Yearly Archives: 2010

Food and Drink, The Features
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First Look: Rustico Ballston

Photo courtesy of
‘Rustico: Coming Soon’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

The paper is still up at Rustico in Ballston when I arrive just a few minutes early for the evening’s events.  The block of Wilson Boulevard is mostly in transition and Rustico sits in the center of the restaurant cocoons, looking like it will be first to arrive.  Across the plaza is the next NRG project, the second location of Buzz Bakery, and next door to Rustico is an early-in-build-out Sweetgreen slated for the end of the year.  Our guide for the evening opens up the side door, and a few workers follow her out, showing that this is still a restaurant in the final phases of being constructed.

The entryway floor is covered in paper to protect the surface from the boots and construction dust, and some of the interior work is in progress, including a beautiful beer bottle and mirror mosaic.  A fireplace sits dormant on a night that would otherwise call for it.  Shepherded past the construction and into the bar, beer sommelier par none Greg Engert is waiting for us, and hands me a small glass of a California Imperial IPA that has notes of just about every possible hop and floral.  While Greg will continue his focus on Church Key, it’s impossible to separate the man from his first home, at Alexandria’s Rustico, and he’s been integrally involved in training the Arlington staff.  Neighborhood Restaurant Group believes strongly that passionate people make the best employees, and have continued that trend forward in the new Rustico.  Andy Carlson will be helming the bar for Rustico Ballston, which will feature 400 bottled beers, 40 taps and 3 cask-conditioned ales, making it a formidable presence in DC’s already expansive beer scene.  Last night’s dinner was certainly a festival of great beer paired with great food that left me thinking that we’re in for a real treat.

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The Daily Feed
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West End Cinema Returns Next Weekend

Photo courtesy of
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats’
courtesy of ‘atomicjeep’

As Samantha mentioned in July, there will once again be a movie theatre in the West End starting next weekend.  West End Cinema will be throwing it doors open next Friday, with four films on the docket: Howl, Budrus, Gerrymandering, and Let Me In.  The new theatre will be running primary first-run independent films, serving tasty cocktails, and running a sweet concession stand.  Look for more as we get closer to next Friday’s launch!

The Daily Feed
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National Christmas Tree Lighting Dates Announced

Photo courtesy of
‘Christmas in Washington – 090’
courtesy of ‘giantminispacegoat’

In a sure sign that the holidays are almost here, the National Park Service announced the dates for the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. The tree will be lit on Dec. 9 at 5 p.m., but you’ll need some advance planning (and a lot of luck) to score tickets. The online lottery to attend the ceremony will be held from 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 5 through 11:59 p.m. on Nov. 7, and includes 3,000 ticketed seats and 10,000 standing room tickets. You can enter the lottery here.

If you lack access to a computer (highly unlikely since you’re reading this blog), you can call 877-444-6777 to enter the lottery by phone.

Essential DC, Life in the Capital, Special Events, The Daily Feed, The District
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Mites On Ice Create New Goal Celebration. Ovechkin to Follow?

This past Tuesday night at the Verizon Center, the Reston Raiders (from none other than Reston, VA) took park in the “Mites on Ice” inter-squad scrimmage during a Caps game intermission. While “Mites on Ice” is regular entertainment at Caps and other NHL games, the Raiders’ goal celebration was completely new.

Apparently, in trying to psyche the kiddies up for the game, Caps staffers suggested the players do never-before-seen celebrations, like a snow angel. Then someone mentioned a game puck and the kids magically inferred that whoever was first to do an snow angel after a goal would get the puck. So every kid was hyper-focused on being the first to flop to the ice and flap their arms and legs after the goal. One kid was so aggressive he even did a face down snow angel. Fortunately, the Caps rock and each player received a puck for their celebration efforts.

Now the only question left is whether Ovechkin will pull out the snow angel after his next goal. I’d love to see that.

We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends, October 23-24

Photo courtesy of
‘DSC_0674’
courtesy of ‘mediaslave’

Rebecca: Friday I’m headed to Bar Dupont to celebrate a good friend passing the VA Bar. Woot Jimmy! Ladies, he’s single. Saturday morning, after picking up some produce from the Glover Park Farmers Market, I’ll have my eyes glued to ESPN as College Game Day travels to Columbia, MO where the No. 11 Tigers will take on the No.1 Sooners at 8pm. Go Mizzou! Burn down that stupid covered wagon! Saturday evening will be devoted to the game and, depending on the outcome, will either result in shots of Firefly for everyone atBreadsoda or crying myself to sleep. Sunday I’m off to Chef Geoff’s for a bridal shower followed by my first visit to WLDC author Jenn’s favorite haunt, The Passenger. To wrap up my weekend, I’m off to NoVa to play a night footie match. Whew! This weekend is going to be a doozy.

