in a weekend.

I began at the 9:30 Club, and ended at the old one.

Friday we started off watching a friend perform on a stage where I’ve seen so many kicked-up and diverse shows through the years. Every time I go to the 9:30 Club it’s like time morphs and all the shows merge into one great moment – Einsturzende Neubauten, Negativland, Catherine Wheel, Dresden Dolls, etc… From there we headed up to Adams Morgan, one of the first neighborhoods I lived in DC after college, to a bar literally a molotov cocktail throw from my old apartment. Two friends dj a chill Britpop night there at a bar that looks like somebody’s fun basement. It has one of the best bartenders in DC, a man I hold personally responsible for our drunken crawl down the street to El Tamarindo at 3:30am. How many nights have ended there?

Saturday night we continued our trip back in time by impulsively dying my husband’s hair with Manic Panic (“Wildfire! Glows in Black Light!!”) and heading to Chiaroscuro. It’s located in a space close to the dearly departed Tracks, where we met as crazy clubkids. It’s nice to see the Industrial/Goth scene is still going on (like some deranged Energizer Bunny), though that area of Southeast is fast becoming a government office park. Somehow the night fast-forwards until we’re finishing off a bottle of icewine (note to self: icewine is just not appropriate to drink at 5am) while chowing down on Yum’s dumplings. How many nights have ended with those ridiculously evil dumplings??

Sunday we decide to dry out and go for a bit of culture by seeing the closing film of AFI’s Silverdocs. As luck would have it, it’s a documentary on the old 9:30 club – 930 F Street. The montages of old posters, footage from raw concerts, and interviews with Fugazi legend Ian MacKaye and various instantly recognizable 9:30 employees/regulars all add to the increasingly nostalgic feel of the weekend. We end the night excitedly sharing stories of concerts past, the old club’s quirky appeal (that smell! those rats!), and its place in a certain time in our lives – newly arrived college kids in DC searching for an alternative scene and relieved when we found not one, but several.

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Meet Jack

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

This is Jack. Tom and I adopted him on Saturday from Last Chance Animal Rescue, via the Petsmart Luv-A-Pet Adoption Center at Petsmart’s Alexandria store.

It’s springtime, which means shelters are being inundated with huge numbers of kittens and puppies, sometimes faster than they can find new homes for them.

If you have a pet, be sure it’s spayed or neutered. And if you don’t have one, or if you’ve got room for one more, consider adopting one from any of the DC area’s myriad animal shelters and rescues. In addition to Last Chance, you can find an extensive list of shelters online. Or you can do what we did and head to your closest Petco or Petsmart on a Saturday afternoon- both chains actively support the work of local rescues.

When we adopted Jack through Petsmart, they gave us tons of coupons for pet supplies, a free visit to the Banfield vet office, and a free 30 days of pet health insurance.

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Really, how can you? I drove to Charlottesville this weekend for a triathlon, and it took me two hours just to get to Fredericksburg on I-95. It would’ve taken me two more hours had I not jumped into the HOV lane. Coming back, I went to Korea Town in Annandale for tasty treats but almost rammed a freak that took 20 minutes to park.

Thank goodness that I don’t have a car (rented this one) and don’t usually drive anywhere. If I had to deal with all those red taillights on a daily basis or the whole parking thing – damn, just shoot me! How can you stay trapped at the speed of the guy in front of you? How can you have the patience for red lights or 35 mph zones?

Give me bike or foot, bus or metro even, just not gridlock. No red lights on a bike, no waiting when walking, no worries at all on the bus – this is freedom, not a car. I can’t wait to return this albatross and give that entire suburbia back to the fools across the river.

Long live car-free DC!

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And then there were two.

Vincent Orange, councilman for Ward 5, has announced his candidacy for mayor, joining councilman Adrian Fenty (Ward 4)as candidates for next fall’s primary. Right, we’re 15 months out, still. 15 months. And we’ve got two candidates for mayor. Of course, Orange seems to be doing it against the wishes of the people, which I find fairly amusing. Of course, declaring candidacies 15 months out for an office that is not the President of the United States seems pretty silly to me, as well.

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I went out to shake my booty at Right Round last night. It’s a little bit outside the sort of socializing I ordinarily do, but I’m all about broadening my horizons, and besides, lil’ e assured me before my first outing that I wouldn’t be out of place, there’s all kinds of people there, and I should come get down.

So I went by myself last night, and was reminded of why I usually don’t. The music was great, lil’ e knows how to read a room, and the promised diverse mix of people was definitely in evidence. But there was this guy….

I was standing against one of the pillars in the Black Cat’s backstage room, looking through the door to see if a friend of mine was coming, and there’s this guy standing right near me. And when I say “near,” I mean, 4 inches from my face, which I have to get over at Right Round because it easily draws 250 people into what is not all that large a room.

But he’s staring at me. He’s about 40ish, heavy set, balding and graying, wearing khakis and a bluish button-down shirt.

I know he’s staring at me, because I’m standing against a wall and he can’t be looking past me at anyone else. So he’s clearly staring, and I’m very studiously avoiding eye contact with him.

Finally, he speaks. “Wanna dance?”

I don’t, really, at least not with him. But I had just been thinking about how dorky I feel dancing by myself, and maybe this guy just feels as out of place as I do and is trying to make the best of it.

So I shrug and say, “Sure.”

I was a little put off by how excited he looked as he went to put his drink down. I was wondering what I had just gotten myself into with Starey McEyeball when he returned, grabbed my hand, and led me out onto the dance floor.

We started to dance. Or at least, I started to dance. He stood about 5 inches from me put his feet about four feet apart, and started swinging his pelvis at me.

