By John Athayde
‘DC’s Mayor Adrian Fenty’
courtesy of ‘Sprezzatura Images’
On Friday, Mayor Fenty declined the Republican nomination for Mayor stating that “While I am humbled by the nomination, I will not accept it.” He pledged his support to work with Chariman Gray. Fenty won the Republican nomination with 822 write-in votes. It is unknown how many Republicans and Independents would have voted for him in an open election, and we’ll have to keep speculating on that count.
By Erin McCann
‘DC Streets’
courtesy of ‘pnzr242’
The few elements of this photo that shine out from the darkness tell us everything we need to know: a man, a train station, a grim expression, head bowed. We’ve all been there, isolated as we trudge from the Metro to the office or back again.
Photography is a game of precision timing and people and light. The people who wander the city’s streets with cameras in hand thrive on the rare moments when all three come together at the exact same instant the shutter clicks. You can get high on the feeling of success in those moments; in them you fall in love with your city, your commute, your camera, everything, all over again. Sure, absolute success is a little about luck, but it’s also about having an eye for the small moments that add up to great pictures. It’s about seeing great light and a great scene and lying in wait for the right subject to come along. Flickr user PNZR242 relied on skill and a little bit of luck to catch such a moment at a Metro station last week.
The man and the moment may seem stern, but in timing them just so perfectly, the photographer managed to raise the bar a little bit for everyone who lifts a camera to their eye and hopes to capture some magic.
By Tom Bridge
Photo by Cheryl Nichols/Nats News Network
The Nationals appeared to have left their collective team heart elsewhere Monday night when playing the Houston Astros in Washington. It’s painfully obvious at this point in September that whatever underdog grit this team had after going 20-15 to start the season is long gone.
Livan Hernandez looked sharp on the mound retiring all six of the first batters he faced, but that two inning no-hitter took a turn for the worst with some deplorable defensive plays in the fifth. The worst of it all is that the Nationals scored two runs in the top of the first. They were winning to start things off but couldn’t hold on for dear life.
By Katie
When I first started with We Love DC, we had 11 authors. (I also hiked to school uphill both ways.) Now, we have a food and drink team of seven writers, and more fabulous authors than I can name in a sitting. We’ve grown into a big family, and so we were invited to Carmine’s for a dinner for eight, it was only fitting that we go together as a team, and make it a faux-thanksgiving feast.
Carmine’s is, as you’ve heard I’m sure, the largest restaurant in DC right now. So inviting a raucous gaggle of WLDC writers meant only one thing: we’d be loud. Luckily, Carmine’s is built for loud, large groups, and so we feasted on pasta, pasta, wine, pasta and a cannoli or two or five. Continue reading
By Ashley
‘Hops (Day 296)’
courtesy of ‘ewilfong’
Are you so over fancy meals paired with wine? How about a great meal paired with…beer? Sounds much more my style. On Monday, September 27th at 7pm, Birch & Barley is holding a beer dinner featuring exclusive beers from Sly Fox Brewery. And diners can learn a little something about the Pennsylvania brewery while they eat, since Sly Fox Brewmaster Brian O’Reilly will be in attendance.
Executive Chef Kyle Bailey and Pastry Chef Tiffany Maclsaac have whipped up a five-course tasting menu designed to complement each brew. Highlights of the dinner include an acorn squash tortellini, a pan-seared wreckfish, a beef striploin, and a gianduji panna cotta.
Tickets are $76, and reservations can by made by calling Birch & Barley (202-567-2576). If you can’t make it to the dinner, ChurchKey will feature five different Sly Fox cask ales that night.
By Rebecca
‘Roller Girls’
courtesy of ‘Edward Hoover’
On Saturday, October 2nd, the DC Rollergirls kick off their 2010 season with the Cherry Blossom Bombshells taking on the DC Demoncats at 4pm. For those of you who haven’t yet experienced some girl-on-girl rollerderby action, what the heck are you waiting for?!!
There’s campy player names (Miso Knotty, Ridin Dirty, Ovary Action, Marion Barracuda, etc.,) full-contact rules, high levels of athleticism, intense amounts of strategic action, the possibility of being tackled by a rollergirl if you stand near the sidelines and, the kicker, no beer lines (FYI: it’s cash only). Oh, the matches are kid friendly as well, so bring the little tikes with you!
By Dave Levy
‘IMG_5217’
courtesy of ‘techsports’
We Love DC’s Sports Fix runs every other Monday. To keep you in the loop on the odd week, here’s a quick ticker on what’s going on around DC, Maryland and Virginia Sports. Continue reading
courtesy of No Age.
While most of DC’s indie-music listeners were reliving past glories watching Superchunk over at 9:30 Club on Friday night, a decent-sized and enthusiastic crowd were dancing the night away to the two of indie-rock’s new breed: junk-techno technicians Holy Fuck and noise-pop purveyors No Age. This show was one of the more interesting stylistic pairings in recent memory with both bands offering radically different sounds while occupying the same altitude of on-the-rise status.
Both Holy Fuck and No Age are touring in support of their third albums, which technically makes them both indie upper class-men, but their noise aesthetic and DIY approach to everything has possibly held them back from tapping the meteoric-rise success model that is being employed by their more pop-oriented peers. In other words, No Age and Holy Fuck are relying less on internet buzz and more on old fashioned word-of-mouth to garner a fan base. Something that No Age should be receiving in spades if they continue to perform at the level they did on Friday night.
By Tom Bridge
‘travis morrison hellfighters’
courtesy of ‘rodolfo herrera’
If you weren’t one of the lucky clickers last week for Dismemberment Plan tickets at Black Cat or 9:30 Club, you have another chance, but it involves obsessively refreshing the band’s Facebook Page obsessively. They’re opening up a third show on their tour for DC. It’ll be at 9:30 Club, with all details forthcoming later today. So, get your F5 finger ready, and snap up tickets to see a piece of DC punk rock history.
‘Baltimore Rock Opera Society’
courtesy of ‘mediaslave’
On Saturday, the H Street Festival introduced me to, as a friend put it, “the greatest thing since things became good.” What is this wonder of awesomeness you ask? The Baltimore Rock Opera Society, my friends. They write and perform original rock operas in venues around the Baltimore area. Yes, they are in Baltimore and thus outside the usual geographic focus for our DC-lovin’ website, but can you seriously tell me you wouldn’t travel to see kitschy homemade valkyrie costumes and fake guitars shaped like giant meat cleavers featured in an original rock opera?
Their “booth” at the festival was right next to Joy of Motion’s , which meant they had to take turns with the dance studio’s cha-cha demonstrations to blast their pounding speakers of rock doom while playing air-er, cleaver guitar and posting for photo-ops with festival attendees around their skull-adorned metalmobile.
But really, don’t rely on my inadequate descriptions. View some photos of the BROS taken at the Festival this weekend.
By Ashley
By arjun
‘Our seats in the upper deck’
courtesy of ‘BrianMKA’
One thing is certain about the Redskins: they are rarely boring to watch. After giving up a 17-point lead in the second half and nearly 500 yards passing, the Skins fell to the Texans 30-27 in overtime. Both teams played very well for the most part but a few mistakes cost the Skins a victory. The blocked field goal in the 4th quarter, the holding penalty on Stephon Heyer after a critical 23-yard catch by Santana Moss, and the offsides call on Chris Horton were among the biggest blunders. Two key injuries also affected the game as Laron Landry and Trent Williams tweaked their left wrist and knee respectively. The overtime itself was torture for Skins fans as the team went for a 52-yard field goal, which Graham Gano made, but Texans’ coach Gary Kubiak called a timeout just before the snap. Gano’s second attempt was way off the mark. When the Texans got possession of the ball, they moved it to the 18-yard line and Neil Rackers hit a 35-yard field goal giving Houston a victory after 71 ½ minutes of football. There is no question that the Skins gave a full effort in this game. It’s just a matter of holding a lead and finishing plays late in the game that they need to improve upon.
By Tom Bridge
‘Pay for time’
courtesy of ‘afagen’
The first battle of the Gray administration is to…walk back meter fees? Really? In a week when the deficit could be rising to $100M? I mean, I hate the fact that I have to carry a couple rolls of quarters at any given point, but the answer here isn’t dialing back the meter fees. The answer is moving to a telephone parking service across the city, like the various trials that are already underway in Foggy Bottom, Dupont and elsewhere in the city, where you can just call in a payment and adjust your meter payment without needing four pounds of quarters. There’s another option, and that’s what Arlington has adopted with their iPark system where the city takes a deposit and you slowly (or quickly in DC’s case…) work through your credit while the city earns interest on the money already in their coffers.
Don’t dial back the fees when you’ve got a $100M deficit. Make parking less painful, yes, but not less expensive. Meters aren’t what drive people away, parking tickets are.
By Ben H. Rome
‘The Lights Converge’
courtesy of ‘Paul Frederiksen’
Another excellent weekend in the area. From the Flickr pool, it seems most of our contributors spent the weekend enjoying the H Street Festival, so if today’s Flashback isn’t enough for you, we encourage you to skim the pool for more highlights.
By Dave Levy
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’
Welcome to a new weekly series here at We Love DC, the Redskins Cheat Sheet. Whether celebrating triumphs or swearing profusely over frustrating defeats, the Redskins take up a lot of the Monday Morning water cooler chatter in offices around town. Of course, lots of people have better things to do on Sundays, but if you want to follow along to those, here’s your quick guide to ‘Skins Banter.
A much bigger recap is coming later on today, so I will not steal all the thunder on writing up a gamer on yesterday’s overtime loss to the Houston Texans. Here’s three quick points to keep in mind to fake your way through any conversations that may come up.
Continue reading
By Don
‘When life gives you lemons…’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’
It wouldn’t be so unfair if Men’s Health called their list “The Worst Foods in America to Overeat” but they left off the last bit. Instead they call the Five Guys large fries a bad choice without ever admitting that their “eat this instead” is exactly the same recommendation that Five Guys makes on their nutrition information[pdf].
That doesn’t give Five Guys a total pass, mind you, since their small exceeds the small size at competitor restaurants and can contribute to over-eating via the large plate problem. However Men’s Health calls them “worst fries” not “worst portion” and does this despite the fact that, gram for gram, Five Guys’ fries are lower in fat than competitors like McDonalds[pdf].
| Five Guys Fries | McDonald’s Fries |
|---|---|
|
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So you should consider limiting your overall fry intake no matter where you go – there’s not any way to make a deep-fried piece of potato good for you – but you could do worse to pick the Five Guys fry for your weekly indulgence.
In moderation, of course.
By Patrick Pho
Jeff Talbott, MacKenzie Meehan, Kathleen McElfresh, Jennifer Mendenhall and Harry A. Winter in Circle Mirror Transformation at The Studio Theatre. (Photo: Carol Pratt)
Finding humor in the mundane lives of others has been one of the key reasons why shows like The Office and Community are hits. A show about the 9-5 of a workplace is something we can all relate to. Community created a small-town, village feel within the student body of a community college. Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation plays along similar lines except for one key difference: characters.
While Steve Carrell and Joel McHale play larger than life characters on their respective shows, the ensemble cast of Circle Mirror Transformation wouldn’t draw a glance if they were next to you on a Metro car or in line with you at Safeway.
By Dave Levy
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’
The full schedule for the 2010-2011 Big East basketball season has yet to be released, but Hoya fans can count on having the national spotlight at least a few times as a part of ESPN’s Big Monday series. Georgetown will head to Madison Square Garden on the first Monday in January to square off with St. John’s (albeit unfortunately matched against the Orange Bowl for TV coverage) and then host its own primetime game at the Verizon Center later that month when Louisville comes to town on January 31st.
You can read more about ESPN’s Big Monday and check out the other featured match-ups in the conference’s release from yesterday.
By Don
‘Log Frame House (Tarentum, PA)’
courtesy of ‘takomabibelot’
The Log Cabin Republicans have put out a press release with their list of candidates who they say support their important causes. “A free market economy, a strong defense, smart tax policies, sound fiscal discipline, and without question– value equal treatment for all Americans,” according to their Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper. If you’re a Marylander or Virginian waiting for this to determine how to vote, however, you’re flat out of luck: they weighed in on none of the races in VA or MD.
My initial assumption was that they didn’t have anybody here they could remotely support, but it looks like that may not be the case. Not endorsing Patrick Murry in VA-8 makes perfect sense after he implied he’d support DADT and “traditional marriage” and his primary opponent would not and MD-5’s Lollar is explicit with the one-man-one-woman definition. I’m a little surprised they weren’t down with Robert Broadus in MD-4, though – while he also mentions “traditional marriage” he has a statement on his website that he’d be down with getting government out of the marriage business entirely.
I would not vote to change this, unless it was to remove government completely from the institution of marriage. I believe marriage is a religious sacrament, and should therefore be decided by churches and by the people who attend them. I do not believe people should receive tax benefits or any other preferential treatment from the government because of their marital status.
More likely, though, is that they took one look at this region and said “why bother?” The Maryland House races are in the bag for the Democrats and the Virginia incumbents couldn’t be detonated out with all the fireworks in China. The only race with a (remote) shot of changing hands is VA-11, where Republican Kieth Fimian is trailing and firmly anti-gay rights.
By Tom Bridge
‘African Lion Cubs Receive First Vet Exam’
courtesy of ‘Smithsonian’s National Zoo’
The cuteness is melting my face right off! Look at these adorable lion cubs! They had their first physical yesterday, at two and a half weeks old, and they’re just about the most adorable and healthy little lions that you’ll ever see. The vets aren’t quite sure yet what gender they are, but initial surveys indicate that they have four small girl lions. Click through for a couple awesome photos at full size.
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