Michael: Friday night I am going up to Baltimore to see Helmet and Intronaut at SONAR. Regardless of Helmet’s status as a “group”, Page Hamilton always brings it hard in concert. Saturday I heard a rumor that DC party legends Thunderball are performing somewhere in town. I am trying to nail down the details. Will definitely be there if it’s going down. Then Sunday I might check out Four Tet at 9:30 Club because his weird electronics will sound great there. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Former WaPo Magazine Turns to Tumblr for Editor

Photo courtesy of
‘Newsweek Logo Process by Jim Parkinson’
courtesy of ‘FontShop’

I thought it was funny when the Associated Press turned to Craigslist to find its new D.C. Bureau Chief. Well, social media knows no bounds when it comes to the job search, which is why Newsweek (under new management since being sold by the Post Co. earlier this year) has upped the game by going to another 2.0 outlet – Tumblr – to find its new editor. From the post on the always entertaining Newsweek tumblr:

Out: TINA BROWN. In: YOU?

Do *you* have what it takes to be the next editor of NEWSWEEK?

The official (unofficial) NWK Tumblr search has begun. We are not f—king with you.

Send us your resumes, pies, LOLcats, booze—and don’t forget to include a special thanks to K. Ryan Jones, the genius behind the official (unofficial) Newsweek editor search video, brought you by NWK Tumblr.

Hey. They are not f–king with you. Get on it.

The Daily Feed
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Food Truck Tracker

Photo courtesy of
‘Mustache 08’
courtesy of ‘yospyn’

I cannot tell you how badly I wanted to wake up and have this be a Friday, but sadly, it’s Thursday. Fortunately, there are a bunch of awesome food trucks and it’s really beautiful and sunny out, so grab your things and get yourself some lunch here in a bit. The walk will clear your head, and a day without lunch is like cookies without sprinkles. Get on it, DC.

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Food and Drink, The Features
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We Love Vegan: Part 3, Question and Answer Session

Photo courtesy of
‘mini peppers’
courtesy of ‘ekelly80’

So talk more about your decision to be vegan – aside from curiosity, why did you do this?
Katie: I recently read The Kind Diet and have been interested in veganism ever since. After The Kind Diet, I read Clean Food, a vegan cookbook that doesn’t make a big deal about being vegan, but focuses more on eating locally and seasonally. After those two, I was convinced I needed to try it, and thought eating this way was something easier done being held accountable by a) Ashley and b) you, our readers. I’d totally do it again, and if I wasn’t a food writer whose career depends on eating meat and dairy, I’d probably take Silverstone’s challenge of going for a month or two and seeing how it felt.
Ashley: I have always been interested in juice fasts, more specifically in the people who are willing to put themselves through that, but I knew that would never happen for me. I thought of trying veganism for a little bit as a way to see if the high of clean eating really exists, as a lot of juice fasters have explained it to me, without quitting solid food altogether.

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The Daily Feed
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Army 10-Miler on Sunday!

Photo courtesy of
‘Army Ten Miler Finisher Coin, 2009’
courtesy of ‘[F]oxymoron’

This Sunday is the Army 10-Miler, starting at 8 AM at the Pentagon. The race is the largest 10-mile run in the country, with over 30,000 registered participants.  The Metro is opening early on Sunday to get all those runners to the Pentagon, and there will be a whole lot of street closures on Sunday morning as well.

The race expo will be held at the DC Armory on Friday and Saturday this weekend.  This isn’t just your typical pre-race expo with displays and sales on athletic gear, this expo is actually doing some good.  Bring your new or slightly worn running shoes to the expo this weekend to help out Soles4Souls, a charity that distributes shoes to disadvantaged people worldwide.

Sunday should be beautiful weather for the race, so even if you’re not registered, plan on heading out to watch the mass of 30,000 people take over the streets around DC and Arlington.  See you out there!

The Daily Feed
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Obama Headlines Daily Show Guests for DC Tapings Next Week

Photo courtesy of
‘This is the proof, we made it to the daily show!’
courtesy of ‘zugaldia’

The DC media and politics junkie scene is (naturally) distracted by the big display that will be Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear a week from this Saturday. It’s easy to forget that one of the reasons Stewart et al will be down here is because they had already scheduled tapings for the Daily Show from DC leading up to the midterm elections that are just a few weeks away.

You may remember this from mid-summer when tickets were made available and disappeared over your lunch hour. All of that mad dash for tickets, and the guests for each taping hadn’t even been announced. In the last few days, the Daily Show finally announced who will be sitting down with Stewart, and the headliner is none other than President Obama. Obama, who will be the guest on the Wednesday show, appeared on the show in the past, but before he was elected.

The other guests for the tapings will be Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Austan Goolsbee (October 25) and Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE; October 26). A guest has not been announced for the October 28th taping as of post time. If you are lucky enough to attend one of the shows, remember: they tape in the early evening, and it’s in your best interest to get over to the Harman Center for the Arts around 4 or even a little before then.

The Daily Feed
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Free Crepes? Don’t Mind If I Do.

Photo courtesy of
‘Crepe Making’
courtesy of ‘K’s Clicks’
Don’t know what to have for lunch today? Are you hoping for something a little French and a lot free? Well head over the new Muncheez Mania in Georgetown, where today at lunch (from 12pm-2pm) they will be giving out free crepes and sandwiches to customers in honor of their grand opening.

Stop by for the Three Cheese Muncheez Sandwich, the Wild Thyme Muncheez, or the PB&J crepe. Delicious forever, but only free today.

Entertainment, Food and Drink, Special Events, The Daily Feed
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“Tiki. Tacos. Terror.”

Photo courtesy of
‘Zombies!’
courtesy of ‘spiggycat’

Trust my favorite bar The Passenger to come up with a terrifyingly terrific way to spend the night before All Hallow’s Eve. Saturday, October 30 from 7pm to close, the bar will toy with the occult by serving up the infamous El Zombie cocktail, a concoction so potent it’s rumoured to turn the living into the undead!

Regular Zombie cocktails are deadly enough – with their origins in the 1930’s Tiki craze, the deceptive fruit content of these rum-based drinks mask the alcohol, resulting in the inbiber’s doooooooooom. From a haunted laboratory within the bar, test your fortitude against the El Zombie’s “evil combination of Mezcal, overproof rum, and infierno” resurrected from a secret recipe. Shudder. Continue reading →

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Dangerously Delicious Pie Truck May Roll Tomorrow

Dangerously Delicious Pie Truck

Dangerously Delicious Pie Truck, via facebook.com/dangerouspiesdc

Creating a flurry of pie-frenzy since they announced their new truck last night, the fantastic Dangerously Delicious Pies may be mobile as soon as tomorrow, according to a staff person at the H Street storefront, though the route and which of the sweet and savory pies might be aboard are all yet to be made public. The truck has a separate Twitter to follow – @dcpietruck – where details are likely to be posted. Details are also said to be updated on the Facebook as they emerge.

Update: Tomorrow’s launch is now confirmed.

Adams Morgan, The Daily Feed
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Black Squirrel, DCRA duke it out in tweets

Photo courtesy of
‘Black squirrel’
courtesy of ‘Pianoman75’

When Matt Ashburn of Cap City Diner & DCRA had their public spat two years ago over permitting problems and an architect gone wild, it wasn’t hard to see that this was the future of Twitter: a way to engage with your city government that is totally public, two-way, and mostly transparent.  Now The Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan is trying to do the same, albeit without any of the politeness and all the frustration.  DCist’s Aaron Morrissey has the whole story, with quotes from DCRA’s spokesman about plans that were contradictory and not complete, but Black Squirrel is now saying that any reference to a problem with the plans is bunk, and that they submitted proper documentation under conflicting advice.

The whole thing is deliciously sordid, wholly full of the sort of rashomon storytelling that is present in many crises, and absolutely worth a bag of popcorn and a lawn chair as it all unfolds.  At press time, The Black Squirrel says they’ve just done an interview with TBD, so I expect we’ll be hearing more.

The Features
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More DC Apologies We’d Like to See

Photo courtesy of
‘Jerk City’
courtesy of ‘Smath.’

You’ve probably heard by now that Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas, called Anita Hill and left her a voicemail asking her to consider apologizing to Justice Thomas for her sexual harassment allegations 19 years ago. I mean, clearly the only honorable course of action was to sit down and shut up about her mistreatment.

We found Mrs. Thomas’ sheer chutzpah inspiring and have come up with a list of additional apologies we’d like to see around DC:

Rasheeda Jones, it is time to consider apologizing to Council Member (and then-mayor) Marion Barry. It was such a shame the way you set him up to get caught by the FBI with that crack pipe. Really. Did you not consider the effect it would have on his political career? And while we’re on the topic, I call upon the IRS to apologize to Barry for their outrageous demands that he pay the taxes he owes to the US Government. Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Features, We Love Arts
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The Washington Legacy of Damn Yankees

If the court pleases, I’d like to enter Exhibit A into the record, the Venn Diagram that leads this post. In it, you’ll note two circles demonstrating a fairly obscure, but relevant point for the upcoming article: the population of baseball fans that intersects with those who are likely to read about Broadway musicals is not large. However, your honor, what I hope to show is that, while the overlap is obscure at best, there is a little something for everyone here in the following examination:

Later this afternoon, the Texas Rangers will take the field at Yankee Stadium for game five of the ALCS. They lead three games to one, and the long defeated franchise stands on the doorstep of the World Series, ready to wave the team’s first pennant. As written here late last week (partially to get a reaction, partially because the history is fun), this organization has some ties to DC, as they were once the Washington Senators, version 2.0. It wasn’t a comprehensive look at the history of the 2nd Senators to grace DC, nor other ties between the Texas Rangers and Washington baseball (notably, the fact that Texas Ace Cliff Lee was a prospect in the Expos’ system and traded away for little long before his rise of the last few years), but really just some fun thoughts to help find a rooting interest this postseason.

In that vein – and to give fair ink to all parts of the Washington baseball past – there’s one other part of Senators history from the first iteration of the franchise that also could be entertaingly relevant: the 1955 musical Damn Yankees.

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Surveillance video: Metro passenger rescues unconscious man from tracks

YouTube Preview Image

Our friends at ArlNOW.com have obtained this surveillance video of the incident in which Dimas Pinzon jumped onto the tracks at the Virginia Square Metro Station to aid another man who had fallen onto the tracks while having a medical emergency, just as another train was pulling into the station.

Pinzon had to pick his way around the electrified third rail, and at one point actually stood on top of the rail cover. Predictably, Metro spokesman Ron Holzer discourages this behavior, pointing out quite correctly that the third rail is dangerous and the cover is not meant to support a person’s weight, but then he asserts that the correct course of action is to notify the station manager so that the train can be stopped.

I don’t know what stations Holzer is using, where you can count on making it to the top of the escalator and actually finding a station manager near his or her desk, but they are not the stations I am passing through, and it’s not like the platforms have a convenient way to page the station manager.  So I am not sure I’d be willing to risk letting a train hit another human being while I ran around to find the manager.

Food and Drink, The Features
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We Love Vegan: Part 2

Photo courtesy of
‘Go Vegan Be Green Save the Planet’
courtesy of ‘bunnicula’

Yesterday, we began a three-part series in which our food writing team, Ashley and Katie, went vegan for a week. This is the second installment of the series. Catch up on Part 1 here.

DAY THREE

Katie: By now you know I eat fruit and a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. Nothing to see here, move along.

Ashley: I was a sad vegan this morning. I woke up and didn’t have it in me to leave the house, and much to my dismay had no food (vegan or otherwise) in the kitchen. I briefly considered wandering to Starbucks in hopes they would have something, but laziness prevailed and I had two cups of coffee instead.

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Hillary Clinton: “It Will Get Better”

When Hillary Clinton speaks, you listen. The State Department released a video yesterday of Clinton telling LGBT youth to “hang in there,” making her the latest personality to join Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign. The campaign was created last month in response to the recent string of LGBT suicides, and highlights personal stories and celebrity PSAs as a way to show young people that the bullying, self-doubt and intolerance of adolescence do in fact improve.

For her own PSA, the Secretary of State included the obligatory patriotism, citing “the story of America is the story of people coming together to tear down barriers, stand up for rights and insist on equality, not only for themselves but for all people.” Her delivery is wooden at best, but it’s nonetheless a powerful message of support from the administration. And poor delivery or no, it’s hard to find fault with one of her final lines: “Take heart and have hope. Please remember that your life is valuable, and that you are not alone.”