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Little points of yellow light are popping up in my yard tonight, dancing in the twilight. The little bugs are dancing their mating ritual, not entirely like the folks in the clubs and bars of DC. The signs of summer are multiplying, the sidewalk cafes, the teeming masses of tour buses and tourists, the increasing humidity and now the fireflies.

I grew up in the West, where fireflies are a storybook tale, not the joyous indicator of the impending summmer. This is one thing I would miss back home.

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La Dolce Vita. The sweet life. It’s the summertime, when culinary thoughts lean toward the decadent and rich choices we are offered when the dessert menus are passed around at the restaurant. Give these choices a look, they’re our favorites.

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After spending almost the entire week in bed due to bronchitis, at about 5pm yesterday I was stir-crazy. I called my husband and convinced him to meet me for dinner at a halfway point between our house and his office. We decided on Hank’s Oyster Bar at Q & 17th in the old Trio’s Pizza spot, open for a few weeks and on our list to try.

Being a transplanted New Englander I’m a serious oyster freak, and the idea of an oyster bar within six blocks of my house is enough to get me crawling out of the sickbed, even in a No R month. There’s a very “neighborhood joint” feel about Hank’s and it reminded me of some favorite places in New Orleans, with a convivial and unpretentious atmosphere. It’s very light and airy, with a tin ceiling, quiet decor, and pleasant waitstaff. We had a great dozen oysters – especially creamy ones from Washington State. Chris had a yummy-looking oyster po’boy with fries and I had the special, soft shell crabs on a bed of watercress. They were perfectly pan-fried with a little bit of lemon, very delicately done.

After our meal we ordered a second round of drinks and were left alone to enjoy them – no obnoxious check-ups or premature presentation of the bill which often mars our dining out in DC. This made a great first impression – it really gets to both of us when a wonderful dinner ends abruptly, the assumption being that you must really want to get out as soon as possible and get on with your oh-so-busy-and-important life. Isn’t savoring the meal and the moment part of the reason you go out to eat?

Possibly the best part – when the bill does arrive it comes with chunks of chocolate!

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Alexandria, fresh off a real estate tax rate decrease, will be adding a few more taxes to spread the net a little wider. Since folks are moving away from landlines ($7.50, to the city’s coffers, each and every month), and to cellphones, the city has enacted a $3/mo charge on all cellphone bills over $30/mo (when was the last time you saw one of those?) and 10% on bills less than $30/mo. Mayor Euille said he thought of it while he was sitting in his car:

“I was just sitting in my car at the intersection. I looked around at 15 or 20 other cars, and everybody had a cell phone,”

Great. Glad he was just sitting there, thinking of all the new ways he can tax his population into submission. Also added to the tax bill will be $0.20 more per pack of cigarettes and a new entertainment tax for movie tickets and other events. Looks like I won’t be going back to the Hoffman Center, if it’s only slightly cheaper, than, say, the Fairfax Corner 14’s Directors’ Hall theatre tickets.

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It’s about this time each year that I start thinking, “You know, I’ve been in DC for X years, and that’s a pretty long time. Maybe it’s time I thought about somewhere else. What’s it like to be in Seattle? What’s it like to be in LA?” I’m eventually snatched from my reverie, no closer to leaving than I was the day I got here. But not after figuring out the best route to the city in question, plotting the maps, the stops, the gas mileage, the costs, the good cheap hotels, the highways and by-ways. It’s not that I entirely dislike DC, it’s that I am a wandering soul, never content to be where I am.

Fortunately for me, daydreaming is pretty inexpensive. For those that are unaware, we’ve got a network of Metroblogs, spanning the globe, from Karachi to Melbourne, from Tokyo to London, from DC to SF and LA. And we also have the Best of Metroblogs to keep travelling dreamers like myself full of ideas. Take a look today, read about the hidden cement slides in San Francisco, the bizarre parking zones in Hawaii, the funny politicians in Manila, or a walk through Karachi.

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Hello all, I am a new handy-dandy writer on MetroBlogging DC and this, my first post, is telling on what I’m gonna write about. Not one to fool with Hill types or even cross the Potomac to NoVa, I’m down with what matters

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There’s a bit in today’s Post about Silver Spring including a bizarro headline that reads: “Worries for Silver Spring’s Soul”

Right. The Soul. Of a Burbclave.

People are complaining that Silver Spring is becoming hip, what with the new AFI Silver theatre, and the restaurants and a burgeoning commercial community, that the city itself has “too many rich people and too many chain stores”.

Right.

Crocodile tears, I’m sure, as tax revenues rise and reinvestment in the larger community becomes possible, thanks to the public-private partnership that’s evolved in Montgomery County. Sure, we want your money, but we don’t want you to stick around. Great. It’s like I never left Davis!

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Now, I’ll be the first to say this: I am deeply anti-smoking, and for a ban on smoking in bars. However, I’ll also say that I would not vote for a ban, but would support a ban placed by the Council. I like my smoker friends, but I hate smelling like I wash in their ashtray.

Tonight, the ban goes up for debate at the City Council meeting, and the Mayor is all for a smoking ban. Carol Schwartz is leading the charge against the bill, along with the help of Ban The Ban (in the interest of public disclosure, I went to college with Brooke). Of course, not to be outdone, there are two groups supporting the Ban: Breath Easy DC and Smokefree DC.

DCist has a great debate going in the comments of their entry on the subject, with many social smokers weighing in on the side of the ban, and several committed nicotine addicts weighing in on the side of “personal liberty.”

I don’t consider polluting my lungs just to hang out with my friends to be a good thing, and I’d definitely welcome not smelling like ass after a night out at the pubs. Consider me pro ban.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs